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 because you don’t know how you’ll possibly be able to drive traffic to it.
Maybe you already have a 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 reports for August 2018.
Shopify Store Income Reports – $321,206 (August 2018)
Most of you know that I’ve been selling on ebay for over 20 years now. Back before they were even CALLED ebay. 🙂 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.
Income reports total for August 2018 (Shopify stores only; doesn’t include blog/misc. income) – $321,206
Traffic total (to my Shopify stores only; sessions-not pageviews) for August 2018 – 22,119
Stats:
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 both in order to get conversion rates.
Printables Store
My printables store makes the majority of the money for me. In August, I made $226,309 and got 17,759 in sessions (not pageviews).
Return customer rate is 51.5%.
Diving a little deeper into traffic in this income report so you can kinda see the picture more….
Online store sessions (not pageviews) were:
- Direct: 11,518
- Unknown: 4,504
- Social (organic, no paid advertising): 1,124 (this includes- Facebook: 943, Pinterest: 139, Instagram: 39)
- Email: 468 (which, I got way more than that according to ConvertKit so it must be a lot in the unknown and direct sections as well)
- Search: 145
My top 5 landing pages this month were:
This month, I released the Student Planner for free and had a sale on the Recipe Binder for only $3.
The Recipe Binder made $9,213 in sales and the Student Planner got many downloads.
The Blogging Binder made $3,478 in sales this month.
My Blogging Bundle was a good money generating source for me this month. It made $52,866 in sales. I have a secret 60% off code going around for the item and it’s being shared – 60% off discount code: BUNDLESNEWSLETTERSECRETSALE
Stock Photography Store
Sha-sam! If this stock photography store isn’t an instant hit. This month alone it generated $94,897 in revenue. I’m a little shocked to be honest. I thought it would do well, but I didn’t know it would do THIS well. I’m not sure if it’ll keep up this kind of attention, but I do know that I been talking about the stores a lot lately.
Since it’s just a new store (opened last month), I won’t know for a little while, how much this revenue stream will make me on a consistent basis every month. Only time will tell, but so far, it’s good traffic and sales. 🙂
The return customer rate in this store is 14.51%. Quite a bit lower than my other store, but I don’t promote it too much to my email list (I plan to change that), which is where I’d be getting most of the return customers.
My top 5 products for the stock photography store
Again, I’m just starting out in the store so the sales are very much spread out between many different items, until I can see clear and consistent winners and then promo just those top products to the masses, but you can see this months’ top 5 products by clicking the links below:
*please note – I was having a lot of tech trouble with having TWO Shopify stores, so sadly 🙁 I had to close my secondary shop.
- 50+ Styled Stock Library (this is on sale for $9 in my header bar currently, but you can get it free for limited time- info. is below)
- Instaquotes Social Media Mega Pack
- Teal Candle Product Mockups
- Square Inspirational Graphics
- Teal Clipboard
A couple things that I notice….teal is a big hit, so as I make more stock photos, I will keep in mind my audience likes the color teal the best it seems.
Also, both Instagram media packs are in the top 5, so moving forward, I’ll plan on creating more Instagram-focused products and see if those will sell well for me also.
Free Stock Photos
You can download the 50+ free stock photos here – be sure to use discount code (if prompted): 50FREEBIESTOCK
The free stock photos shown above are no longer available as I closed by stock photography store (due to tech issues of trying to run two Shopify stores), however, GOOD NEWS! I do have another free set of 50 here:
You can download the 50 free stock photos here – use discount code (if needed): 50FREEBIESTOCK
My Million Dollar Shop®
If you are new in your store or it’s not making what you want, carve out the time for it, and check out my Million Dollar Shop® courses, here.
They have all the tips and tricks that I’m 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!
I really dont understand your business there are tons of tons of printable business out there and no one hit $100000+ with mere 17000 visitors and who are direct visitors? is it good option to instead of attach store to shopify I add printables direct to printify?
thank you 🙂
I’m not sure what printify is, but what most people are doing wrong is their marketing. This isn’t a blogging age of doing what everyone else does and expecting success. This is about doing something that’s right for your readers in particular, having high engagement (my conversion rates are super duper high), and investing and caring more about people than money. When a person genuinely cares more about the people they serve, even if that means a LOSS in revenue, they ultimately ALWAYS (100% of the time), earn more than anyone else. Having higher success than my peers is something I’m used to for a good 20 years now; it’s normal to me. Those are things I’m teaching. It’s different than most of the world and that’s why it works. 🙂 I’m at $2.4+ million dollars a year in both my shops and I haven’t even started paying to promote (social media ads, etc.) The sky’s the limit when we PUT PEOPLE FIRST. 🙂 <3 Something the world just doesn't understand...or they try to say they do, but they really don't. :/
Agree 100% Sarah.
