The Pros and Cons to shopify… Is it worth it?

Hey everyone! Today I’m stepping inside the e-com realm and giving you the pros and cons of utilizing the platform Shopify and is it worth it for you to start now. If you’re reading this is because, you’re heavliy thinking about joining the platform to create your own online business. You’re wanting to tap into the world of E-commerce and believe it’s a big ass world. Growing by the billions in terms of sales. Without further adue, let’s begin.

 

Pros

Shopify is trusted by over 325,000 entreprenuers (myself included) and is growing by the day. Here are some of the pros that you’ll enjoy when utilizing shopify:

• Cheap to get started ($30/monthly subscription)
• Beginner friendly
• The amount of control you have
• Thousands of apps that’ll help you run your business more effectively
• Staff accounts (when your business gets bigger and you need VAs)
• Small trainings the platform provides

Shopify gives you a chance to utiize the internet and gives you a platform to sell any product and recieve payment from it. Some of the most successful brands on shopify would be Kyliecosmetics, Fashionnova, MVMNT watches, and that’s just a few. These shops bring in millions of dollars a month. Now I know what you’re about to say, “Yeah but they have strong social presence.” Although that’s true, there’s thousands of other shopify brand stores bringing 6-7 figures a month. Besides, everyone starts at zero so don’t let that scare you.

Now these pros are important because, anybody just starting out in the online business world, you want to be able to set up everything without going through unecessary hills and hoops. Its as simple as setting up your store, importing your products and market traffic to your store. You also have massive control over your data information. Everything with who visited your store, people who added to their cart, abandoned carts, sales, and other key information you’ll need to keep track of your business results.

Best part about this, it’s only $29/month to get started. Now depending on the apps you download to your store (some of the apps aren’t free to use or have inside-app purchases) will determine your actual monthly price. Other than that, it’s super cheap to get started. To think all it takes now a days to start a 5-7 figure business, starts with less than $30. Man times have changed truth be told.

 

Cons

Now one thing we know about this world and everything in general, nothing is perfect. So with that being said here are some cons that’ll make you think about using this platform so you can double check to see if you really want to do this. So let’s go ahead and name some of these cons already:

• Low price = High saturation
• Limited theme customization
• You can’t actually use the store until you’ve payed for the monthly plan
• You’ll be spending hundreds/thousands on getting traffic
• Low profit margins

So two of these cons aren’t really a big deal. If you have a creative taste to you, having limited theme customization isn’t a problem. Also since the store is only $29 to get started, applying for the plan isn’t a deal bigger. You can still cancel however before your 14 free trial is up and you WON’T be charged. Now lets get into the other three cons that will probably 97% of people who won’t go for this.

High saturation is definitely a big problem when using this platform (specfically if you’re doing drop-shipping) because, people think all you need to do is pay for the subscription, set up everything & just wait for the customers to start coming in. Also some of these Shopify “gurus” on youtube give a false hope to most of these people wanting to make some extra money. Promising you, you’ll be making 6 figures your first month. Not saying it’s impossible because some have done it, but those people that find success in the first month 99% of them already had the marketing experience or had the resources already or both.

You’ll be also spending a lot of cheese on promoting your products on these social media platforms such as Facebook ads, Instagram ads/influencers, Youtube, Google ads, and many more. Now my best advice for people starting this platform is for one get good at using one social media platform at a time so you’re just not throwing money in the black hole. You’re also going to fail a few times as well so if you’re not okay with losing money in the beginning to learn I highly recommend STRONGLY do NOT do this.

Now with low profit margins, this will only be a issue when you’re scailing your store into higher numbers a day. For example you might have a product that cost about .29 cents to buy but selling it for $15-$20 dollars. You might be profiting big time right now, but when you start scailing your product, your ad cost will go up which will decrease the amount of profit you’ll be making. On top of hiring a few VAs to help you run your business, you’ll be paying them as well. You’ll also be spending money on creating content for your marketing. At the end of all of that you’ll probably be profiting 20-35% maybe 40%  of your actual sales. But I mean when you’re making $100,000+ a month you wouldn’t care about those margins to be honest.

