Presentation Highlights:

1:30: The reason to consider going from Amazon To Shopify.

4:54: How much time are you spending going from idea to idea without a solid long-term plan?

5:30: The real problem we are all trying to solve for as e-commerce sellers.

6:08: What can be achieved when you begin to solve the real problem.

8:00: Example - how one simple product can create dramatic wealth.

11:00: Our story and why we're so passionate about helping business owners sell online.

15:55: Is your current sales system creating the result you want?

16:50: The 4-Tests Of A Successful Brand - and how to pass them.

17:00 Test #1

18:00 Test #2

19:00 Test #3

20:40 Test #4

22:30 The Lean Startup Method-For Shopify Sellers

28:15: Overcoming the 3 biggest challenges of creating a successful Shopify Ecommerce website.

28:30: Challenge #1 - The biggest challenge with launching a successful Shopify site.

30:30: Challenge #2 - Overcoming the most difficult part of managing a Shopify...

You know it's coming. You can tell. Your boss is acting weird, the news from the top is not good in general, and there is a lot of restructuring going on. So when you boss asks if he can meet with you first thing when you get in - you know it's over.

As a former Human Resources Generalist, then ultimately SVP in charge of Human Resources, I coordinated a lot of these meetings. Doing the behind the scenes paperwork, preparation, and planning. It sucked. I always worried about the impact of the financial hit the employee was going to take.

I heard on the radio the other day that,

71% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.

So getting fired can mean serious financial stress. That's just part of our new economy. It used to be that just poor performers got terminated and it was fairly rare for good workers to get shown the door.

But today's marketplace is so incredibly volatile, and short-term in nature, it's really common for very good people to end up on the wrong side of these types...

How We Finally Got Retargeting To Make A Profit...

I'm an eager student, but a slow learner. So when retargeting came along a few years ago, I jumped at the chance to learn how to do it. In this blog post, I explain Retargeting as a marketing strategy and how we failed repeatedly to make it work - and then ultimately found our way to a successful retargeting strategy. I'm not claiming to be an expert on this topic in any way - I'm just a student of the technique sharing my story...

Retargeting Defined: (in case you're not familiar with the phrase), "retargeting", it is the idea of placing an advertisement in front of someone who has previously visited your website. You do it by installing a "pixel" tracking code on your Shopify (or other) website that tracks visitors - so that you can serve up ads to them later.

(Note: Google calls this "remarketing", Facebook calls it "retargeting")

Because retargeting is an advertising strategy - the folks who offer you the "pixel tracking code"...

Like a ton of online entrepreneurs - we started our e-commerce business (Liberty Jane) selling on eBay then added a Wordpress site. Then discovered Shopify in 2013.

Looking back, it's obvious now why Shopify is superior to Wordpress, but at the time, we weren't sure.

In this post, I'll share why (functionally) we prefer Shopify for e-commerce selling. But first...

Disclaimer: I use Wordpress sites, both hosted and self-hosted, for blogging - and really like them for that purpose. I'm not trying to bash Wordpress in any way. 

But if you're an e-commerce entrepreneur trying to decide on website options, I think this article will shed some light.

Achilles' Heel - There Is Really No Such Thing As A Self Hosted Wordpress Site

The first real problem we encountered with using Wordpress for e-commerce is, there is no such thing as a "self-hosted" Wordpress site. This confused us at first. What is "hosting"? But over time our thinking got clearer. What is implied by the phrase...

In the last 30 days, we've had over 100,000 people visit our Shopify site (www.pixiefaire.com). They visited 240,000 times in total and looked at 1.2M pages.

In this article, I'll share the simplest, most effective, and most under-utilized way to get lots and lots of people to visit your Shopify site. Here is a screenshot of our analytics to prove my traffic claims,

Focus On Why They Come

The newbie marketer asks, "where" do I spend my time getting people to visit my website? Is it

Facebook?

Instagram?

Youtube?

Pinterest?

Twitter? 

Snapchat? 

Viral Video?

Email Marketing?

SEO?

The veteran marketer asks "why" would people want to come to my site and how can I make that "why" incredibly attractive to my ideal customers. 

