Author – Mark Miller

Unless you make use of the Shopify payments system, you will need to pay a fee on each sale and that can be anywhere from 0.5% to 2%, depending on which plan you are signed up to. If you opt for the basic plan, the transaction fee is 2% of each sale; the Shopify Plan is 1% and the Advanced Plan is 0.5%. How much of a disadvantage this proves to be is down to your perspective.
= In terms of money, it is equal to between $0.5and$2 for every $100 sales-that isn’t too bad.

Payment Plans

• Starter
  The basic tier of Shopify service is $14 per month and includes the ability to list** 25 items** for sale. This is the perfect option for those who are just getting a feel for online sales and don’t want to be able to do too much too soon. 
• Basic
  At twice the cost of the starter option of $30 per month, the basic tier of service allows an unlimited number of items to be listed for sale. It also offers telephone support, 1 gigabyte of storage, a waiver of all transaction fees, unlimited bandwidth usage and a credit card charge rate of 2.9 percent plus an additional 30 cents per each transaction made. If you are thinking about creating a company that drop-ships items, then this is the service tier you are likely going to want to consider.
• Professional
  For an additional $50 each month, professional tier users are allotted 5 gigabytes of store storage space, which allows for high resolution photographs for products that require a greater degree of visible detail. Additionally, you will be able to offer gift cards to your users as well as recover their old shopping carts. You will also be privy to an improved credit and debit card transaction rate of 2.5% plus 30 cents per charge. Perhaps most importantly, this tier of service provides access to an advanced suite of analytics tools to more accurately monitor customer behavior.
• Unlimited
  The unlimited Shopify plan offers no limits on the amounts of data that your store uses for the cost of $179 each month. This option is only really needed by professional businesses who are using carrier shipping and needs real time results. It offers a credit and debit card transaction of 2.25% as well as the 30 cents per-transaction fee.

There are also numerous paid templates that typically range between $100~300, though if you are planning on paying for a template, you will likely want to pay a little more and have one created for you from scratch for the best results.

If you choose the basic level of service or above, you will also have access to the ability to sell both physical and digital goods and charge any shipping rate of your choice, as well as PayPal integration for even more payment options.
You will also be able to start a blog and send email blasts, as well as add a buy now button to any existing websites. Additionally, you will have the ability to create staff accounts, discount codes and have access to additional point-of-sale integration options.

The main thing to remember, as a Shopify store owner, is to never lose sight of your primary goals in starting an e-commerce store. Whether your target is to have an additional source of income, or to eventually expand your online store into your main livelihood, long-term profitability and sustainability should be your focus rather than impulsive, hastily-decided, poorly-planned directions that can sidetrack you from financial freedom.

Learn to use social networks to increase your income.

Some tips to remember:

• Users are likely to be attracted to social media posts that contain famous or fun quotes.
• Perform periodic surveys on social networks.
• Be smarter by including behind-the-scenes photos in your posts that show how consumers produce or consume products or services.
  Sometimes, displaying photos of your employees, your warehouse or your work area increases the likelihood that potential consumers are interested in your publications.
• Always update your company’s statistics and data in real-time.
• Periodically recycle your posts that have worked very well, attracting more traffic.
• Guest posts in other publications or famous blogs.
• Accompany your posts with brand images.
• Social media users like fun and fun things.
• Use graphic information when posting or blogging on social networks.
• Link your posts to many other controversial blog posts.
• Ask your followers for suggestions about your products or services and how to improve them to the fullest.
• Make use of photos that have nothing to do with your product or services, but that conveys the feeling and attitude behind your brand.
• Why not try something different, such as posting photos that have absolutely nothing to do with the brand you are promoting, but convey feelings and attitudes of your brand?
• Always remember to tell your audience how they can communicate with you on social networks, and this includes providing your name on Facebook and your name on Twitter.
• Always be sure to connect all your social networking sites.
• Always participate in photo contents on social media platforms.
• I would try to mention the expected shipment times to help customers out.