 

So is starting Shopify worth it?

In my opinion, yes. Shopify gives you a very flexible platform to bring your dream business online and gives you a chance to start multiple streams of income and expand your variety when comes to monetizing your ideas. If you can deal with a slow start to a long lasting path then I highly recommend you start and take that chance. However, if you’re not willing to take the cons about this platform Irecommend your try a different business model, because truth be told you won’t last long in the world E-commerce. You could try affilate marketing, social media marketing, amything else, but Shopify wouldn’t be your best bet. Just being honest.

How can I stand out from other starting online businesses?

Hey what’s up NGW family! Today’s blog isn’t going to be a long read, but I wanted to quick tips that can stand you aside from most online businesses that you’re competing in right now. So without further adue, let’s get started. So when starting a business, everyone focuses on the amount of money they’ll make or the freedom they’ll gain as they reach the level of financial freedom that not everyone in this world will reach. Although if your business doesn’t click with the audience you won’t be making any money, period. I remember reading a book called “Blue ocean strategy” by Renee Mauborgne & W. Chan Kim and the main purpose of that book was to explain how you don’t want your business in red waters. Red waters meaning copying and competing with other businesses in your field, but to be a blue ocean which means be different, unqiue, something no one has done or done right before. Today I’ll be giving you some tips to be a blue ocean instead of a red water.

 

Branding

In order to have a LONG lasting business you need to create a brand. Something that people will come back over and over again becoming a lifetime customer. Here’s some things you’ll need to create a brand:

• A concept
• A logo
• A reason
• A audience

A concept because it gives you an overall idea of what you what your brand to look like, this will be the concept that you’ll be putting up for years and years. A logo because it’ll give you the recongition that your audience will take you as. If you’re not much of an artist no worries, I create unique minimalisitc logos for your start up online business. For more info about my services click here and you’ll be guided to my service page. A reason because there has to be a motive/story behind every brand. People love come up stories and that’ll validate you as a business. The more people connect with your story, the more you’ll connect your business. Of course you need an audience because without traffic, you’ll have no business.

 

Marketing

Marketing is the key and I mean the KEY to having a sucessful business for the long term. Marketing is literally the difference between having two of the same products and one selling like candy in the candy shop than not selling at all. Now remember marketing is about 50% creativity & 50% skills, so if you’re not already a seasoned marketer it’s okay I’ll hook you up on some info real quick. Now of course you don’t have to have a rocket science degree to master this skill. The main agenda is to drive traffic, grab attention.

Now there’s many factors that go into this like the following:

• Trigger words
• Colors
• Videos/Pictures
• Attention span time

And many more factors. For more info about this specific topic check out this video by Dave that’ll go more in depth about this. So as I mentioned today this isn’t going to be a long post, but I’ve been having this in my mind all day today and while it’s still fresh I wanted to share this with you to give you an idea on how to stand apart from other business, because truth be told it’s not a lot you just have to master the two giants and thats marketing and branding. I’ll be dropping a more in dept version of this post very soon so be on the look out for it! Have a blessed day.

How can I quit my job and become a boss?

Well if you want the short answer, walk in the bosses’ office and demand they make you a boss… If he/she says no, passively but aggresively quit your job in a cinematic rant and walk out. Literally… That’s it. Thanks for reading! Just kidding. Don’t go nowhere as I actually give you some ways that you can quit your job and become the boss you’ve always wanted to become. Imagine waking up knowing you no longer have to rush to get ready to get in rush hour traffic, just to hear your boss bitch about you being 2 micro-seconds late. You’re making money while you’re sleep, eating, on a date, traveling, whatever your heart desires. That’s the true American dream in my opinion, having true freedom with a coorperation.

