Thinking about starting a Shopify store? Don’t build a single page until you read this!
Before you invest time and money into building your online store, you need a solid plan.
Our free tutorial walks you through the right way to start a Shopify store — from setting it up with confidence to promoting it like a pro.
Plus, you’ll get our FREE guide, packed with smart strategies to help you:
- Choose the best niche for your goals
- Avoid common (and costly) beginner mistakes
- Promote your store and test your products so you know what sells
If you're serious about making money online, this is the shortcut you've been looking for.
Click here to start your Shopify journey the smart way (with a free trial) — and return to this tutorial for start up guidance and a game plan!
Share Products with Your Target Audience
Building a shop using Shopify is an excellent choice for entrepreneurs, especially creative and handmade business owners (really anyone) who want to showcase their work.
This step by step video tutorial will walk you through setting up a Shopify store for your business.
If you're familiar with Shopify and you're ready to jump in to building your store, you don't need to go through this entire article. Click the link and get started with the video tutorial below.
If you're not familiar with Shopify, read on to find out why Shopify is the gold standard and an amazing solution for anyone who wants to start selling online without having to build a blog or standard website.
No matter where you are in your journey, click on one of the titles in the quick navigation panel below to find the part of the tutorial that that best fits what you need to build your store.
The Benefits of Selling on Shopify
Shopify offers an intuitive and user-friendly platform that allows even those with limited technical skills to set up and manage an online store efficiently. Its ease of use ensures that entrepreneurs can focus more on their craft and less on the complexities of website development and maintenance.
It provides a variety of customizable templates that cater to the aesthetic needs of creative businesses, ensuring that the store reflects the unique brand identity of the entrepreneur.
How Shopify Makes It Easy to Showcase Your Products and Highlight Your Talents
For creative and handmade businesses, having an online shop on Shopify brings numerous benefits. First, it provides a global reach, allowing artisans to showcase and sell their products to a worldwide audience.
This increased visibility can significantly boost sales and brand recognition. Additionally, Shopify's robust SEO features help improve the shop's search engine ranking, making it easier for potential customers to find the products.
The platform also supports various payment gateways, ensuring a seamless and secure transaction process for customers, which can enhance their shopping experience and build trust in the brand.
Another significant advantage is Shopify's integration with social media platforms and various marketing tools.
Entrepreneurs can leverage these features to promote their products, engage with customers, and drive traffic to their store.
Shopify also offers built-in analytics that provides valuable insights into customer behavior, sales trends, and marketing campaign effectiveness.
This data-driven approach helps entrepreneurs make informed decisions to optimize their business strategies and grow their handmade business sustainably.
Here are the steps you should take to get started with a shop you can use to earn from handmade, affiliate and digital products.
Decide on a Business Name
A useful tool for coming up with an eCommerce store name is the Shopify Business Name Generator. You can add a keyword or two that you’d like to have in your store name, and it will provide you with recommendations. Then you can simply scroll through the options and select your desired business name and launch your business.
In the old days, you had to get a server, upload an eCommerce system to it, hire someone to customize it according to your needs, and pay to maintain it. the old process was expensive, time-consuming, and the final result was still a slow and ineffective website.
Thankfully, Shopify has simplified the process. You can create your eCommerce store in just a few clicks, and all of the server setup and maintenance is taken care of for you.
Dream big, build fast, and grow far on Shopify.
Video Tutorial: Build Your Shopify Store
In this video, you’ll find a complete tutorial that’ll allow you to build a Shopify store in about an hour. Who knows, the next hour could mark an exciting turning point in your life as you begin on a journey as a shop owner. Let’s get started.
Click the button below or go to Shopify.com, click ‘start your free trial,’ enter your store name, and create your shop.
Set up, Promote and Test Your Shopify Store
Set up your store with this video tutorial and download the guide that contains a series of step by step checklists.
