See all the Shopify store income reports here.
Maybe you’ve been wanting to start a store, but don’t know where to start or what platform to choose.
Maybe you’re scared to start a store as a beginner because you don’t know how you’ll possibly be able to drive traffic to it and make it profitable.
Maybe you already have an ecommerce store and can’t understand why you’re not making anything but chump change in it.
Maybe you’ve spent some time on your store and seen only crickets in traffic.
Maybe you’ve tried other platforms like Etsy, ebay, Amazon, Creative Market, the list goes on and on and have seen a little bit of money, but know there’s more out there for you.
Whatever your situation is, you’re in the right place! Opening up my own Shopify store, very quickly changed my entire life, and while I’m not promising massive amounts of money your very first month, what I AM saying is that most people don’t realize the POWER having your own Shopify store has.
Today, I’m going to be sharing my Shopify store income report for June 2018.
Shopify Store Income Report – $138,945 (June 2018)
Most of you know that I’ve been selling on ebay for over 20 years now. Back before they were even CALLED ebay. ๐ I was just a teen back then, but really realized the power of selling things online. It was a whole new world for me. An exciting world.
But there are several things I’ve always LOATHED about selling online.
- I HATE to ship products.
- I hate keeping track of inventory.
- I hate keeping everything perfectly organized to sell.
- I hate not being able to find something right as it sells.
- I hate following someone else’s rules.
- I hate when they CHANGE said rules and I have to go back through all my ads and completely redo all of them to comply.
- I hate feeling like I have no ownership over the store. Like I’m powerless.
- I hate not having the capability of making certain sales the way I want them to be, instead of working with the basic tools they give me.
- I hate being at the MERCY of a customer who does something shady and leaves bad feedback and everyone thinks it’s ME who has done something bad. Or competitors who leave negative feedback to ruin you (yep, it’s happened!)
So, while there’s a lot of good things about selling on a platform like eBay or Etsy, there are also a lot of bad things you MUST accept in order to sell on someone else’s “turf.”
I sold on Amazon, I’ve sold on Creative Market, I’ve sold on ebay, I’ve sold on a membership site, I’ve sold on a stock photo site, and I’ve sold on Shopify.
For me, out of all the options I’ve tried, Shopify is, HANDS DOWN, the best way to go.
And as I’m writing this post (July 3), I’m really SUPER excited to announce that on July 1, I opened up a SECONDARY store. I’m going to attempt to sell stock photography and see how that goes! ๐
The site is not at all ready for the public. It’s still a mess and I’m working on setting it up, but it IS viewable and the reason I’m making it viewable is because I think it’s really HELPFUL, to see HOW I’m setting up shop. How I’m doing things, what I’m doing, what I’m taking the time to do, what I’m not taking the time to do, what my priorities are. Am I setting up a lot of products or just a few.
All those types of questions, I wanted you to see first hand, behind-the-scenes AS I’m setting up, so that you can walk with me through this adventure.
I do not expect it to be as successful as my regular printables shop, however, I do think it can bring in at least HALF of the money the printables shop makes and that only serves to add to my income in a way that is, once set up, mostly on auto-pilot.
I believe that if you have quality stuff, once you get people TO the site, the products speak for themselves and they literally sell themselves. SO…the only real key, is getting people there.
So, why stock photos?
Well, I don’t feel like there’s ENOUGH solid options for people. There are some good sites out there FOR SURE, but what I WANT and what I NEED for my own business, there’s a lack. It seems like you really have to scour the internet at all different sites, to gather a few photos from each place and that’s NOT NOT NOOOOOTTTT good for branding. Because everyone’s style is naturally different. And without things looking co-hesive and well put together, it’s hard to stand out in the crowd.
So I want to create a place, a community, where bloggers can go and buy the stock photography that I will sell at super cheap prices. I have a huge passion for helping other bloggers get started because I really found myself in blogging and it’s a great way to earn money to stay home with your kids.
Of course, that’s what I’m all about: helping women stay home with their kids. Having a stock photography site as a resource for bloggers is a GREAT way for me to give back to other bloggers now that I’m stable on my own blog and that’s my #1 why! <3
I can read your mind. ๐ Your next question is going to be, “WHAT type of photography WILL I sell?”
Personally, I am quite OBSESSED with desktops. Office supplies, etc. It stems from way back as a kid. My favorite store was the Hello Kitty stationary store. Oh how I just always LOVED markers, stamps, paper, stationary, binders, pens, erasers, and so on. The cuter the better.