Now that doesn’t mean that everyone is built to do this, simply because this takes a certain mindset, a certain amount of discipline, sacrifice(not blood… well maybe. Depending how far you’re trying to go… Again, just kidding.), time management, and many other factors. Most people woulf actually just prefer to work for someone as long as the job pays good and they have good benefits, they’ll be straight. But, not you. If you’re reading this right now is because you’re at a job that either:

• A, you’re not making enough money
• B, the people at your job are toxic
• C, your boss is a straight asshole
• D, you just want your time back to pursue your dreams

Now truth be told you won’t get the time you’ve spent working for the man, but you can invest that time into what I’m about to talk to you about right now. So I recommend starting a business. Period. Starting a business can give you the leverage to build some passive/residual income. Now I won’t go into deep details on why you should start one, but if you want to read more info about it go ahead and check out my blog post about “10 reasons why you should start a business“.

How can I leave my 9 to 5 and become a boss? First off, do reasearch on a business model that you’d like to do that’ll take you out of that situation. Whether it’s affiliate marketing, E-com, social media marketing, forex trading, etc… Whatever the case may be for you. Figure that out first that way you’ll know what’ll you’ll be focusing your time, energy and money on. –Wait we gotta spend money on this? Yes, you do. That’s why I said this was going to be sacrifice in building your financial freedom & that’s why most people won’t do this. Now after you’ve Identified what it is you want to start building your income stream in, secondly you’re going to want to invest a great amount of time into creating your business.

And before you ask, yes, a great amount of time. Even if you’re already working a full 40 hour week, you need to be investing at least 2-6 hours inside of your business a day(side note, make sure you tailor your business around things your gift/passion so it doesn’t feel like work and the time will be going by fast). If you’re just soo damn busy that you can’t even take at least 30 minutes to invest in your future than you need to go ahead and re-evaluate your life expeditiously. Also, a bit of life advice before I continue. If your job right now is paying your bills & keeping food on your table… DO NOT QUIT… yet. Most of these damn entreprenuers tell you, “Quit your job, take that huge risk, walk out blindly and just start walking”. Now i’m going to sit here and say that doesn’t work but, very seldomly does that actaully happen & you have to really be willing to risk it all.

There’s a difference between taking calculated risk and jumping off the twin towers hoping to land on a pillow. Hold on to the job and build your side income up until the side income becomes the main income and then ditch the 9 to 5. Now that requires a special of discipline because most people are tired like shit when they get off work, but if you do what most people wouldn’t do right now, you’ll live a life like most people can’t live. So it’s worth it at the end of the road. Now for those who are still reading at this point I’ll go into some business models you can start now from easy to hardest. Thank me later… Or now. Doesn’t matter.

 

Affiliate marketing: Easy

Now for those who don’t know what that is, check out my blog post “Affiliate marketing for dummies…” and it’ll go over everything you need to know about the affiliate marketing world. I recommend this as a start if you’re just new into making an online business. I’ve been using this system called legendary marketer  by Dave Sharpe and it’s by far the EASIST way to make money online. Now you have others such as Awol and Clickbanks but legendary marketer literally gives you the ad copy, emails, landing page, and has a team of highly trained coaches to guide you on your path. It’s literally a copy and paste business and works oh so devine! Start NowStart Now!

Amazon FBA: Medium

First off, can we just thank Jeff Bezos for creating one of the greatest gifts in the world, Amazon? Not only can you buy products off there you can also become a seller! Amazon FBA allows you to create a seller account in any country you want(USA, Canada, UK are highly recommended) and find hot products to sell on their platform. They’re 300million active users on amazon a day so traffic and marketing is already there, your job is to find that winning product. I recommend doing research before starting, but in a nut shell you just contact a supplier(alibaba is recommened). Have them ship the product to an Amazon fulfillment center and they will send the products to the customers while you take in profits. Only downside is that you need some bread upfront(about $2,000-$3,000) already on you to get started. However if you already have it, go for it!

