The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

We discuss the top mistakes to avoid early in your entrepreneurial journey. Look, when you start something new, you don't know what you don't know. It's easy to make a lot of mistakes early on that become obvious to you only later with experience. I know this because I've been through it. I've engaged in all of the mistakes we're about to discuss. Show Links oVertone Govalo AMP by Shop Sheriff Pos...

Serial entrepreneur Drew Sanocki shares his career learnings after starting, buying, running, or selling numerous ecommerce businesses. Notable quotes: "You make most of your money on the exit." "Buying a business reduces the risk... its the ultimate shortcut" "Valuations change over time. Growing ecommerce businesses can sell for 5-8x EBITDA" We discuss: Selling furniture as one of the earliest d...

In this Ask Me Anything episode sourced from our listeners, we discuss... Alternatives to Shopify and Google Analytics TikTok Strategy What do successful brands do differently? Is SEO still viable? What's one thing around the corner no one is talking about yet? Which 3 eComm strategies that just don't work like they used to? Meta Shops (FB/IG)... Should Shopify merchants have checkout on their own...

We're joined by Becca Davison, co-inventor of UnbuckleMe, an innovative, patented tool that makes it easy to open kids’ car seat buckles. She's a Shark Tank alum who experienced the most unusual event in the Shark Tank: all five Sharks were interested in investing in and partnering with UnBuckleMe. When Becca's mom Barb offered to help out with childcare, they identified a problem, and Barb was un...

Our guest today is a serial entrepreneur who shuns the hustle & grind and instead focuses on enjoying the journey of starting a business. "I have had many ups and downs but one night I had a dream about my grandfather and hot honey and the name heart soul heat all came into focus." We're joined by Raoul Benavides, founder of Heart Soul Heat, a purveyor of ghost-pepper infused honey. "As someone wi...

In this episode originally recorded live for a virtual audience at The Future of Ecommerce , we talk with conversion copywriter Lianna Patch about how to improve your store's copywriting and maybe even add a dash of humor. TAKEAWAYS: What are some easily fixable copy mistakes (AKA copy-tunities) you'd like to see more stores address? What's the difference between conversion copy and direct respons...

In this episode, we talk through migrating to Shopify: things to watch out for, and experienced advice on how to make the most of migrating to Shopify. Our expert guest contributors are: Stewart Knapman who joins us from New Zealand where he is a Merchant Solutions Engineer at Shopify. Before moving to Shopify he spent the last decade working as a Shopify partner and Plus Expert helping merchants...

Since creating Bug Bite Thing in 2017, Kelley has been a "Mom on a Mission" to offer the most effective chemical-free solution for insect bite relief worldwide. In 2013, Kelley Higney moved from California to Florida, only to discover the horror of living with mosquitoes. Her daughter suffered from constant mosquito bites. After many failed attempts using creams and trying home remedies, Kelley di...

Alicia Reynoso began selling online 7 years ago and has since built and exited an 8-figure brand on Amazon and Shopify. It wasn't until she launched her free 60 Day Challenge that she was able to grow a hyper engaged community around her brand. With this challenge and community of super fans, Alicia was able to scale their business, increase their customer lifetime value, generate an endless amoun...

Kyle Hale spent a year teaching himself to draw so he could start Ambitious Kids, a T-shirt company for children. His designs have a retro midwestern vibe that has a way of sparking conversations. Still early in his journey, Kyle is open about the struggles he's faced starting his brand, and the lessons he's learned in the process. Show Links Ambitious Kids DesignPickle - Gig economy design servic...

How a family business selling teddy bears, Plush in a Rush, went from a regional traveling salesperson venture to a nationwide wholesale e-commerce store. Yes, this store is exclusively wholesale, and thriving. Having sold online for nearly 20 years, owner Todd Steinberg has a lot of unexpected and practical advice to share from his experiences. Show Links plushinarush.com Sponsors Free 30-day tri...

We discuss our own key takeaways Shopify's extensive Future of Ecommerce Industry Report for 2022 to arm you with the ecommerce trends, insights, and advice you need to succeed in 2022. Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z26-lJ6GKPsdash Show Links The Future of Commerce: Industry Report (2022) - Download Shopify’s complete Future of Commerce report for yourself. Or get just Shopify's Futu...

Also available in glorious HD video on YouTube:  Show producer Paul Reda returns to from paternity leave and he's on fire with hot takes in this AMA episode. We answer your burning ecommerce questions. Today's themes are metafields, theming, and Online Store 2.0. Show Links Shopify Balance Shopify and JD.com unlock world’s largest ecommerce market for merchants Help Doc: Displaying metafields on y...