Shopify has a deal with the USPS that allows you to purchase labels at a discounted rate and print them off at home.
Because you are most likely selling products that range from small to large, light to heavy, this is typically going to be the best method.
All you need to do for your products is set up a weight, possibly slightly higher than the actual weight, to accommodate for the packing materials and handling.

In SEO, the most important thing is that you are producing QUALITY content that is well written, proofread, and 100% original. Anything that isn't high quality is going to hurt you
one way or another.

Use CopyScape to check for plagiarism.

Avoid using reusing manufacturer descriptions and pictures.

Do not solely depend on pay per click. This is a strategy that is used by a lot of e-commerce sites to increase the visibility of their stores. The dark side of this strategy is when one stops its implementation for traffic, the traffic can almost instantly disappear as well.
Also, there is a mild feeling of distrust amongst customers when it comes to sponsored ads. While this strategy would pay off, one should also focus on implementing a strategy that grows traffic to their websites organically, which is a better long-term strategy for maintaining their visibility.

Do not duplicate content. Duplication of content on e-commerce sites, whether in terms of descriptions of products or even the listings, may result in penalization by search engines. Therefore, it is important for store owners to investigate the content they produce, ensuring it is unique but also SEO optimized to increase traffic to their sites. 

Build a content strategy. Creating high-quality content that is unique will help your site rankings when it comes to optimization and will also prove a beneficial tool for encouraging repeat visitors to your sites since your customers will find value in your content.

Refrain from using the product description from the manufacturers. Copying and pasting this information from the manufacturer site in order to save on time is SEO suicide.
Make sure to write new descriptions for your products, which would help best optimize it and lead to increased traffic to the site. 
Optimize images of products. Image search increasing has become an important tool that users of the internet are taking advantage of to get products online. With this said, online stores should then use more keywords with the ALT tags from the images that they use. This helps their products to be found easier, and this would consequently translate into increased sales. 

Include product review Allowing your users to submit reviews for your products works to encourage the generation of content for better SEO optimization. This content, however, is being created by your customers, and this saves you time and effort while improving your site’s ranking. 

Have products linked from the home page. This is a mistake often made by many store owners. Their products are deep into their websites, and what this does is that it makes it increasingly difficult for customers to find your product. Furthermore, it adversely affects your product page’s ranking, making it harder to appear in engine searches. 

Organize the store for search engine optimization. The way you structure your store will affect its visibility. Think of organizing your internet store with the goal that it incorporates various landing pages, of which they can be particular to a brand or item. Applying this structure affords you the chance to better optimize pages and keywords, which will build your site’s visibility when they are looked up online. 

As a rule of thumb, a keyword should not be utilized more than once per 100~200 words.

Find a handful of blogs and reach out to the folks running these pages. See if they’ll link to your blog or store, and offer to do the same for them.

Create coupon codes and distribute them amongst the many free coupon and freebie websites. This not only encourages sales by offering a deal, but it also creates back links since your website will have to be linked for customers to enjoy the deal.

If you are brand new in business, you might set the goal to make your first year profitable in business.
Identify what exact number that would be for you.
Or, you might set the goal to increase your brand awareness.
Whatever your goals may be, make sure that you use the SMART planning goal style: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

What to remember about pricing:

• Pricing is part of branding and positioning.
• Pricing is very psychological:
• It’s often associated with quality.
• It can also be related to status.
• To determine your product’s price, there are some elements to consider:
  The purpose of your product
  The paying capacity of your target market (niche)
  The market’s reference price (other similar options offered on the market)
  The perceived value of the solution or benefit your product provides

It’s better to offer multiple levels of products in order to have a portfolio of products of different value and at different prices.
       
Instead of discounting your product, offer bonus items for a limited number of purchases or for a limited time to add extra value. This way, it won’t diminish the perceived value of the original offer, and it will avoid accustoming your customers to discounted rates.

Today multi-channel selling is popular, which entails making a sale across multiple platforms. Do not just wait for the customers to visit your website, rather attract them using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.