I started Little Shop Joy, my handmade pet shop, on Shopify in 2018. I waited for a couple of days hoping that sales would magically show up butttt I had to be realistic. No one knew about my shop so howww would they know they absolutely needed my amazing handmade pet accessories like my scrunchie dog bandana? They wouldn’t! After a week of waiting, I decided to take some action that required no additional money. Within a couple of days, I had orders coming in. Here’s four things that I did in order to get did to get my first sale on Shopify-
- Shared my Business with my family and on Instagram – People need to know your business exists sooo share it! Share it and your products on your social media platform of choice. Mine was Instagram. I posted a couple times a day to introduce people to my products and my brand and slowly (but surely) I started getting more followers. (Please know that followers do not always mean you will get sales – it does mean that people want to keep up with you and your brand though which could lead to sales)
- Started an Affiliate Program – I knew I needed to get people to try and talk about my products so I started an affiliate program. In the beginning when my business was on a budget, I would manually create and track affiliate codes. I eventually moved on to Smile and it was amazing. My affiliates were able to login and see their earnings from referring other people to my brand. This was how I grew my brand drastically. People referring other people is how I made most of my income.
- Messaged People on Instagram– Each time someone followed me, I would reach out to introduce myself and my brand! I was not spammy with it – just super friendly! I would invite them to check out my website and give them a promo code for like 15% off that would expire in 5-7 days. I did that to one, get them to check out my website and two, use the promo code within 5-7 days. This was another way I got customers – a lot of people did not know about my scrunchie dog bandanas so I would mention those bandanas in the messages and people would reply back asking questions about them! They always wanted to know it was possible to have a slide on dog bandana.
- Giveaways – To get people more engaged and involved in my brand, I would host a giveaway that would last a few days to a couple of weeks! The prize would be a scrunchie dog bandana, dog bow tie or a coupon for like 30% off! The requirements for the giveaway would be simple to: like the post, share the post and tag some friends. Hosting giveaways also helped me get more followers who I turned into customers.
That’s it! That’s all I did in order to get my first sale on Shopify. The first sale then turned into my second sale and third sale and then my 1,000th sale. I just kept doing these four things until the orders started flowing in like water.
This is not the onlyyyy way to get your first sale on Shopify but this way worked for my new business. so it may it work for yours too.
Sending you lots and lots of sales,
Jackie
