Shopify

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

“Net 30” is a common payment term you might see on an invoice. It simply means buyers have 30 days after receiving an invoice to complete their payment. Buyers typically receive their goods in the interim. Net 30 is popular among buyers that purchase products from wholesalers because it gives them enough time to sell the products before paying for them.

For some merchants, the idea of waiting 30 days for payment is risky. How will they operate in the meantime? Is there any guarantee that your customer will settle their debt, or is there a risk of them going silent before the payment term expires? 

These are all valid concerns, but there are steps you can take to insulate your business from bad debt if you’re offering a net 30 payment. Here’s how to protect your business and allow customers flexible payment options.

What is net 30?

Net 30 is a payment agreement in which a customer pays for their order within 30 days of receiving the product. It’s most often used in business-to-business (B2B) commerce, where buyers pay for inventory once they’ve sold it.

How do net 30 days payment terms work?

Net 30 days payment terms mean that the buyer has 30 days from the date of receiving the invoice to settle the payment in full. Some buyers opt for these terms because it gives them extra time to improve cash flow. During the 30-day period, the buyer can confirm the products meet their expectations, and sell it to their own customers (if this is the purpose of the sale). 

If the buyer hasn’t paid for the goods when the 30-day period expires, the outstanding amount may be subject to late fees or penalties.

An example of net 30 payments

Let’s say a small business owner purchases inventory from a wholesaler that offers net 30 payment terms. Upon receiving the products, the wholesaler issues an invoice dated March 1, stating that payment is due within 30 days. The wholesaler also offers an early repayment discount of 10% if the buyer pays within 15 days. 

The small business has until March 16 to claim the discount, with a final deadline of March 31 to make the payment in full. This is enough time to inspect and resell the products before settling the sales invoice within the agreed timeframe.

If the small business doesn’t make payment within 30 days, the wholesaler will likely issue a new invoice with an additional late payment fee. 

How to manage net 30 payment terms

1. Create an agreement

A contract is a legally enforceable agreement that protects you if a customer doesn’t pay within 30 days. To make the agreement watertight and let the buyer know what’s expected of them, you can include the following elements in your contract:

• The start date and end date of the agreement
• Products or services provided
• A discount offer for early payment
• Penalties for missing the payment date
• How returns are handled

Alongside the contract, prepare an invoice, a document that explains what you’re selling and for how much. This should include an invoice date, your agreed net 30 payment terms, what you’re selling, and instructions on settling the debt. 

To do this from your Shopify admin, create a draft order and select the “Payment due later” option. Here, you can set your payment terms. Choose “Within 30” days for net 30.

2. Consider an early payment discount

If you’re offering net 30 payment terms to your customers but would rather not wait a month for the money to hit your bank account, you can offer early payment discounts to incentivize people to pay earlier.

Early repayment discounts are typically written in the following format: [discount]% / [number] days. For example, 5% / 15 days net 30 means customers get a 5% discount if they settle their invoice within 15 days (before the net 30 deadline). 

3. Send regular payment reminders

Your customers might be busy people who forget about their upcoming payment deadline. Instead of waiting for the deadline to pass, you can send regular reminders to people who’ve agreed to a net 30 payment term. Here’s what that might look like:

• 23 days after invoicing: One week left to complete their payment 
• 29 days after invoicing: Final reminder with warning of a late payment fee
• 31 days after invoicing: New invoice with a late payment fee 

Shopify can send automatic payment reminders for you. Go to Settings and choose “Notifications.” Select “Customer notifications” and find the payment reminder section. You can edit what the reminder email looks like and choose how often you want to send them. 

Advantages of net 30 terms

Net 30 payment terms are popular among ecommerce retailers because they offer the following advantages:

• Incentivize new customers. Net 30 can help customers improve their own cash flow if they don’t have to pay for their goods until 30 days after receiving them. This removes any concern about trying new brands.
• Competitive advantage. If a customer is choosing between two merchants, the one offering net 30 payment terms could be the best choice for a customer who prefers a longer payment period, such as small business owners.
• Encourage customer loyalty. Offering net 30 payment terms is a sign of trust that can solidify strong relationships. This can build loyalty, because it’s easier for people to stick with a brand if they feel a strong connection to it.

Disadvantages of net 30 terms

Despite the advantages that net 30 can provide, there are some disadvantages to consider before you offer these payment terms to your customers: 

• You’ll need more working capital. You won’t recoup the cost of producing a product until 30 days after you’ve sold it. That means you’ll likely need a lot more working capital to operate your business in the interim. 
• Unpredictable cash flow. When people take you up on your net 30 offer, you trust that they’ll pay within 30 days. If they fail to do so, your business can experience cash flow management problems. 
• You may need to manually approve net 30 requests. Customers with poor personal or business credit scores might be more likely to default on their payments, and approving these people in advance takes time.
• You’ll need to remind people of upcoming payments. This is made easier with software that can send deferred payment reminders, such as Shopify.