Shopify: Hard(Depends on your experience with marketing):

Now shopify is a great way to start an Ecom store and longterm build your brand. Some of the biggest celebs & brands(Kylie Cosmetics, Fashion Nova, etc) are all on shopify and killing it as we speak. Shopify can be used for many different things such as:

• Dropshipping
• Print on Demand(shirts)
• Branding

The list goes on. The only thing with shopify is that you’re incharge of marketing(facebook ads and instagram influencers). Finding the winning products which involves a lot of testing. Contacting reliable suppliers and making sure they’re not screwing you over. I can go all day on this, but shopify as proven to be great when it comes to handling orders, payouts, customer service, the whole 9 yards. You can literally make a 6 figure business within 1-3 months(if you’re consistent). Takes a little more work but the rewards are uncanny! If you need a logo for any of your businesses I’ll make you 2 of em in order to give your brand that unique look. Click here for more info.

 

How to make money online as a college kid…

So today’s blog will be targeted to all of my college kids or adults who went back to college whatever the case may be, we’ve all been through this part of life before. We all know the common scenerio, broke college kid, struggling to part for expensive ass books and supplies. Living off of Ramen noodles and hotdog slices. Driving around a beat up ass hooptie that’s about to break down on you for the 3rd damn time(better off just walking at this point). You’re probably at a point where you need to start generating some extra income for yourself because you’re literally hanging on for dear life by a financial thread and you’ve had enough.

Now what I’m going to be giving today will of course require you to invest time and have patience simply because nothing long lasting will happen over night. I forgot who said this quote but I believe it said, “It takes 10 years to become an overnight success”, but it shouldn’t even take you less than half of that time. So let me go ahead and give you some options.

Now of course if you want to make some extra money online, one of the strongest recommendations I have is to start your own online business. Reason why I say this is because, if you take the time to do the research and build one up correctly, you’ll reap great financial benefits that can honestly take you to another level. You could either do it as a side gig and keep it part-time while you focus on getting your degree or you can do it full-time and ditch the degree, either way you’ll be creating a real safety net in terms of generating income.

So I know what you’re about to say, “Man all this school work and shit I have, I don’t even have the time to do something like that!” Well, you have time to go out during the week/weekends and get f*cked up right? Priorities people. Would you rather sacrifice some fun to increase your funds or keep partying, clubbing and drinking with your bank account on negative and a paper due? Thought so. Now starting a online business can be a little itimmidating at first, especially when you have no idea what the hell you’re doing, but fret not there’s many ways to skin this cat.

I recommend to start out with Affiliate marketing when starting a online business simply because the whole model in general can be understood very quickly and applied effectively. Now you’re probably asking, “what the hell is affiliate marketing?” So, pretty much you have a company that has a product or service to offer, but they don’t know how to connect the product/service to the customer. So you as the marketer would be putting their product infront of the customer and if the customer buys the product/service from the company, you get a commission. Simple right? You don’t create no products, hire any employees, you’re just putting the product infront of the customer and that’s it.

If you decide to do this method of online business, my best advice to you especially if you don’t know much about the online world to that degree, is find a trustworthy company that will teach you the skills on how to start, grow and effectivly market your affiliate marketing business. I recommand this company I’ve been with for about 4-5 months called Legendary Marketer as they take you through trainings, pair you with coaches that have made 6-7 figures doing this and many more. For more info, click here and watch the video.

So if affiliate marketing isn’t up your alley and you’d like to do something different my next recommendation is to start a dropshipping store on Shopify. So for those who don’t know what dropshipping is, you have either already stumbled across a dropshipping store and didn’t realize it or you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years. Dropshipping is pretty much you build a store around the product you want to sell. The customer buys the product. You use the customer’s product to buy it from the actual supplier, the supplier sends the product to the customer & you keep the profit. For example let’s say I’m selling a watch. I’m selling the watch for $40 and you as the customer buy it. I take that $40 dollars and buy it from the supplier which cost about $3 dollars. The suppliers send you the watch and I profit $37 dollars. Now imagine doing this 100 times a day.

