How to Go from $0 to $30k Online Using Shopify

Show Notes

There are a lot of factors that make an online store successful.

But in this week’s episode of The Marketing Natives we’re going to chat about three major components that will help you scale from $0 to $30k/mo

What you’ll learn about today:

Which numbers you should be looking at daily in your business
Why testing may be the fastest way to grow
The unfair advantage that most people aren’t talking about that you can leverage today

If you’re an online store owner and want to know exactly how much you should be spending to hit your revenue goals we created this free calculator you can use today. Start using the calculator now

Connect with us

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Transcript

Christian [00:00:00] All right, in this episode, we're going to show you how to go from $0 to thirty thousand dollars a month online using Shopify. We're going to talk about three things that you need to be constantly doing and constantly improving on in order to get to that goal. And we also have a freebie for you. So if you're listening to this, make sure you stick around so you can get that.

Narrator [00:00:24] This is the Marketing Natives providing actionable ways to grow, improve and succeed in your business.

Narrator [00:00:32] And now your hosts, Christian and Aaron.

Aaron [00:00:42] All right, so if you're looking this is a $0 to thirty thousand and you think this is kind of a daunting fit because you're literally just starting a website from $0 and you're like, okay, I just want to make my first sale. I want to clarify and say that to go to thirty thousand, this is not going to happen like in a couple of days. This is like if you were to look at I would say, all right Christian, if you're going to go from $0 to thirty thousand, here's like a 90 day or like a couple of five month plan. You know if you're just literally starting a brand new site, here's how you would do it. So this is, I think this is a good podcast episode for people who are just starting obviously from $0 and want to get to that sustainable, you know, that thirty thousand dollars per month and beyond. And I believe that once you get to thirty thousand per month, the reason we chose that number is that, that's such an easy number at that point to kind of like catapult yourself to that next level. So if you're just starting out, don't worry, this is not meant to be overwhelming. You're thinking of doing a better grab my notes and you should. But it's not, hey, you needed to do thirty thousand next month. It's a progression and it probably will not happen to thirty thousand in the next month. It's like, okay, let's build this up over time. So I think that's kind of a way to approach the episode so you can like, use it as bite size pieces versus Oh dang! I'm going to try to go after something huge right now.

Christian [00:02:00] Yeah, I think the first thing it's like a lot of people I think that might be two camps. Right? You have the drop-ship and community.

Aaron [00:02:08] Yes.

Christian [00:02:08] You probably do know their numbers very well. Right? That's probably, it's a majority of what they focus on is their numbers and making sure that makes sense because drop-shipping people I feel like they just kind of want to make money.

Aaron [00:02:25] Right.

Christian [00:02:25] They don't really focus a lot on the product. And then the other kind of people is, yeah, like your mom and pop shops. Or maybe you have a really great idea and you need to start selling online. And these are people who are more focused on the product.

Aaron [00:02:39] They love their product.

Christian [00:02:40] Yeah.

Aaron [00:02:41] They don't.

Christian [00:02:41] They I mean, they probably do have a great product and they probably have a great following at their mom and pop shop you know, locally. But they're starting to delve into online selling and they don't necessarily know their numbers very well.

Christian [00:02:56] I would say maybe a majority, but that's just not the case with everyone. And I think that's the very first thing is like you need to have a good understanding of your numbers and you need to have a really good product. Obviously, the people are actually going to buy. So understanding your numbers, I mean, there's a lot of different numbers, right. But it's basically you want to know how much you can spend per purchase because I mean, another thing that we're going to talk about, it's going to be paid traffic.

Christian [00:03:25] Right. So, you know, how much money can you actually spend on marketing in order to still make money and still sustain your company? So that's like one of the number one things that you need to be looking into. It's like you have a great product. You're finding ways to to sell online. But to be honest, like the first thing that you need to figure out is how much money can you spend in order to break even or make money, right?

Christian [00:03:51] I mean, the goal is to make money, so knowing those numbers is crucial to starting this journey from $0 to to 30 K.