Alternatives to net 30 payment 

If you’re not set on the idea of waiting 30 days to receive payment, consider these alternatives:

• Net 0. Also known as payment on receipt or immediate payment, net 0 means that payment is due immediately after placing an order. It’s most commonly used in direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce, where orders are processed at scale.
• Net 15. A customer has 15 days to make their payment. Some retailers find the shorter payment window is a good middle ground between flexibility and waiting for money to hit their bank account. You’ll most often find net 15 terms offered by wholesalers to smaller businesses. 
• Net 60. This payment term gives customers more time—60 days—to pay for their order. The longer window is more attractive to customers with cash flow problems, but you’ll need substantial working capital to operate in the meantime. Net 60 isa popular arrangement between wholesalers and larger businesses. 
• Net 90. This tends to be the maximum payment term that businesses offer. Again, you’ll need a lot of working capital to operate while waiting. You’re most likely to find these longer payment terms in government contracts with longer sales cycles and approval processes.

Accept deferred payments with Shopify

Getting paid is a key part of selling online, so take some time to determine whether net 30 terms are right for you. Does the potential of converting more customers balance the risk of late payment?

If you’re not sure yet, you could also try offering net 30 payments to specific customers. You might contact existing customers you already know and trust to explore the idea of net 30 terms. Once you’ve got the hang of it and feel more comfortable accepting deferred payments, you can open it up to more customers. 

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Solvency, just like profitability, is a financial metric every business owner should be familiar with. 

Financial solvency is required for long-term survival. If a business is insolvent, it can find itself filing for bankruptcy and going out of business. 

To keep your ecommerce business financially sound, learn what solvency means, how it works, and some practical strategies your business can use to improve its financial solvency.

What is solvency in simple terms?

Solvency is a financial metric that evaluates a company’s ability to meet its long-term financial obligations. In business, debt is often a double-edged sword. While it can be an exceptional financial catalyst, it can also lead to a business’s downfall if poorly managed.

But solvency is sometimes confused with liquidity. While the two are similar, they are not the same. 

Liquidity vs. solvency

Liquidity measures a company’s ability to pay its short-term financial obligations. Solvency measures a business’s ability to meet its long-term financial obligations.

A liquidity problem occurs when a company cannot pay its short-term liabilities, like employee wages or supplier invoices, using cash on hand and outstanding customer receivables. Liquidity can easily become a concern for an ecommerce company. 

For example, assume a company makes large inventory purchases in Q1 to prepare for a busy summer selling season. The company may face liquidity issues in Q2 because a large chunk of its cash is tied up in inventory that won’t sell for several months. This leaves little cash coming in to cover ongoing expenses like rent, wages, or order fulfillment.

On the flip side, a business experiences a solvency problem when it can’t pay its long-term liabilities, like loans and mortgages, even if it sells all of its assets. 

When the total of a company’s current assets (e.g., cash, inventory, receivables, equipment, etc.) is less than its total liabilities, the business has a solvency problem. While a liquidity issue can be frustrating and can slow down operations, a solvency problem can be dire. 

Here’s how to visualize the difference between liquidity and solvency.

How does solvency work?

Because solvency is a key financial benchmark, merchants need to know if their businesses are solvent. But how?

The easiest way to determine if a business is solvent is to sum up its total assets and total liabilities and then subtract its total liabilities from its total assets. To calculate solvency, use this formula:

Solvency = Total Assets – Total Liabilities

For instance, suppose an ecommerce store’s assets include:

And assume its liabilities are:

Since the company’s assets exceed liabilities by $350,000, this company is solvent since it has an extra $350,000 to cover its total liabilities.

It also helps for business owners to understand these three solvency ratios.

Debt-to-equity ratio

The debt-to-equity ratio measures how a company finances itself with debt (loans and payables) compared to its own money (equity). It reflects the company’s leverage. In this calculation, debt is the numerator and equity is the denominator. To calculate debt-to-equity, use this formula:

Debt to Equity = Total Debt ÷ Total Equity

A higher ratio, typically over 2, should be a concern to an ecommerce entrepreneur. A debt-to-equity ratio of 2 means that for every $1 of equity, there is $2 of debt. This is when you can creep into solvency issues.

The ideal debt-to-equity ratio varies widely by industry. For example, businesses in capital-intensive industries, such as airlines, have higher debt-to-equity ratios. But technology and healthcare companies have lower debt-to-equity ratios. 

Let’s look at an example from popular ecommerce company eBay’s December 31, 2023 balance sheet.

Ignore all the words and numbers. Only look at the items blocked in red and blue. These are the two numbers needed to calculate eBay’s debt-to-equity ratio. 

As of December 31, 2023, eBay had a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.38 ($15,224 ÷ $6,396). As an established ecommerce company, this ratio wouldn’t raise solvency concerns. But for newer ecommerce businesses, this would warrant ongoing monitoring.

Interest coverage ratio

Another way to know if your business is solvent is to calculate its interest coverage ratio.

The interest coverage ratio measures a company’s ability to cover its interest expense on its debt. It tells you how easily the company’s current earnings can cover the interest expense; hence the term “Interest Coverage.”

You can calculate your interest coverage ratio by dividing your company’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by its interest expense. Use this formula to calculate interest coverage ratio:

Interest Coverage Ratio = EBIT ÷ Interest Expense

EBIT shows you how much profit your business made from its core operations before considering extra expenses like income taxes and interest.

A low-interest coverage ratio suggests a company may have difficulty paying its interest expense. But a higher ratio means the business has more wiggle room to pay its debt obligations.