How a Walmart forklift driver with no ecommerce experience started (and sold) a series of successful dropshipping businesses. In this episode, Ben lays out his practical and repeatable approach to building legitimate high-ticket dropshipping businesses all while breaking through limiting beliefs and mindsets. Show Links the3dprinterguy.com empireflippers.com Gary Vee shoptinyhouses.com https://www...

In 2004, Andy Humphrey took the $108 he'd saved and turned it into $10,000 profit in 6 months selling Christmas lights on SuperTwinkle.com while working full-time as a distributor account manager. Fast forward >> today he sell millions online tactfully optimizing SprinklerSupplyStore.com and blazing trails with wholesale distributors. Along the way, you may have seen him on ABC's, Shark Tank (ECOM...

How a design student bootstrapped a watch strap business with $20 and a sock, cultivated a loyal repeat customer base, and ultimately sold over 200,000 watch bands starting from a dorm room in Texas. Our guest today is Braxton Manley, founder of Braxley Bands, a lifestyle brand combining style and function to make insanely comfortable Apple Watch bands. What he began working on for a random class...

Good SEO and content strategy can help ecommerce store owners be less reliant on paid traffic. Do you rely on paid ads to get traffic? What happens if you get banned from running ads or traffic dries up? That's exactly what happened to today's guest. Without Facebook and Google ads to generate traffic, he had to figure out an SEO strategy to replace the lost traffic to his eBike store. The solutio...

Jonathon and Maria Denholm have invented a new way for teachers to manage their classrooms with an adorable product they call Your Teacher's Pet Creature. In this episode, Jonathon shares their journey going from "having no clue what I was doing" to running a 6-figure Shopify store with a completely new product alongside his wife, all while juggling two kids and a full-time job. You'll hear the st...

According to Shopify sales data, "merchants on Shopify generated peak sales of nearly $3.1 million per minute at 12:02 PM EST on Black Friday, and merchants crossed $1 billion in sales by 4:00am EST, four hours earlier than Black Friday in 2020." Now we have to get all that product delivered. In 2020, that was a problem. Is it an issue this year? CMO of ShipBob, Casey Armstrong, joins to tell us....

In today's show, CROSSNET co-founder & CMO Chris Meade tells us how he bootstrapped the world’s first four way volleyball game into a 8 figure business in 4 years. CROSSNET is sold in over 2,500+ retail stores, has been played in 10,000 schools, and has even aired on ESPN. In this episode, Chris is candid about his journey, and lays out the struggles and tactics that led to their success. Show Lin...

In our last chat with Rishi (AKA the Shopify product page guy), we talked about why product pages are important ( https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/episodes/rishi-rawat ). It was one of our most popular 2021 episodes.  So I invited Rishi back. This time we dug into how to rewrite the product description so it connects with the psychology of your shopper. Rishi has been experimenting with conver...

Our guest is Adam Greenberg, one of the co-founders and CMO of ONE BONE, a size inclusive brand for the hard-to-fit man. He’s a morning show radio host on Virgin Radio in Montreal, Canada, and he used to tour as an MC (TB1) in an EDM DJ duo (1DAFUL). While he was on tour across North America, he had to custom make his own clothing because finding something that looked as good as it fit, was very h...

This episode is also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2O8th50rMbM If you advertise on Facebook (or other ad platforms) you need to understand Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) vs. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and how to think about advertising incrementally. Why Facebook Ads reporting on ROAS is broken. If you’re pulling back on Facebook ads as a result, you're hurting your business. Switching to a...

Hear from Ilya Grigorik at Shopify about the latest with Hydrogen, Shopify’s new React-based custom storefronts framework. At Shopify Unite 2021 last summer, Tobi Lütke demo'd a new quick-start toolkit for store development called Hydrogen. It looked cool, seeing Tobi demo it made me want it, but truthfully I didn't understand it. Should I have FOMO? Because I think I do. We're going full tech ner...

In this episode, Rhian Beutler and Kelly Vaughn join us to discuss the state of the supply chain and the economy in Q4, what that means for your store, and what you can do to avoid "dead ends" on your site and "save Christmas for your customers." Show Links Bloomberg: 2021 Gift Cards Expected to Surge Amid Shortages Book: The New Abnormal The Economist: America Inc and the shortage economy App sto...