502: How To Make Your First $1000 Dollars On Shopify (The Easy Way) – Family First Friday

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For the past 12 years, I’ve worked with many new e-commerce store owners who are in my Create a Profitable Online Store course. And the number one problem I see with new Shopify store owners is the inability to get traffic to their websites. So in today’s episode, I’m gonna walk you through everything you need to know in order to get your first sales in Shopify without spending a lot of money. In fact, the strategies that I’m gonna teach you in this episode are somewhat unconventional, but they will help you make money no matter what you sell.

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What’s up everyone, you are listening to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast where I teach you how to make money online by exploring different tools, strategies, and understand how to leverage human psychology to grow yourselves. Welcome to a special segment of the show called Family First Fridays where I go solo to give you my thoughts on how to make money without sacrificing your lifestyle. If you haven’t picked up my book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and get over $690 in free bonuses.

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Now for the purposes of this episode, I’m going to assume that you’ve already figured out what you want to sell, you have some product in hand, and you already have a website up and running. And at this point, your number one goal is to drive traffic to your website and to generate some sales. And to do that, you need a marketing plan. But before we get into the details of that, the absolute first thing you need to do is figure out whether your website is good enough and trustworthy enough for the average consumer to want to buy from you. Now I’ve been teaching e-commerce for a long time,

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and I’ve heard practically every complaint under the sun. Hey Steve, I’ve driven over 5,000 people to my site without a single sale. What am I doing wrong? Steve, I’ve gotten a ton of product views and even a few add to carts, but no sales. Well, here’s the problem. 99 % of the time, and I’m not even exaggerating this number, the problem is a poor converting website. If you’ve never designed a website before, your first iteration is probably going to be pretty bad, especially if you don’t know what to look for in a good website.

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So I’m going to start by telling you the bare minimum that you need to have on your site. So first off, you need to have a phone number, a real physical address, and a free shipping policy for your store. Because when you first launch your online store, no one will have ever heard of you before, so they’re going to be skeptical that you are even a legit business. And the very first thing someone will look for is a phone number, address, and contact information. I guarantee it. If they don’t find this info, they’re probably going to bail.

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Basically, people want to know if there’s a way to contact a real human in case something goes wrong. After all, you are an Amazon and people need reassurance. The second thing you need on your website are testimonials basically proof that someone else has actually shopped and bought something from your store in the past because people are like lemmings and they need to see that someone else has shopped in your store before they buy. So just go up to four of your close friends, give them some free product and have them write a testimonial for your store.

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And for bonus points, ask them if you can use their photo on your site as well. And if you can get a friend with any sort of credibility or authority, even better. Then paste all these testimonials on every page of your website. Make sure that everyone sees your phone number and your address. And if you’re worried about anyone calling you at this point, don’t. Just get a Google voice number and just say something along the lines of, thank you for calling my shop. All of our operators are busy right now. If you need immediate assistance,

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please send a text to this number or email this email address and we’ll get back to you ASAP. By the way, if you’re enjoying this episode so far, make sure you sign up for my free six day e-commerce mini course over at mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Finally, make sure the product descriptions and the copy on your website is enticing. Think benefits, not features. Make sure you talk about why your store or your products are different and make sure people understand why they should buy from you and not the competition.

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Now once you think your website is ready to go, it still probably isn’t ready. Go to PickFu and launch a quick poll. PickFu allows you to poll 50 random people about your website for about 25 bucks if you use the coupon in the show notes. All you gotta do is say something like, pretend you like the products in this store. Would you shop here? And do you find the store trustworthy? If not, why? Here’s a URL. And within minutes, you’ll get 50 people leaving you paragraphs of feedback. Now if the majority

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If these random people find your store legit, you’re finally ready to start driving traffic to your website. But do not proceed to the traffic step until your website is ready. All right, so in terms of your traffic strategy, it really depends on what you sell. But one of my favorite free strategies for traffic is to find out where your customers hang out on Facebook. Now, most people don’t realize this, but there is a Facebook group for practically every possible topic in the world. For example, if you sell fishing supplies,

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there’s a Facebook group full of fishermen. If you sell wedding supplies and accessories like I do, there are tons of bridal groups on Facebook. In fact, I challenge you to give me a product that doesn’t have a customer base on Facebook. Leave me a product in the comments and I’ll tell you where to find your customers. Now, once you’ve found some Facebook groups, you should join and ingratiate yourself within the community. And whatever you do, don’t just start pitching your products left and right or else you’re going to get banned. Instead,

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spend three or four weeks answering other people’s questions and actually helping out others in the community. And if you’re active enough, the sysadmins will soon realize that you are an upstanding member of the community and give you a little bit more leeway as to what you can post. And then when you feel you are ready to start a light pitch, all you have to do is say something like, hey, I’m thinking about using these handkerchiefs for my wedding. What do you think of these? Oh, by the way, I have some extras. Let me know if any of you guys want them and I’ll give them to you for super cheap.