Get a good "why" and the "where" is simpler. The "where" almost takes care of itself if you design this strategy correctly. (I'll explain how in a moment).

So let's look at why someone might come to your site and how to build a system to make that...

Every Shopify store owner has a top of mind question:

How do you get people to your website?

In this post, we'll discuss how to answer that question using Pinterest.

Pinterest Basics - Not Tricks

As context, I'm a big believer in mastering the basics rather than trying to chase short-term tricks or gimmicks. And with Pinterest, there are tried and true basics that you can (and should) follow to grow your traffic. So anyone can do this! As Bruce Lee wisely said,

"I don't fear the man that has practiced 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that has practiced 1 kick 10,000 times."

In-Depth Resource - Pinterest Power: Oddly enough I've had the privilege of being on the front lines of the marketing world's adoption of the Pinterest platform. I started blogging about Pinterest in December 2011 (www.marketingonpinterest.com) and because I was pretty much the only one discussing that topic at the time, I got a traditional book deal. My book Pinterest Power was published by...

Veteran online sellers have found a tried and true product strategy for scaling a business to six and even seven figures - and Shopify is a great platform to implement this blueprint on. 

What's the product strategy? I call it Product Stacking, or the Integrated Product Stack. It's not complicated - and here is a chart that outlines the concept:

Product stacking is built on the idea that people want to 'go deeper' in connection to their area of interest - and if they trust you for one aspect of that journey, they'll likely trust you for the other aspects as well. Or, if they don't trust you, at least you're ideally positioned to make an offer to them associated with the other needs related to the topic. Since you've got their contact information and you know they purchased something in associated with that issue you are more ideally suited than anyone else to offer them a related product.

Step One - Initial Purchase

If you offer something - and someone...

Lots of people try to sell on Amazon and fail. We did. And although I don't generally like to dwell on my failures, I think in this case it might be helpful to share about it - in the off chance that you're in the same boat. 

Of course - my prescription for success is to sell direct-to-consumers via Shopify - which may or may not be the right solution for you - I get that. But if you've failed on Amazon then my best suggestion is to diagnose the root cause of the failure, look at it carefully, and then craft a new plan that is built on those hard-won lessons.

Reasons Why Sellers Fail On Amazon

There are a lot of ways to fail on Amazon. Let's document the most common (and I'll share which one snagged us):

1. The product you're attempting to sell has low sales volume on the Amazon platform (this could be for a wide variety of reasons).
2. The product you're attempting to sell has good sales volume on Amazon, but you can't source it cheaply enough to have any profit at the...

I'll never forget the day I was sitting in a room of over 500 online sellers (the vast majority were selling on Amazon) and the speaker asked everyone selling over $5,000 per month online to stand up. Half the room stood up, including me.

• She asked people to remain standing if they sold over $10,000 a month. A good number of people sat down.
• She asked people to remain standing if they sold over $20,000 a month. More sat down.
• She asked people to remain standing if they sold over $30,000 a month. At that point there were about 20 people standing.
• She asked people to remain standing if they sold over $40,000 a month. Most of them sat down.
• She asked people to remain standing if they sold over $50,000 a month. Two people were standing - me and Mike Brown of Death Wish Coffee.
• She thanked everyone for sharing their results, asked the audience to applaud us, and asked us to sit down.

I was shocked. First of all, where did all the amazing Amazon sellers go? Why did they drop...

I've had the honor of working with almost 1,400 Shopify site builders in the last 6 months, and I've come up with a working theory of e-commerce success. I believe it takes 4-Core team (or personal) Aptitudes to begin finding some success. I like using the baseball metaphor to explain it.

Last month I introduced my 4-Core concept in a super long blog post, (The E-commerce Formula - Mastering The Four Core Building Blocks Of Online Selling Success). To summarize it - I made a framework diagram I'd like to share. If you like it, share it with other people around the internet.

The Business Aptitude 

Your decision to sell products or services as a business venture starts the process. When you put on the entrepreneur uniform and gear up - you're in the game. You step up to the plate and begin looking at opportunities flying by - like baseballs. You begin seeing opportunities to make money everywhere you go - and in tons of different ways. You can take a swing at any one of...