Now even though that sounds crazy good, starting a dropshipping store is a little more harder than you think. Especially now a days because there’s a lot of competition out here, but don’t let that scare you because if you do your research on products, learn how to utilize social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube to your advantage. You’ll be fine. You will have to have patience though and it’s highly recommended that you have some type of dough stacked up already before doing this as this will help cut your learning curve when putting your hand inside this business model. You do this right and the type of freedom and control you’ll have will be ludacris.

In conclusion, these are legit ways to make more money online, but I wouldn’t do this if you expect overnight success. If you think you’re going to make $10,000 your first day, I want whatever it is you’re smoking because it isn’t anything logical. Paitence will be your bestfriend and keeping it a buck 50 you will experience some failure and you’ll probably lose money in the beginning, but thats why I stress you do HEAVY research and learn from other people’s mistakes before doing this so you can avoid losing a heaping amount of money. Last little tip for before I close, take a little bit of that financial aid that you have(if you’re getting it) and use it as start up money to invest inside your business and watch how this works out for you!

 

My life story… How did I get to this point…

So today I’m going to getting a little personal and tell you my life story to this point as I’m 21 turning 22 in a couple of months. I’ve lived a lot of life and had many experiences that molded the person you see now. Truth be told, my education started after I dropped out of school. Life in it, itself is the best teacher and whether you take notes and past the tests it throws at you or not… Life will educate everyone, it’s up to you learn.

Let’s start things off right shall we? Starting with my name, Benjamin Immanuel Christian Clark. I know, A lot right? My mom named me with purpose as the first three of my names are biblical. “Benjamin” symbolizing the right hand of God. “Immanuel” meaning God with us. “Christian” meaning follower of christ. You can tell I grew up in a house hold that was surrounded in church.

Truth be told I wasn’t actually supposed to be here. My mom till this day calls me her “Miracle baby” because, I was supposed to die at birth. When I was being delivered the ambilical cord was wrapped around neck about three times and I was literally seconds away from leaving this planet, but thank God that wasn’t the case… I made it. Now because of that situation my mom thought I was going to grow up “special” because of some of the effects I had in my early stages of my life. I was super quiet and a little slow, but as I grew up, I pretty much did a whole 360. Seriously, you see me now I’d probably talk your ear off.

So as I grew up, we weren’t rich. We started off as most people and that’s at the bottom. We weren’t living on the streets thank God, but we did have a lot of moments we struggled. We had moments when we didn’t know how the bills would be paid, we had moments when we had to live with other family members houses if we weren’t at our own spot. There’s been times we didn’t know what we were going to eat or even have transportation. Now here’s the part where most people neglect to give the Lord thanks, because truth be told we still made it through and with flying colors. I never went hungry, I always had clothes on my back, a roof over my head and my mom always provided for me just like God provided for us.

Now as a kid, you already know I would always dream big and have big goals/hope for a future. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I was going to be successful one day. I went to a lot of elementary schools in the early stages in my life, but finally I ended up at one called Crouch elementary from 4th-6th grade. Fast-forward to 2012 we were living in our own apartment, but we ended up getting evicted and forced to get out. So we ended up moving in with my Aunt and for 6 years I had to share a room with my mom because we stayed in her Den.

2014 I finally was in position to finally start working. My first job and till this day I know God was looking out for me for this, but my first job was Footlocker. Not just any Footlocker, but the best and biggest Footlocker in the southern region. As a junior in highschool, I had that job and my popularity shot up literally overnight. However, having that job made me realize how fake people were as I was only getting hit up for a discount and after a year in a half I became the “shoe guy”… You don’t want to be the shoe guy… Anyways, I met a lot of amazing people. Different races, different personalities, people from different countries. I think that help me develop my personality to adapt to anyones character. After two years and two months I finally left that job and thats where my real story begins…

So this was around the year 2016 when I quit and I was still in college. I was in my first semester in college doing my basics and my mom gave me a choice, because she really wanted to see me succeed, but money was tight around this time as I was just fresh out of a job looking for another one. She said I could either do school full-time or work full-time. As much as I wanted to pick one, at the time I was under the mindset that society tells us that a degree will make you a successful, but I knew I needed to make my own money so my mom wouldn’t work any harder than she was. So I decided to do both.