I loved school and I loved school supplies. As an adult, I’m still obsessed with that stuff, and THANKFULLY, I have a printables store, that I can release my creative side and create things for an office. Binders, coloring pages, wall art to decorate your office, and everything in between.
So for me, taking pictures of office/blogging stuff, comes very naturally to me and I ADORE IT! I’m really passionate about it.
Here’s what I mean…
You can download the free stock photos here:
Look for TONS more coming soon to the new shop!
Shopify income report total for June 2018 (printables store only; doesn’t include blog/misc. income) – $138,945
Total sessions (for the printables store only) – 10,920
Total orders for the printables store only – 2,225
Stats per product:
This is my favorite part of researching analytics. Figuring out which products sell (or get downloaded for free) the most. Stuff like this tells me EXACTLY what to create more of in my store and what to stop creating, so it’s something I gauge very heavily.
If you have the $79/month Shopify plan, which I do, you’ll get FANtastic analytics reports that will give you all this information broken down by product. I then go into my newsletter (I have ConvertKit and love them) and compare them in order to get conversion rates.
But at quick glance, you can see that there were 10,920 sessions and 2,225 orders, so that’s over 20% conversion, JUST on the people that visit, which is pretty high. People are coming and loving stuff enough to go through checkout and buy. ๐
200 Essential Oil Diffuser Blends Binder
My new binder out this month was my Essential Oil Diffuser Blends Binder.
So far this binder has 471 sales on it, every single one of which, were free. Every month, I release a new binder and it’s usually free. But I usually DO get a lot of sales on the binder as well during that time and this binder has gotten a whopping ZERO, so that tells me my pricing is too high.
I started it at $37 and what I’ll probably do is run a sale on it from $37 to $7 for a couple weeks in my header bar on the shop and see if I get good sales from that. Then, after that sale period is over, move the regular price down to $17, and see if I get sales for it at that price point.
It’s okay if this binder doesn’t make me a whole lot of money, because eventually it’ll just be part of a MUCH BIGGER all-inclusive Essential Oil Binder (that I am creating now behind-the-scenes). ๐
Coloring Hope Binder
Another new binder out this month was my Coloring Hope Binder.
It’s the same exact thing as my regular Hope Binder, but in a coloring page format. Most of my audience really loves to color, as do I and my daughter, so I try to do a lot of colorable stuff, because it’s just plain fun! ๐
The Coloring Hope Binder got 493 sales this month. It’s a little lower in sales than normal and I think it’s just due to it being summer. There’s less traffic, less people online, everyone’s traveling, enjoying the sun (myself included), so newly released stuff is a little harder to gain traction right now and that’s okay.
I’m in this for the long haul and the store does fantastic with all the mainstay products. Whatever I add on now, just adds to my overall shop portfolio (and traffic generating marketing plan) and people are still really loving everything released, so it’s good. ๐
This month, I didn’t release a lot of products or do a whole lot because I was pretty focused on sharing The 90 Day Year with people. It’s only open once a year (in June) and it’s the #1 thing I attribute to most of my success within my store.
While I have gotten a few businesses/companies come along and try to sneakily get me to say that THEIR products/services have attributed to my success, the real glory goes to:
- God
- My hard work
- Shopify – where I have my store hosted
- ConvertKit – where I have my newsletter
- The 90 Day Year – which taught me how to manage my time and produce products in record-timing
One of the things I did as a marketing perspective for my store this month is to add the word “Binder” as its separate category in my navigation bar on my blog. I originally had the word, “Binder”, under, “Printables”. Now it has it’s own category. I feel like this highlights it more and what I’m about.
So, this month, I pulled my heatmap (free) to see if that plan is working or not. Here’s what I’m seeing.
In my navigation/header section, you can see that, “Binders”, is at .69%. It’s not really AS high as other things in there for sure, however, one of the things I’m most known for is saving money and it’s higher than that, so I feel like it fits in there very well and I want to draw people’s attention to it, so I will leave it in.
The other thing I did this month is to line up some topics to see which topics my audience wants the most of. This is an incredibly subtle way to POLL my audience. I line up 4 options, they “vote” on which one they like best. This is absolutely intentional as well as serves a purpose of showing others WHAT EXACTLY my blog is about, who I am, and what they will get out my site.
I’m very happy with this section because it accomplishes SO much!