What interest coverage ratio should ecommerce businesses aim for? A company with consistent revenues should aim for a minimum interest coverage ratio of 2. 

Let’s look at another real-world example from the ecommerce brand Etsy. Again, ignore all the words and numbers. Only look at the items blocked in red and blue. These are the two numbers needed to calculate eBay’s interest coverage ratio. 

As of December 31, 2023, Etsy’s interest coverage ratio was a solid 19.9 ($279,841 ÷ $14,042). This is a strong financial position because it means that for approximately every $20 Etsy makes, it spends only $1 on interest. 

Equity ratio

Another financial metric you use to evaluate your company’s solvency is the equity ratio. 

Business owners and analysts can evaluate a company’s solvency by analyzing its debt using the debt-to-equity ratio or the interest coverage ratio. But you can also evaluate a company’s solvency by reviewing its equity level.

Equity is how much of your business you own after deducting what the company owes to others. The idea behind the equity ratio is that if equity is high, then debt will correspondingly be low. The formula for the equity ratio is total equity ÷ total assets. 

Let’s go back and look at eBay’s balance sheet and calculate its equity ratio. Remember to only look at the items blocked in red and blue. These are the two numbers needed to calculate eBay’s equity ratio. 

As of December 31, 2023, eBay’s equity ratio was 0.295 ($6,396 ÷ $21,620).

An equity ratio below 1.0 is worthy of attention because it means the company has more debt than equity. While this might not be a problem, it’s worth monitoring.

Factors influencing a company’s solvency

Monitoring your company’s solvency helps ensure its long-term survival and provides peace of mind to you as a business owner.

Factors that affect solvency can be broken down into three categories:

• Financial management
• Market factors
• Operational issues

Financial management

Poor financial management can lead to insolvency, and inefficient inventory management can drain cash flow. Overstocking slow-moving products ties up working capital, but understocking can lead to lost sales. 

Keeping a close watch over sales trends, including seasonality and customer purchasing patterns, can help with under or overstocking. Solvency can be traced back to profitability. A company consistently generating healthy profits has a greater ability to meet debt obligations and remain solvent.

Market factors

Economic conditions beyond your control can lead to solvency problems. For example, the government can change its tax regime, import or export policy, or regulatory requirements.

Staying ahead of the competition, identifying changes in customer preferences, or recognizing industry trends can help your business stand out and attract new customers and increase sales. 

Operational issues

Your ecommerce company’s operations are the backbone of your business. Slow order fulfillment and unreliable shipping can damage brand loyalty and lead to lost sales and reduced cash flow.

Ensure your marketing campaigns are designed effectively. A poorly designed campaign that cannot generate a good return on investment can eat into cash flow. Rapid expansion of product lines or entering a new category space that is not well thought out can also quickly deplete cash.

Other factors that can affect solvency include technological changes, natural disasters, and poor leadership.

Strategies for improving solvency 

Solvency is often a life-or-death issue for a business. That means scrutinizing your solvency metrics can be life-saving. 

If you’re worried about solvency and want to shore it up a bit, consider the following strategies. 

Improve your profits 

There are two ways you can increase your profits: increase sales or reduce costs. Typically, you will start by reducing costs because it’s the easiest and can give you results in days. 

Consider negotiating better prices with suppliers and shipping vendors. But don’t overlook the need to increase sales. Cutting costs can only do so much to improve a company’s financial health. Consider dynamic pricing models where prices adjust based on demand, competition, and customer behavior.

Restructure your debts 

Before risking default, consider restructuring your debts. 

Restructuring debts that lead to lower interest rates or extended repayment schedules can give business owners breathing room as they figure out how to put their business operations on a more sustainable track.

Manage inventory efficiently

Review your inventory management techniques to avoid over- and under-stocking. If you haven’t already, create procedures to prevent product damage to reduce waste and shrinkage. Ensure you are completing regular inventory audits to identify any issues with inventory storage.

Securing your future as a business owner

While you should know whether your company is earning profits, you should also assess whether it will continue to make profits for the foreseeable future. That’s why solvency, which measures whether a business can meet its long-term financial obligations, is crucial. 

The debt-to-equity ratio, interest coverage ratio, and equity ratio can help entrepreneurs evaluate whether their companies are solvent or not. 

And if you find your solvency metrics aren’t stellar, you may want to explore restructuring your debts and cutting unnecessary costs.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Entrepreneurs need good business ideas. Successful entrepreneurs take those ideas, scale them by using the right tools and their organizational skills, and build a brand. 

Raven Gibson’s journey is the perfect example of this. She took her passion for graphic design and her love of her natural hair to create Legendary Rootz, a fashion and accessories brand dedicated to empowering and uplifting Black women. Legendary Rootz started as Raven’s side hustle while she was still a college student. Despite never having previously run a business, her designs can now be found at Target. 

To grow her business, Raven uses a set of tools to capture her creativity and provide a great shopping experience for her customers.

3 tools and tips to help you run your business 

When it comes to staying organized so she can bring her ideas to life, Raven relies on specific tools:

1. Bulk import on Numbers

With so many different touchpoints for her brand, Raven uses bulk import to track data. “You can export and import your CSVs, filter by tags, collection, and visibility,” Raven says.