Aaron [00:04:01] Yeah, like we're about to jump on a call with a client who doesn't know her numbers very well. Like to the point where, you know, her product was the same to ship something that was three times the amount of weight versus something that was one times the amount of weight. And she decided to do free shipping over fifty dollars. Well, what she realized was that, okay, Fifty dollar item to ship it or to purchase, let's say, 50 dollars and she has one hundred percent margin, so she made twenty five dollars off of it. Okay? But then what she realizes that okay, this one product costs three times as much to ship. And so it's going to cost me twenty dollars to ship and then I just spent in advertising. Let's just say they spent five dollars on advertising to acquire the customer. Well now it just broke even. Like literally I just broke even. I actually probably lost money because you've got a factor in like everything else that goes onto it. So, and even if let's just say the the 50 percent or 100 percent margin's also included advertising, she still would have only walked away with five dollars. But if you don't understand your numbers, you would have looked at that. And I would have been like, hey, Christian, look at this. So we got a five dollar purchase and they spent fifty five dollars because of taxes and everything. So we spent fifty five dollars. We spent five dollars acquirement. That's a fifty dollar net. But then you look at, okay, what is our cost of overhead? How much does it cost to ship? Like, cost of goods sold, like the packing materials, time, everything. So if you don't factor those into it, it's like, okay, you run into an issue of oh dang, I went from super profitable where I made fifty dollars to oh well I'm negative. So, how can I adjust either my pricing or my shipping or whatever my, you know, whatever the answer is. But if you don't understand your numbers you could make twenty thousand dollars per month and still lose twenty one thousand or twenty two thousand. So, that's just an example of like if you don't understand your numbers and you're getting to it, like starting on a $0, I would say, like if you were selling, you know, making two thousand dollars per month or three thousand dollars per month and you're listening to this podcast and you don't see it as much because you're like, well, we don't know our numbers, but we'll make it three thousand dollars per month. It's going to take a while. And as we make more money, then the margins will get smaller. But then it's like there's, it doesn't work out that way. So, again, and just to the point of understanding your numbers, your shipping costs, the cost of goods sold.

Christian [00:06:33] Apps.

Aaron [00:06:33] Yeah, exactly. There's different apps to use. Some are free. Shopify, you get to pay for, emails to pay for. So there's a lot of factors. And I think it's one thing to figure out also is how much does it cost you to acquire that customer? So the first time that they come, it's going to be the most expensive. But if they come back twice, so say, for example, in that same story, if she lost five dollars, but she knows that every two or three weeks somebody is going to buy again, then she's going to make money, because even though she doesn't have to pay for advertising, because they're just going to she's just going to send an email or whatever else, and they'll come back and purchase. And she knows at that point, oh, they're going to come back three times. So now instead of worth fifty dollars or worth one hundred and fifty dollars and you'll happily spend five dollars for purchase for them to do it three times. So that story could easily turn around to be a happy one if you know your numbers.

Christian [00:07:33] Right. Don't we have a calculator or something to offer?

Aaron [00:07:38] Yes.

Christian [00:07:38] Our listeners.

Aaron [00:07:39] Yeah. Yes. It's free like Google document or Google Sheets calculator. So if you want that, they'll probably be like a break in here to. We'll talk about that. But if you want that, just go over to Instagram @BitBranding and just shoot us a message and we'll just send you the link and you can just use the calculator and punch in your own numbers. And it's all based off kind of like Shopify. So, yeah. How much is your average order value? So like if you sold anything like even one hundred dollars worth, like you should have enough data to, to forecast, as I would say, to figure out what you need to do, which is plan for your cost of goods and everything like that.

Christian [00:08:17] Yeah. Cool. And then. Yeah. So after knowing your numbers I think obviously we're alluding to, you know, some sort of paid traffic, but there's also the the idea of always testing. Right? Always testing. Almost everything right? Like, you know, testing your ads, testing things on the website, testing things on your email and testing things on these numbers that, you know, we're just figuring out and coming up with creative solutions on how to maybe lower some of those numbers, make numbers higher. And I think you had an example here of like, you know, if you're testing something on the website with, for example, a video or product images versus video. Not video, videos for the products on how much that would affect, you know, buyer behavior. Same with, so we talked about social proof and having an app that shows whenever someone's purchasing that particular product and providing social proof that way. And it's, I think it's very important to always be testing your ads, always be testing things on the website, even different apps that do maybe the exact same thing. I can think of, like apps that do, they do pop ups right? Just doing regular kind of random pop ups throughout the website or do an intentional pop ups on, you know, exiting the checkout page, for example.