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This strategy works extremely well for even the most random products. One of my friend’s 14 year old daughter was selling opossum pins. So she posted some of her designs in popular opossum Facebook groups. And when people loved her designs, she casually mentioned that she runs an Etsy shop and started making over a thousand dollars a month as a high school student. My wife and I launched our online store. I was very heavily involved in the wedding forms. And whenever a would be bride had a question about anything, I would do my best to answer her question.

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In fact, I was like a mini encyclopedia of wedding venues, flower shops, gift shops, you name it, and I would help people in the community. And then sometimes I would casually ask what people were using as there’s something blue for their wedding. And then I would suggest some of our blue hankies. You get the point. This method and this method alone is enough to make you a couple thousand dollars a month. In fact, my friend Vivian Kay of Kinky Curly Yaki made over a million bucks by selling her hair extensions solely to women she found on Facebook groups.

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Do not underestimate the power of community. The next method of quickly generating sales is by running a giveaway to collect email addresses. Now before you roll your eyes and close this podcast episode, I want to show you a very unique way that I run my giveaways where I can easily control when to start and stop my giveaway and ensure that it is profitable. Now the way I run all my giveaways today is through an evergreen Facebook Messenger giveaway. So what’s different about a Facebook Messenger giveaway as opposed to a regular giveaway?

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Well, unlike a traditional giveaway, Facebook Messenger giveaways are completely automated and run on their own. As a result, you only have to set up your giveaway once and you can run the same giveaway as many times as you want. Winners are selected automatically and award redemptions are handled in an automated fashion with your shopping cart as well. So basically, Facebook Messenger giveaways are hands off and generate you both Facebook and email subscribers on autopilot. Now, in order to run a Messenger giveaway,

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you first need a software tool like ManyChat to help you set up a Facebook Messenger chatbot. Now, if you aren’t familiar with the term, a chatbot is basically like an AI robot that runs your entire giveaway for you on autopilot. Basically, your chatbot is responsible for collecting emails, selecting winners and losers, and sending winners a link to redeem their prize. Here’s how it works. You first set up a Facebook Messenger ad to drive traffic to your Facebook Messenger bot. So for example,

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Let’s say I’m giving away a personalized ladies handkerchief. For best results, you should always give away something that you actually carry in your store. That way, you know that people are actually interested in the products you have for sale. Now in the case of my handkerchief giveaway, no one would enter a personalized handkerchief giveaway unless they genuinely liked handkerchiefs. Now once someone clicks on the ad, they are taken to a bot, and once they click yes, they immediately become a Facebook Messenger subscriber, and then afterwards,

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I immediately hit them up for their email address to complete the giveaway signup process. Now what’s nice about Facebook Messenger is that the email address is pre-populated on the screen, so no typing is required. This boosts the conversion rate for mobile users tremendously. Now after a user taps their email, they are presented with an enticing offer that is related to the giveaway prize. And done correctly, the post giveaway special offer should pay for the cost of running your Facebook ad. And the cool part,

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is that for 23 hours, your chat bot automatically decides whether the customer wins or loses, and the odds of winning can be set however you like within ManyChat. For example, if you feel like you’re giving away too much product, just dial down the odds of winning. And if someone does win, they’re automatically sent to a special page to redeem their prize, whereas losers are presented with a consolation coupon. Now, depending on your offer and your audience, you can get new Messenger and email subs

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between 25 and 75 cents a piece. Meanwhile, your special offers and your giveaway email sequence should generate sales during the giveaway, which should pay for the cost of advertising. But it doesn’t end there. Once you have their email, you should put them on a special email autoresponder flow that markets your products to a customer on autopilot. Here’s a hypothetical five email sequence. The first email can present them with a special consolation coupon to shop at your store. The second email can be your brand story.

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and your unique value proposition. Basically, you’re telling people why they should buy from you. The third email can suggest bestsellers and product recommendations in your store. The fourth email can show off your testimonials and your social proof. And the fifth and final email can point people towards your social media channels. Basically, this email sequence should convert a percentage of customers, which will allow you to break even or make a little bit of money on your giveaway ads. Meanwhile, you are building a customer list essentially for free

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that you can market your products to. And with just these two strategies alone, you should be able to make $1,000 a month with your online store easily. Now that you know how to generate your first sales, make sure you listen to my other Family First Friday episode to learn how to hit seven figures and beyond.