She uses bulk import on her Numbers spreadsheet to visualize all of her orders and customer profiles at once. This helps her ensure everything is in order on the back end of her website and aligns with the customer’s order.

2. Zendesk

For customer service management Raven recommends Zendesk. “With Zendesk I can pull up an email, the customer’s information, their orders, and shipping information all at once,” she says. Having this information in one place helps the team quickly fulfill orders, or solve problems when they arise. “It’s helped us streamline the process so we can help customers faster.”.

3. Notion 

When it comes to keeping track of creative ideas, Raven relies on Notion to stay organized. “Ideas spark, and instead of rushing into it, I take note of it in Notion. I have a database where I keep track of all my ideas, who I envision the design on, and how I want to market it.”

Notion allows Raven to conceptualize the roadmap for each product before rushing into production or prematurely marketing a design. Having tools to organize your creative process allows you to follow the muse when it hits, without worrying you’ll lose any of your great ideas.

To learn more about how Raven organizes her business, and to discover her tips for staying positive during stressful times, tune in to the full Shopify Masters episode.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Brightland is frequently cited as a direct-to-consumer success story. In under five years, Brightland’s photogenic olive oil bottles have not only become a hit on social media, but also with food editors, and even Oprah herself.

Founder Aishwarya Iyer never expected to go into the food industry. She had built her career in beauty, tech, and startups doing PR and communications. “I never thought that I would build a business in food and I never thought I would actually be an entrepreneur,” she says.

Aishwarya grew up in a family of home cooks, but it wasn’t until she rediscovered cooking as an adult that she became obsessed with olive oil: how it tastes, how it’s made, and the history behind it. 

She noticed how confusing it is for many grocery shoppers to differentiate olive oils. “There’s got to be something here where we can build a brand that people feel really excited by and people want to put it out on their countertop,” Aishwarya says.

Here’s what Aishwarya did to create one of the most-loved olive oil brands and how she’s expanded the product line to include honeys and vinegars.

Taking a risk and showing herself compassion

Aishwarya was apprehensive at first about starting Brightland because she didn’t have a background in food or an MBA. But ultimately, she decided to be compassionate with herself and listen to the “inner child” that helped steer her toward pursuing her passion for food.

She also got comfortable with redefining success and the risks involved with entrepreneurship. Her thinking was Brightland “could either turn into something huge or maybe I can sell a thousand bottles in eight months and I’ll be really proud of myself.”

Learning about the olive oil industry

Before she launched her olive oil, Aishwarya took classes at the UC Davis Olive Center. She wanted to be educated on what made a good olive oil. And, to learn about the local olive oil industry, she spoke to small, family-run farms around California. 

That’s how she learned most people didn’t know what good olive oil tasted like, because most olive oils at the grocery store are fairly old. The olive oil most consumers were used to, “may not have the bright tasting notes that a real fresh extra virgin olive oil actually has,” Aishwarya says.

The realization olive oil didn’t have to taste neutral helped Aishwarya hone in on the product she wanted to bring to market. She describes Brightland olive oil as, “really pungent, peppery, and grassy, and it tastes like something that’s alive.”

Expanding the product line

Brightland brought its mission of creating fresh, great-tasting pantry staples and working with high-integrity, small farms to create new products as well. The company found honey and vinegar producers in the US to complement its existing olive oils. And Brightland put a new spin on its hero product by creating a pizza oil that Aishwarya says it can’t keep in stock.

She explains the key to Brightland’s success has been forging its own path and tuning out the noise about when and how to expand. “I didn’t look at what other entrepreneurs who were ahead of me were doing,” she says. “I’m a big believer that silence and stillness actually give clarity.”

To learn more about Aishwarya’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur, listen to her full interview on Shopify Masters.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Do-it-yourself content has turned TikTok creators into overnight stars. A quick YouTube search uncovers craft tutorials for everything from embroidery to woodworking. And despite more competition, Pinterest is still growing. The DIY movement is having a moment (again). 

Studies show that working with your hands offers many mental health benefits. Crafting diversifies your brain activity, especially for those who do computer work, helping to increase creativity. And the sense of accomplishment in creating something from scratch can decrease stress and anxiety. 

Better yet, exploring your creativity may even spark a business idea. If you’re looking for a hobby you can monetize, let’s get crafting! Ahead, explore trending crafts to make and sell, with ideas for every skill level. Learn how to diversify your income and turn your passion into products to sell online, at craft fairs, and everywhere in between.

12 crafts to make and sell

1. Tufted rugs and mats
2. Paper flowers
3. Textile dyeing
4. Home fragrance products
5. Ceramic or clay plant pots
6. Needle felted goods
7. Vintage upcycle
8. Tote bags
9. Woven and knotted home décor
10. Handmade beauty products
11. Resin and polymer clay jewelry
12. Disco ball art

This list of crafts to make and sell is based on popular products sold by online retailers, predictions from crafting sources, and trending craft topics on social media. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Browse craft fairs and social media for DIY crafts that may spark an idea for something completely new. Anyone can sell crafts online once you find the right idea.

1. Tufted rugs and mats

One trend that’s still going strong is rug making, using a hooking or tufting method. Whether you hook by hand with a punch needle or use a mechanical/electric tufting gun, you can create unique rugs, mats, or textile wall art based on your own designs. The top creators are often fetching hundreds of dollars for one two-by-three-foot rug. It can be a lucrative business if you find your niche.