Aaron [00:09:50] Yeah.

Christian [00:09:50] And testing different headlines, testing images. I think it's very important to always be testing. Especially. Yeah. I mean, I think we talked about this in the previous episode. It's kind of weird. I remember reading this, but yeah, I think in order to to scale to that, you have to stay sort of on top of trends and seeing what other people are doing as well, as far as their shopping experience and even seeing what Amazon is freaking doing.

Aaron [00:10:19] Yeah. Copy Amazon.

Christian [00:10:21] Yeah. You know, you see different things that Amazon test, obviously, you know, you might not have the money to to do some of the things that they do.

Christian [00:10:30] But there are alternatives as far as apps and things that you can do on the website or even the messaging that they use right after you purchase something like the little things like that.

Aaron [00:10:43] Their branding card stuff is amazing.

Christian [00:10:44] Yeah.

Aaron [00:10:44] So, yeah, we even mentioned the episode 177 a lot. That's a really good episode for you to go back to, like finish listening to this one and then go back to the other one, because like Christian mentions, like social proof, we talk about, you know, the importance of driving traffic and really kind of nurturing it.

Aaron [00:11:06] But yeah, I think the testing part of it is just a small section for this episode. The previous episode is all about what you should be testing or the things that you need to drive traffic or drive more sales. And those are the things that you could be testing. For example, like this last weekend, we had a client well, I guess it was about three or four weeks ago, like our client, we used a lot of, she's been doing really well on Instagram, so had a decent amount of following. And she, for whatever reason, just keep posting the same thing. She may be like a shadow band right now. I don't know. I don't know what she did, but she lost a lot of traffic. And because of that, our strategy had to change because we're like, okay, well, this is losing a ton of traffic to this campaign. So since we're getting like a third of the amount actually I think is like a tenth of the amount of less traffic we had to test something new. Now, granted, it wasn't something new because we had done something before, but we just turned it off. We're like, all right, we have to go look at the account. What had been done well before looking at our numbers, which is, again, knowing your numbers. And we were just testing like, okay, well, what if we go back to this campaign? What if we rebuild it? And since then, it's done really well because we weren't dependent on that one thing that like Instagram that was driving the traffic. But if we weren't testing our, like, trying different things in the past, we would have kind of been like, all right, well, we have to, again, test from the beginning.

Aaron [00:12:29] If you're starting from $0, you always want to just be testing because you never know what's going to be, what's going to click or what's going to work. So as long as you know your numbers and like how much you can spend, you can be testing things. And as long as you're testing, you can figure out what works. But for this client, it turned out to be a good situation. But we can't be dependent on like what's yesterday's results were, because that may change to your point about like things changing with times like. Well, all right. Well, Instagram was a huge driving traffic source, but now they changed their algorithms. So we lost half of the traffic to the website. So where are we going to do so? Always be testing new things and always like never. I guess the other word for this is, instead of continue to test is like, don't be complacent with where you're at, because if feel like, oh, my site's good, I got so much traffic and you're like, well, you have 90 percent of your traffic from one source. Like what happens to that one source if it goes out? So I think that's just a good example of just continuing to test, no matter what it is, can be organic traffic, could be influencers no matter what it is.

Aaron [00:13:37] Hey, local business owners! If you're ready to grow your business online without having to work more in your business and you can spend more time on it. We created a free training on how to attract, qualify and convert more leads online.

Aaron [00:13:51] It's 38 minutes. It's going to take a little bit of your time, but it's going to have a huge benefit. It's completely free. Make sure you click below in the description, whether you're on Facebook, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're on the podcast. Everything's there that you need. Go grab the training now.

Christian [00:14:08] I think we have this happened recently where Facebook targeting options changed.

Christian [00:14:13] Yeah. Yes.

Christian [00:14:13] And we had to change a lot of our campaigns because of that.