Let's Get Your Shop Set Up:
If you only need help with certain areas, use the time stamps for instructions on setting up your Shopify Store. You can also watch the entire video to see the process from beginning to end.
0:00 Intro
0:48 How to get started with Shopify
1:30 How to Set up your Shopify Store- Shopify Admin overview
4:48 How to choose and set up a domain on Shopify
7:17 How to customize a Shopify store
13:39 How to add products and collections on Shopify
19:12 How to set up shipping and fulfillment on Shopify
25:02 How to set up Shopify Pages (About Us, Our Team, Blog Post, Contact Us, Policies, FAQ)
29:45 Shopify navigation Main Menu & Footer Menu
30:48 Shopify Search & Discovery
31:40 Setting up Social Selling
34:16 Shop Pay: Everything you need to know the Shopify Shop app
36:30 Shopify Flow
38:25 Shopify Apps & Integrations
40:30 Customer Management & Data Tracking
42:00 Customer Groups & Tags
43:43 Store Performance
44:21 Shopify Point of Sale (POS)
Premium Shopify Themes
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Impact Shopify Theme
$400.00 Buy product -
Multi Shopify Theme
$380.00 Buy product -
Whisk Shopify Store Theme
$310.00 Buy product -
Reveal Shopify Theme
$180.00 Buy product -
Expanse Shopify Theme
$380.00 Buy product -
Sunset Shopify Theme
$380.00 Buy product -
Symmetry Shopify Theme
$400.00 Buy product -
Empire Shopify Theme
$340.00 Buy product
Get Familiar with Shopify Dropshipping
A traditional eCommerce model works like this: First, you buy several hundred products, then you wait for them to be delivered, stock them in your garage or a small warehouse, and when someone places an order, you ship them to your customer..
Today, you can integrate your shop by uploading products from a dropshipper, and when your customer places the order, it will be processed by the dropshipper who then ships the items directly to your customers.
No maintaining inventory or shipping products from your garage or basement. Drop shippers have established feeds that can be used, or a direct integration with Shopify that will make it easy to get those products uploaded to your store.
Set up Payments
I highly recommend using Shopify Payments, no matter where you’re based. It allows you to accept various forms of payments, including credit cards, Google Pay, Shopify Pay, and more. You can sign up for Shopify Payments by providing Shopify with your business information, personal details, product information, and bank account number.
Set up Terms and Conditions
Shopify offers handy tools for generating terms and conditions, standard privacy, and return policies. You can access them from Shopify Settings > Legal > scroll down to Refund > Privacy > Terms of Service > Shipping statements section to generate each policy sample.
Offer Free Shipping
If you’re looking to start an online store, I highly recommend that you offer free shipping on your products. You can set this as default from your Shopify account settings. Just remember, you will need to factor this into the price of your items if you want to earn a profit after absorbing the shipping costs.
Go to Shopify Settings > Shipping and delete all shipping zones that are “Domestic”. Next, click the “Add shipping zone.” If you’re offering free shipping, just type that in and then choose “Rest of world” if you’re ok with shipping to other countries. Now go to “Add rate” under the “Price based rates” section and select the ‘Free shipping rate.’
Import Products from Dropshippers
Before you import products into your store from Drop Shippers, customize them with your product names, descriptions, the right photos, and other details like assigning them to collections or adding tags. Trust me when I say that it’s a massive headache to import first and customize later. Just don’t do it.
Wrapping Up
In summary, Shopify's user-friendly interface, extensive customization options, global reach, and powerful marketing tools make it an ideal platform for creative and handmade businesses.
By building a shop on Shopify, entrepreneurs can focus on their passion for crafting while enjoying the benefits of a professional, efficient, and scalable online store.
With hard work and a sales push on your side, the possibilities are endless. Focus on why you started this eCommerce business in the first place and let that drive your determination to succeed.
No matter where your eCommerce adventure takes you, rest assured that you’ll learn so much more about yourself and witness your levels of creativity, determination, and perseverance reach new heights.
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