One brand that rode the wave of this trend when it first surged was Mush Studios. Founder Jacob Winter picked up tufting as a hobby during the pandemic, documenting his process on TikTok. When those videos went viral, he launched his successful brand. 

🧶 Tips:

• Offer a custom or made-to-order service, creating tufted rugs to your customers’ specs.
• Starting out in this space will cost you a few hundred dollars for materials, especially if you opt for the tufting gun method. Try a class, if one is offered in your area, to see if you enjoy it before investing.

2. Paper flowers

Paper flowers are simple crafts to make and sell, and potentially can be a fruitful small business idea. The wedding services market, though hit hard by the pandemic, is bouncing back and expected to be worth upward of $414 billion by 2030.

Marketing paper flowers as statement-making décor for weddings and events could score you a piece of that very big pie. Tons of free online paper flower tutorials and templates make it easy to get started. Better yet, paper flowers are among the easiest crafts to make and require very little upfront cost to get started.

Brittany Watson Jepsen built her career as a blogger and content creator for a decade before scaling her brand, The House That Lars Built, to include an ecommerce business. Brittany’s handmade paper flower tutorials were a particularly big hit among her followers. Now, she sells kits to help others easily make them from home. 

🧶 Tips:

• Find or create designs that can fold down and be unfurled by your customer to save on shipping costs.
• Why not try making and selling craft kits for kids or adults, assembling and cutting elements of paper flowers that customers can assemble at home?

3. Textile dyeing 

Tie-dye cycled back into popularity in ’90s, popping up in fashion retailer collections on everything from sneakers to underwear. Tie-dyed goods are easy crafts to make and sell from home, requiring very few materials and skills. 

You can buy and dye bulk blank t-shirts or tie-dye fabric to sew into one-of-a-kinds products, depending on your skill level. Also try traditional Japanese shibori, a trending method of resist-dyeing using natural indigo dye. 

Or, make your own fabrics to sew onto one-of-a-kind DIY crafts or handmade clothing—another trending craft for 2024. 

🧶 Tips:

• Fabric dye, both synthetic and natural, can be purchased commercially. You can also experiment with making your own dyes with ingredients from your pantry, like avocado skins, turmeric, or teas.
• Tie-dyeing typically can be done using string or elastic to resist dye. But anything can be used for this purpose—try bulldog clips, clothespins, or a wax-resist method like batik.

4. Home fragrance products

One of the easiest crafts to make and sell online, home fragrance products like candles require no prior crafting experience. And, they’re in demand. Candle making continues to trend and the home fragrance market is expected to reach $9.2 billion by 2026. 

You can purchase a basic candle-making kit to experiment with the process of adding essential oils to melted wax. But the possibilities are endless: Get creative and stand out with unique containers/shapes like those by Yui Brooklyn, great branding like Boy Smells, a niche audience like Scent & Fire, or unusual scent combinations like Frostbeard candles. 

In a crowded market, what’s your unique selling proposition? 

Young brothers Austin, Collin, and Ryan Gill started their candle brand as a home-schooling activity with the help of their mom, Celena. Frères Branchiaux started out selling at craft fairs and is now a seven-figure business with products sold in Macy’s and Whole Foods. 

🧶 Tips:

• Other home fragrance crafts to make and sell include room and linen sprays, custom essential oil blends, and natural diffusers.
• If you plan to make and sell candles online, be mindful that they are products susceptible to breakage and melting. Factor this into your packing and shipping strategy.

🎨 Learn more: How To Start a Candle Business (Guide and Examples)

5. Ceramic or clay plant pots

The plant-parent population grew like a weed at the onset of the pandemic, and businesses selling plants and plant accessories harvested the benefits. And, with plant care being a long-term commitment, tangential businesses will see benefits for years to come.

There is often a higher barrier to entry to pottery due to the need for specialized ovens (called kilns) to fire the clay. These are often cost- and space-prohibitive, but you can generally find community centers or clay studios that rent kiln time. 

Pottery-like plant pots can also be made from air clay or cement (poured into molds) and do not require firing. 

Rachel Acosta made a “radical career change” when she quit her job as a data scientist to pursue her pottery hobby as a career. Her brand Glaze Me Pretty sells ceramic plant pots and vases alongside a number of fired goods like dinnerware and soap dishes.

🧶 Tips:

• Take a pottery workshop or class to learn how to work with clay and get access to a kiln. 
• Consider other plant accessories like garden markers, hanging planters, watering spikes, or window boxes that can be made from a variety of materials.
• Since pottery is one of the more challenging crafts to make and sell, it’s less saturated than some of the other DIY ideas. It’s still important to find your own aesthetic to stand out from the crowd. 

🎨 Learn more: The Ultimate Guide To Selling Plants Online

6. Needle felted goods

Martha Stewart magazine named needle felting as a trending craft to make and sell for 2024. Needle felting is a sculptural wool craft made using a long, thin needle with a series of notches at the tip. This needle is poked into the wool, tangling it as it’s extracted. As the crafter continues this process, the wool becomes more dense and can be shaped into a number of finished products.