One of my friends gave me a tip for this temp service and thus begins my second job. Now I was never opposed to working for somebody because, my family are pretty much workers so it was just naturally in my blood. However… Little did I know that this job would change my mindset for the rest of my life. So I won’t disclose the name of the job, but this job was so SHIT. They threw me in the warehouse with no training, impatient co-workers, 6 day work week, 12 hour shifts on top of saturdays, we worked till the assembly plant we were in contract with closed. ON TOP OF STILL BALANCING SCHOOL! It got so bad one day, my supervisor was rushing me soo fast, I had a sharp blade in my hand and my gloves weren’t cut resistant and well… You can put 2 and 2 together.

So after two hard and crazy weeks of working their I finally decided to quit because this job was disturbing my peace. Little tip people, I don’t care how good the job pays. If your job is toxic, leave. I ended up leaving and became jobless for about three months. I wasn’t doing good in school in fact, I only passed 2 out of the 4 classes I had and I barley passed them. So throughout those three months I ended up getting involved with one of those MLM’s and I didn’t have knowledge on what that was at the time, but after working that warehouse job I wanted to become my own boss. My entreprenuer bug starting biting me hard. For the first two months of being in that company I was doing good, but in the third month. A big scandal happened in the company and I found out our “Team Leader” was scamming us. I had to pay back everybody I enrolled under me over somebody else’s fuck up and my poor judgement at the time.

So after that happen I was at a stand still. I wanted to own my own business and be my own boss, but didn’t know how and I was mad that I wasn’t making any progress in life. Fast-forward to August 2016 I was watching youtube videos and I stumbled upon this video made by Complex about this guy starting a Shopify store and making millions in three months. This is where my online business journey began. So fast-forward a little over a year later(around Decemeber 2017) I’m working at Ups after finally making the descion to dropout of college, because I wasn’t learning and the classes they offered me and took, didn’t help me at all. Ironically, they were business classes.

Anyways, I wasn’t making much money as I was working part-time and since I didn’t have seniority I couldn’t get a full 20 hours, I was only working two hours a day. However, around this time we were in a busy phase since it was the holidays. So I made a plan to use this money and invest it into my business. Now I didn’t know that this was legal but they made us work two weeks no days off. I got paid around $250 dollars and I took that and invested it into instagram influencers(four of them). I spent all of my money. Ended up with over 1400 visitors in a span of a day in a half and only got 1 sale. You can imagine how angry I was when I failed. I was crying hard and I rarely cried, but the disappointment hurt soo much. However, I took that failure and turned it into my very own print on demand streetwear business called 1Vision(site’s down right now but when I get it back up I’ll share my link).

One more year later and I’ve made some money here and there from online shopify stores, but then I happen to stumbled upon Legendary Marketer. Now before I wasn’t a big fan of affilate marketing mainly because, I didn’t have too much knowledge on it, but then I did my own research and realized this is honestly one of the easiest and cheap ways to start a online business especially when you’re a beginner. For the past 4-5 months I’ve built connections, built this blog you’re reading off of right now, built business plans to increase my income streams and increased my  marketing skills. So if you’re looking for a great affilate marketing program to get started with and need all the guidance/teachings to get you on the right track, I highly recommend you join Legendary Marketer. For more info and to get started click here and start your journey. That’s my story so far as of now people, there’s in more in my life to come so be ready for more of me opening up in the future. I want to thank you dearly if you made it this far, I truly appreciate it.