Aaron [00:14:19] I was just talking to Facebook today. They're like, oh yeah, they flagged it. They flagged our campaign because it was like a calendar. I actually found out that it was something else. They flagged it because it said book more appointments and like it's a calendar icon that we use as an emoji. And they flagged it for some reason. And I've been fighting with them for like three weeks to get it turned back on. And then finally, just talk to this very nice guy named Dean today, to shout out Dean from Facebook, who's look, definitely listening. And he's going to help, like, put in a manual review for it. But it was three weeks. So like if our whole business was dependent on whether or not we got these leads be freaking out right now because that's that one source. But, yeah, they flagged it for a calendar icon. There's no policy, but there's so many ads going and it's fourth quarter. And so just be aware of this. If you're running paid traffic, which probably a good segue is that they use AI to scan this thing. And so it look like some kind of like something that was against their policies, which was not.

Christian [00:15:18] Yes, I think yeah. I mean, the next obviously we've mentioned already multiple times is paid traffic. I don't think there's. I mean, obviously, there's some outliers and unicorns out there that do make thirty thousand without any paid traffic, you know, maybe they somehow go viral, which it's impossible, I guess, to.

Christian [00:15:38] Intentionally create, recreate or create, you know? I would say impossible, because it's just I mean, the odds are against you. Yeah. If you're intentionally trying to make something go viral. Sure. There you can try your best, but you're probably not going to succeed.

Christian [00:15:55] And that's why I mean paid traffic is the way to go if you want to, you know, make money online using Shopify, getting back on. I mean, any brick and mortar store at some point they have used paid traffic right? Whether billboards, magazines or whatever they you know, they've done. Do you have to spend money on marketing in order to make money or to pay to play?

Aaron [00:16:23] Yeah.

Christian [00:16:23] And it's the same with Shopify and any online store out there. You have to take into consideration that you will, some of your budget will have to go into some paid traffic sources, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Influencers.

Aaron [00:16:40] Yeah.

Christian [00:16:40] SEO. There's a lot of different ways to get that $30 K. Obviously paid traffic is the idea. But from there, where do you take that? There's a million things that you can do there.

Christian [00:16:57] And I think the number one thing before you do that is having those systems in place. Having the follow ups, having the the strategies sort of completed and followed through. Having a proven strategy will be even better instead of you starting from scratch and trying to figure everything on your own.

Aaron [00:17:20] Right.

Christian [00:17:20] What's actually going to work? Grabbing something that's already proven with maybe a different industry doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work, but it has worked for different industries that could work for yours. And it might be that it's working, but it could be tweaked, you know, to make it work better for that particular industry.

Christian [00:17:39] So I think using something that's already been proven to successfully make some money is a good way to to start there.

Aaron [00:17:47] And if you, and I was going to say, like, if you look at paid traffic is like the last thing that you do, even though it should be like the first thing like to drive totally to grow the business in the sense that, like, it's the fastest way to do it. But if you don't have example, like on our last episode, episode 177, we talked about site speed. And again, just go check that episode out, but we talked about site speed. So if you have a new website, but it's just bogged down because you decided to upload all of your images like super like high megabytes is like, you know, they're super heavy on the site. Well, if you put paid traffic there and you have an amazing product, it's still not going to work because the website won't load. So there's so many things you have to do to make sure that the sites that you're going to perform well and then put paid traffic to it. So, again, understanding your numbers important so you can be profitable, testing what works, and then more so after you've completed all of those things and you get the right like pieces in a row, then you could do paid traffic. Start running advertising, do things like Facebook or Instagram ads or whatever else. But if you don't, then it doesn't matter if you're one from $0 to 10K or $0 to one hundred dollars because nobody's going to be able to purchase. So, the, I guess the way to look at paid traffic is it's literally just gasoline to an already burning fire. So you got to have the other stuff before you just start running the ads. And I think that's why ads get a bad rep.

Aaron [00:19:16] A rap, I guess, is what the term. It's because they're like, oh, ads don't work. But it's really like, have you ever used them before? And is your product actually good? Because it could be that you don't have the right ads. Yes. So there's a problem there, but more than likely it's the depart after that. Like, you just have a really bad experience. For example, you talked about before and I guess the previous episode go check out 177 again. Is the guy who targeted you or the company target you on Instagram? You just didn't have the best experience with them. So they spent paid traffic and they probably wasted money. So, I think that is like the final thing to do to get you to thirty thousand.