Once you get a hang of the technique, this is one of the many easy crafts on this list. Consider making and selling anything from felted wool dryer balls like those in the example from The General Bean, above, felted soap casings, ornaments, pet toys, and more.

🧶 Tips:

• With trending crafts, you’ll find a ton of competition in the market. Consider what you can create that differs from what you see from competitors.
• Felted goods make great gifts. Create product collections around gifting holidays like Mother’s Day or graduation and attend local craft fairs during busy shopping seasons.

7. Vintage upcycle

If you’re looking for a sustainable idea for a craft you can do from home, vintage upcycling might be for you. The process involves sourcing vintage or used clothing—maybe pieces that have rips, stains, or dated shapes—and repurposing parts into new products. 

Upcycled materials from a torn maxi-skirt could become a tote bag; a faded vintage sweatshirt could be cropped and re-dyed; an old t-shirt could be reimagined as a baby hat. The possibilities are endless for this DIY trend.

Frankie Collective upcycles vintage sports jerseys and other goods, mostly from the ’80s and ’90s, into other clothing, like shorts and crop tops.

🧶 Tips:

• You don’t need to have sewing skills or even a sewing machine to upcycle vintage clothing. Try distressing denim or cropping and dyeing tees.
• Consider what’s in demand. Which fashion trends from the past have cycled back? How can you convert less-desirable cuts into modern silhouettes?

🎨 Learn more: How to Sell Vintage Clothing Online: The Ultimate Guide

8. Tote bags

This is one of the most versatile craft ideas on our list, with options for every level of skill and creativity. At the low end, you can buy blank cotton tote bags and personalize them with silkscreening, beading, hand painting, textile dyeing, or embroidering. 

For more advanced crafters, sew tote bags from scratch from your own pattern—add pockets, closures, and other details to make yours unique.

Also consider other types of bags you can make. Take this example from upcycle brand Psychic Outlaw. The team turns vintage quilts into a number of accessories, from cosmetic pouches to fanny packs.

🧶 Tips:

• As a sustainable option, upcycle vintage clothing or fabric into a usable tote bag. Consumer trends continue to tip toward brands with sustainable business practices.
• Consider finding a niche in this crowded market. What about tote bags just for wine bottles, totes that convert to backpacks, bags that fold up to fit in a pocket, or totes screen printed with memes and pop-culture references?
• If you truly don’t have a knack for crafting, consider uploading your designs to a print-on-demand partner and have them shipped directly to your customer.

9. Woven and knotted home décor 

Woven and knotted textile art has made a big comeback in tandem with midcentury home trends. These home décor crafts have a range of options for every skill set. Macramé is a knotted technique popularized in the Victorian era and revived in the 1970s that can be used to make belts, textile art, and hanging planters.

Searches for “hanging planter” spiked in 2020 and have had sustained interest since, peaking during each spring gardening season. Even better, if you’re looking for easy crafts to make and sell, this craft is perfect for beginners.

Other textile crafts like hanging wall art can be made with a weaving technique using a loom—these can range from a simple wooden frame or hand loom to large electrical power looms. 

Obakki works with artisans in Mexico to produce handcrafted home décor like this textile wall hanging, made to order in custom sizes.

🧶 Tips:

• A beginner weaving kit can cost as little at $30 and contains all of the supplies you need to weave a trial project.
• What other woven crafts can you make and sell? Consider placemats, bathmats, soft baskets, throw pillows, DIY rope bowls, or jewelry.
• Follow trends in home and décor when planning your collections. Etsy identified curved shapes, boho details, and wiggle patterns as décor trends for 2024.

10. Handmade beauty products

DIY beauty products can be easy crafts to make and sell—even if you’re not very creative. Dabble with testing simple products (like DIY bath bombs) in your spare time before progressing to more complicated craft ideas like nail polish or lotions. 

Once you’ve perfected your product and start to see some success with your business, consider upgrading to working with a lab or factory to produce your products. 

That’s what Melissa Butler did when her handmade lipstick line—created in her kitchen—started to take off. Now The Lip Bar products are sold in WalMart, CVS, and in the brand’s own flagship store.

🧶 Tips:

• As handmade beauty products make great gifts, consider building your collections around gift-giving occasions. Gift sets are a great way to bundle products and make shopping simpler for your customers. 
• When you’re just starting your craft business, you can save on overhead costs by using upcycled materials like Mason jars for product packaging. Local thrift stores are often good sources for these ideas.

🎨 Learn more: How To Start a Makeup Line in 5 Steps

11. Resin and polymer clay jewelry 

Both resin and polymer clay jewelry creations began trending a couple of years ago but are still popping up all over the web because of their versatility and appeal as DIY crafts. Martha Stewart magazine names resin art as one of 2024’s trending crafts.

Resin jewelry is often characterized by items like dried flowers “preserved” in a hard, clear substance, while most common polymer clay jewelry is composed of opaque geometric shapes in bold colors. 

Both require some upfront investment for materials but have a low learning curve with plenty of online tutorials. Great as a hobby, jewelry is also an easy craft to scale into a side gig, as you can produce multiple pieces in each batch.

🧶 Tips:

• Resin jewelry is slightly more complicated, since it involves mixing chemicals and can be messy. Trial and error will help you avoid bubbles in your creations.
• Polymer clay jewelry can be made by cutting freehand shapes or using mini cookie cutters, then assembling the pieces with jump rings. Invest in a rolling pin designed for this purpose for a more professional finish.
• Consider how this medium can be used beyond jewelry. Think: holiday décor like Christmas ornaments or picture frames.