It’s always great to hear the “People first” mantra reinforced. It can sometimes be easy to get sidetracked and forget.
Absolutely Anders. 🙂
Love how you put people first, Sarah! So refreshing! <3
I can sense it in your writing…and I can learn so much from you. Thank you for doing things differently… what a great role model.
Please put this topic in your Shopify course. How do you continue to give so freely and still make so much money?!!
I’ll definitely go more in depth about it, but I answered the jist of it here on Instagram. 🙂
Awesome! Thank you for sharing the IG post. What a great way to think about marketing! You’ve got me thinking. 🙂
How do you know what to give away for free and how much to give away? Do you have a system?
Yes, definitely have a system. I’ll be sharing it a little bit later. 🙂
ok thats nice to hear it 🙂 is there any course or guideline that direct where right audience and care whom we target?
thank you 🙂
I’m not sure I understand the question…are you asking to find out where to find people who will buy your products?
yes like people interested in finance printable? people interested in planner etc
This would be part of your marketing strategy, which I’m going to cover in depth in my Shopify course coming soon, but my favorite way of attracting people who are interested in your stuff is here in my new Instagram post. Check it out!
I really enjoyed reading about your experience. It sounds like you’d have a lot of interesting stories to tell. Competitors trying to take you down with negative feedback? Wow!
It definitely sounds like Shopify is a step above the usual selling sites that come to mind!
Glad you liked it Kim. <3 Competitors leaving negative feedback is pretty common actually. 🙁 Absolutely, definitely a step in the right direction. 🙂
Totally agree Sarah. People who copy you will not get the same results because what you are really selling is Sarah, who is unique in her style, personality, beliefs and exceptional and generous service for her customers. People cannot copy that. So those who steal your ideas will not succeed. Quick question Sarah, do you take all the photos for your new photo store or do you have resale rights for some of your packs?
I am really looking forward to the shopify program, I have been wanting to launch my creative business for a long time and I believe I will learn a lot from your experience and insights.
Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge.
Pam, I take all my own photos in my stock photos store. 🙂 There are no resale rights for my photos.
Absolutely…glad to help anytime. <3
Well they are fantastic, you definitely have a natural gift. Thank you for your reply.
Do you recommend the basic edition of shopify when starting out? If I set up my store now will it be difficult to rearrange things once your course comes out? I need to get some products up. =)
Yes, definitely recommend the $29/month Shopify plan to start. After a while, you’ll want to upgrade to the $79/month plan for the reports and abandon carts feature. For rearranging, yeah, there will be a lot of rearranging when the Shopify Binder (30 day series comes out), however you can get started on the 10 day series here. That’ll take you a few days, maybe a week. The actual course is separate and will be the more advanced training so I’d start out with the free stuff first (the 10 day and 30 day series’). 🙂 If you’re just starting now, you won’t need to buy the course for at least a couple months b/c it takes a while to set things up. You want to have a solid foundation FIRST, so start with the 10 day and 30 day series first. 🙂
Hi Sarah! Thank you for your reply. Can you link the 30 day series?
Tamikia, it’s not ready yet. It won’t go live until November. 🙂
Oops sorry. Looking forward to it!
No reason to apologize. 🙂 <3 Glad you're looking forward to it!
I’m looking forward to your Shopify Binder. I don’t have a shopify store yet… because I don’t have anything to put in it yet. I would like to open it before the holidays. Should I start creating my printables for my shop now? Your Genius Blogging Toolkit Planner is beautiful… I want to create printables like that…and not sure what program to use. I asked on another blog post what program you use to create your printables? thx <3
Yeah, got it. Answered on the other post. 🙂 If that’s the direction you want to go (check this book first to determine your path), then yes, start creating a couple products before opening your Shopify store. I started mine with one binder. 🙂
Thank you sooo much for your guidance. You are truly an inspiration and I can’t wait to implement all of your tips for my printables.
Absolutely, Nikky! They are SOOOO fun to make! <3