Christian [00:20:01] Yeah. And that's why I think going back to having a system or having to do something that's proven or going with someone who have done this before, they can point you into those, you know, holes in your bucket that are there leaking water.

Christian [00:20:14] And I think for a lot of our prospects that come in and they're like, oh yeah, we need to do ads. Like when you do marketing, we say like, well well well let's check out your website, OK? Let's check out your numbers. OK, and if there's holes in those, in that bucket right around those areas, then we usually recommend something completely different instead of going through paid traffic. Right? We usually tell them, like, okay, we need to fix this website.

Aaron [00:20:41] Yeah.

Christian [00:20:41] We need to make this.

Aaron [00:20:42] It's almost always the website.

Christian [00:20:42] We need to make the checkout experience a lot better. We need to implement email before we do, you know, any of this paid traffic. It's going to be a waste sending you all this traffic and then people are just not going to convert because they're missing a lot of different pieces.

Christian [00:21:01] So there's a lot of times that, yeah, that happens where we need to have those things in place. And in order to know that, again, go with someone who knows what they're doing, have done this before and knows what it takes to get from that $0 to that $30 K.

Aaron [00:21:17] I think that's a good point.

Christian [00:21:19] And if you're listening to this episode and you're like, well, you didn't give me tactical advice, like go do this like there is no let's just say there is no magic wand. Like, one fits, one size fits all for everybody, but, if you look back at it and listen to the episode, if you understand your numbers on how much you can spend and how much it costs you for your products and services, it's probably going to be the hardest part because like Christian said, you even have two camps here, there's the drop-ship you're listening here. And you're like, OK, how do I do that? Or a person who's a brick and mortar, you love it or you have a good Instagram following, which to be fair, and the amount of Instagram followers you have does not mean the amount of business you will make. Those just kind of a misnomer. But understanding your numbers will help you whenever you're building that store and growing online. And then if you test what already works and then you put paid traffic behind that, that really will take you to that thirty thousand. We just brought on a client who had never done paid traffic before, or if they did, they boosted some posts and they are well on their way to doing thirty thousand dollars per month. But they know their numbers. They have had a proven system for what's going to pay for shipping their offers. They already had everything in place and they focused on those things. And now they contacted us because like, hey, look, we know you guys have and you've helped other people in the past. And we talk to them about a proven system, as you mentioned, and then it was just easy, a plug and play like, hey, this will work for you too, because you figured out these things and because you figured them out. Now, we really can help with paid traffic and emails and obtaining cards and stuff like that. And it really can catapult you to that thirty thousand so much faster. So it's not that you can't get there, quote unquote on your own, but go and find somebody who's done it before, who has a proven process to get you there faster. And that way you don't have to, you know, learn all the mistakes that everybody else did. It's just a, why hit your head up against the wall kind of thing.

Christian [00:23:20] Exactly. Yeah. Learn from other's mistakes.

Aaron [00:23:22] The rule, rule number, rule number one.

Aaron [00:23:27] All right. So as Christian mentioned, guys, if you want that free calculator, it's, we don't have a direct link yet, but there will be a link before the episode so just click below. Whether you're on YouTube or the podcast, it will be link below or you can message us over on Instagram and just say, hey, give me that free, we call it ROAS, return on ad spend calculator. So how much can you spend and still be profitable in your business? All things considered. So if you want that for free and you want to start using and figure out your numbers and your business, shoot us a message on Instagram or click the link below. All right. And if you've been listening for a while, please make sure to go over to Apple podcast, leave us an honest rating review and let us know, hey, what would be better about this podcast or what you love about the podcast? Now, this helps us reach more people and it helps us to create better content for you. And if you are a first time listener, whether you're on Apple podcast or whether you're on YouTube or watching online, please make sure that you subscribe so that you don't miss out on any of our new episodes. We put out content every single week, every single Monday. And if you've been listening to us on or watching us on YouTube, we put out multiple videos per week on how to help you grow your local business online.

Narrator [00:24:39] The Marketing Native's podcast is a production of Bit Branding.