🎨 Learn more: How to Start a Jewelry Making Business: The Ultimate Guide

12. Disco ball art

One of the trendiest crafts to make and sell in 2024 is disco ball art or mirrored mosaic art goods. This mirrored effect is showing up on everything from bar carts to holiday ornaments.

You can find mosaic tile mirror sheets through many craft and online retailers to create the effect on goods to sell. This trend is especially popular for home décor crafts but can be applied to almost everything. Your imagination is the limit!

Manifestie is a festival wear brand that has gone wild with the trend, bedazzling hats and even decorative helmets with a mirrored exterior.

The disco ball trend has even made its may into makeup trends, with TikTok creators like Miryssa using peel and stick mirror sheets to create this look:

How to find trending craft ideas

When you’re looking for crafts to make and sell, the best place to start is with market research. This includes following trends in the industry. The niche craft communities on TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram can be a goldmine for DIY ideas. As you engage with content, the algorithms will start showing you similar content, including viral trends within those areas.

Also consider investigating trends through the following sources:

Get creative and sell crafts online today

Arm yourself with a glue gun and your winning DIY ideas. It’s time to upgrade your skills from a side hobby to selling crafts with your own business. Before you jump into the craft world, though, remember to build a solid brand, write a business plan, and identify your target customer. 

Remember to follow trends in DIY crafts and consider seasonality. You’re ready to make and sell crafts from home via an online marketplace or your own branded ecommerce store. Or, meet your customers in person and start selling your crafts through retail stores and craft fairs.

Illustrations by Sophie Gullbrants

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Ever sit soaking in a bathtub, marveling at the products that make a bath so enjoyable? Bath bombs (otherwise known as bath fizzies) come in a rainbow of colors, scents, and shapes, providing an indulgent bath experience. And, as it turns out, they’re easy to make.

If you’re creative and looking to turn a hobby into a business, bath bombs are also inexpensive to make and sell. A bath bomb business is the perfect low-risk idea for the first-time entrepreneur. There’s a thriving market for at-home spa experiences and room for newcomers if you find your niche.

The global bath bomb market is estimated to be worth $133 billion and is expected to grow into a $189 billion industry by 2030. Bath bombs are so popular, in fact, that there are millions of Instagram photos dedicated solely to these colorful creations.

Here, you’ll learn the process of making bath bombs, sourcing ingredients, and building a profitable business selling bath bombs.

Why start a bath bomb business?

Starting a bath bomb business has a few major benefits—namely, that you can make them in your kitchen with inexpensive ingredients and no machinery.

They’re also hugely popular. Bath bombs have become a worldwide trend in the past few years, and a mainstay in people’s self-care routines. And they’re showing no sign of slowing down: based on Google Trends, queries for “bath bomb” and related terms have steadily increased over that past five years.

In addition to being a lucrative market with surging consumer demand, here are a few other reasons why you should consider making bath bombs and cashing in on this trend:

• Low start-up costs. Since you probably have most of the ingredients you need at home, starting a bath bomb business is extremely inexpensive.
• Don’t need a lot of space. Because bath bombs are small and compact, you can easily store additional inventory in your house without paying for extra storage.
• Easy to customize. We’ll introduce you to a simple bath bomb recipe below that serves as a guideline for creating your own, but you can switch out interesting or unusual ingredients to differentiate your products.

Bath bomb business licensing requirements

From a product standpoint, bath bombs fall under two broad categories: cosmetics and drugs. Navigating what your product falls under can be tricky, but it basically comes down to what claims you’re making about your bath bombs. If you make any claims about mental or physical benefits, then they’re considered a drug. Otherwise, they’re considered a cosmetic product.

Most of the bath bombs we list below are considered cosmetics and are treated like soaps or lotions by governing bodies. If you plan on marketing your bath bombs for their medicinal benefits, your products must be FDA approved for effectiveness as well as safety.

FDA approval can be a costly and time-consuming process, but there are third parties that will take care of the approval process for you for a fee. And with the global wellness industry worth $5.6 trillion, it may be good business sense to invest in this type of product.

Requirements vary from country to country, so consult your local government for more information on how to register your cosmetic bath bomb business.

FDA approval can be a costly and time-consuming process, but there are third-parties that will take care of the approval process for you for a fee. Getting audited by the FDA can have serious legal and financial implications—not the hot water you want to find yourself in.

Types of bath bombs

Now that you know this self-care trend has traction, let’s examine the common types of bath bombs that you can consider making, and the target markets you can sell to.

Classic ball bath bombs

Most people are familiar with the classic bath bomb. These products are traditionally spherical in shape and come in a variety of colors and scents. They are considered mass-market products, and have a broad demographic of customers.

Jewel bath bombs

As if the soothing oils and intergalactic waters weren’t luxurious enough, some brands like to spoil their customers even more by adding jewelry to their bath bombs. Popular brands like Charmed Aroma and Fragrant Jewels are well-known for these products, and are a great gift for loved ones. These bath bomb brands typically target women and girls aged 16 to 35.