As you can see, Make Money Blogging is #1 at 3.16%.
- Make Money Blogging – 3.16%
- Make Money with a Shop – 2.17%.
- Save Money – 2.08%
- Organize Your Life – 1.68%
This tells me that more people care about saving money than organizing their life. And more people care about making money blogging still over making money with a store. I hope to flip that.
The direction I’m going in, I’m hoping that one day, I can gain enough credibility to position myself as an ecommerce expert. I still absolutely want to teach blogging and will always teach that, but that I want to focus a little more on the ecommerce side than blogging as I feel like the market is already well saturated beyond belief with blogging information, whereas ecommerce is a lot harder to find, and impossible to find within the mommy blog niche, of which I am a part of.
My top 5 products
You can see this months’ top 5 products by clicking the links below:
My Million Dollar Shopยฎ
If you are new in your store or itโs not making what you want, carve out the time for it, and check out my Million Dollar Shopยฎ courses, here.
They have all the tips and tricks that Iโm using to crush it in my store, and it goes into massive depth of all the ins and outs of what to do. I hope you check them out, and I hope your store flies!
Ready to start up your OWN Shopify store?
Click here and you can get a 14 day trial FREE! It just might be the best move you ever make. It certainly was for me! Are you the next Shopify success story?!
JAMIE says
Are these incomes only from your store? Am amazed your an inspiration of never giving up
Sarah Titus says
Yes, just solely from my printables store. I just opened up a secondary store on July 1, which has already made me $15k+ in the last 21 days. ๐ Those reports don’t include the new store yet or my blogging income at all (ads, affiliates, etc.)
JAMIE says
Wow am this is amazing. Hopefully I can get to this point amazing
Sara says
How are you driving people to your shop? Is it mainly Pinterest or Facebook ads or something else?
Sarah Titus says
Sara, neither! ๐ I think I pinned around 4ish? pins somewhere in the 13 months I’ve had the printables store. Nothing to my stock photos store yet. I’ve never run any kind of ads. I need to learn for sure! ๐ Especially since Shopify gives you $100 in free Google AdWorks money. Still haven’t used it. lol. Working on a couple products as we speak that will go into massive detail of how I do all this, as there are a ton of questions I get on it all. I want to be sure to answer EVERYTHING, so I’m writing your questions down and if you have any more, be sure to let me know. <3
Pam says
Sarah, loving your posts and learning a lot. Quick question please. This new shopify course you are creating are you going to be teaching people starting from scratch with no list. As you mention that you donโt use paid ads, hardly ever pin on Pinterest, been selling online for a long time and started with a list of 35,000. I think what many people are wanting to know (having read most of the comments), are you going to teach based on people without an existing or small list? Or those who already have a blog and steady stream of traffic and 5k plus email database? Plus, can you make money in a shopify store if your existing blog has nothing to do with your store niche?
Just want to know how realistic the numbers will be for those without a blog or existing email list and your recommendations to get sales without an existing list please?
Sarah Titus says
Pam, I haven’t mapped out the course yet, so I’m just not sure of details yet, however, I would say that yes, my second store, I don’t have a list for it and still make 5-figures month in it, so I’m able to teach something like that fairly easily. ๐ For Pinterest, that’s correct. I don’t pin anything for the stores. I just pin for my blog as I’ve always done. You can make money in a Shopify store if your existing blog has nothing to do with your store niche, yes of course, however, just know that it’ll be an uphill battle. It won’t be near as easy as if you have a list and can market to a group of people already interested in your stuff. So many people do things backwards. You’re not looking to start a store and then build it from there. You’re looking to have a platform and give your audience more of what they already want. It can be done yes, but I’ll probably start with the easiest part first, having an existing audience. ๐ That doesn’t have to be an email list and it doesn’t have to be thousands of people. They say you need thousands of people b/c their conversion rates are barely anything and they are barely anything b/c they come of ingenuine or scammy. Period. My conversion rates are 60%-80% on average. I’ve even seen 90’s percentages! I’m killin’ it. So, if I had 100 people in my audience, 80 people would buy. You sell something for $10, that’s $800. You don’t need a lot of people. ๐ What I will teach is so opposite of everyone else. You’ll be required to think completely different.
Pam Brossman says
Wow thanks for the in depth reply, that makes a lot of sense. Looking forward to the course… I love doing things the opposite to everyone else. Have an amazing day ๐
Cheers
Pam