Glitter bath bombs

For the folks who love baths that are as sparkly as they are relaxing, glitter bath bombs are the answer. The addition of glitter or even crystals into these products has caught the eye of consumers—especially the growing market of consumers who believe that crystals have healing powers. 

Once reserved for fringey New Age circles, crystal healing has become a billion-dollar mainstream business. Still, most of these products are sold to urban-dwelling women between the ages of 20 and 35, with a higher-than-average disposable income.

Shaped or themed bath bombs

Other brands have chosen to think outside the box (or ball) by designing products in a variety of shapes and sizes. 

Whether they’re intended as favors for a bridal or baby shower, a gift for a pastry lover, or fun bathtime for kiddos, there’s likely a themed product out there to meet any shopper’s niche demands. And from hearts to doughnuts to chill pills to Pokeballs, the only limit on the shape of your bath bomb is your imagination.

Aromatherapy bath bombs

These bath bombs have been formulated with therapeutic grade essential oils. Distilled from the leaves, flowers, and seeds of plants, essential oils are used in bath bombs to target various physical and emotional ailments, like stress, dry skin, and digestive issues.

With the global wellness industry worth $5.6 trillion, it may make good business sense to invest in this type of bath bomb product. These bath bomb products have the broadest appeal in terms of demographics and the most profit potential.

Since aromatherapy is a type of alternative medicine that claims to have therapeutic benefits, the use of essential oils classifies these products as a drug, not a cosmetic. In this case, if you plan on marketing your bath bombs for their medicinal benefits, your products must be FDA approved for effectiveness as well as safety. We strongly urge you to not bypass this step. 

How to make bath bombs to sell

Once you’ve settled on what type of bath bomb you want to make, it’s time to start making them.

Gather your ingredients and supplies

Bath bombs are surprisingly easy to make and require only a few essential items. While you can switch out some of these ingredients to customize your bath bombs, the basic recipe for one batch of bath bombs calls for:

• 1 cup baking soda
• ½ cup citric acid
• ½ cup Epsom salt
• ½ cup cornstarch
• ¾ tsp water
• 2 tsp essential oil (lavender, eucalyptus, rose, orange, and lemongrass are popular for the bath)
• 2 tsp carrier oil (jojoba, sweet almond, coconut, olive, or even baby oil)
• 2 tsp of shea butter for an extra moisturizing “butter” bath bomb
• A few drops of food coloring (make sure it doesn’t stain)
• Molds
• Optional: dried flowers, sugar cake decorations, sparkles, crystals, etc.

💡Tip: If you prefer unique shapes, you can opt to purchase silicone molds that are used for baking or for ice. These hold up well during the creation process, are easily cleaned, and silicone trays help you create multiple products in one batch.

How to make bath bombs: Step-by-step instructions

It’s time to mix up your ingredients. You just need to combine the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls, then slowly combine them into a single bowl.

1. Mix dry ingredients

With the exception of the citric acid, mix the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

2. Mix wet ingredients

In another mixing bowl, pour all of the liquid ingredients and blend.

3. Whisk wet and dry together

Pour the liquid mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients, and whisk to meld together. Slowly add in the citric acid and continue blending. You’ll probably notice a slight fizzing reaction because of the citric acid. No need to panic—this is normal.

4. Mold and freeze

Pack the mixture into your chosen molds very tightly. You can overfill the molds slightly and use a spoon or glass to press the mixture in as tightly as possible.

5. Unmold and store

Pack the mixture with your favorite mold and place it in your freezer for an hour. Alternatively, you can immediately loosen the bombs from their molds onto wax paper and let them dry overnight. After drying or freezing, remove the bath bombs from the molds and ta-da!

If you choose to let them air dry, give the bath bombs a day or two to set completely before using them or wrapping them up. If you don’t plan to sell them right away, store them in airtight containers like plastic or glass Tupperware. Fresher bombs fizz and bubble more when dropped in a bath, so proper storage is integral to keep your inventory at its highest level of quality.

Note: Because bath bombs are crumbly in texture, molds with intricate designs and small pieces could break off. Testing and experimentation will help you figure out the best molds to use to achieve your desired results.

Sourcing ingredients 101

Now that you’ve perfected making bath bombs, it’s time to figure out your bath bomb formulations. Luckily for you, most of the ingredients you need can be bought at your local grocery store or in bulk online.

Questions to ask when choosing ingredients and formulations

Long soaks in hot water open up our pores, which allows more ingredients to absorb into the skin. But this also means more ingredients can absorb into your bloodstream. Because of this, you’ll also want to research your ingredients and your suppliers thoroughly—especially if you’re using essential oils.

Whether you’re re-creating popular bath bomb recipes or coming up with your own unique blends, you want to be sure you’re making truthful claims on your packaging, and that the ingredients you’re using are safe. Here’s what to consider when sourcing ingredients:

• Are the ingredients skin care grade and/or approved for use in skin care in your country? For example, coconut oil may be sold in both food-grade or skin-care-grade versions.
• Is the food coloring or soap dye you’re using FDA approved? Is it stain-free?
• Do you care about natural ingredients? How will you ensure that the suppliers’ claims are legitimate?
• Do you care about being eco-conscious? Are the ingredients you’re choosing biodegradable or will they clog up pipes?
• What preservatives will you use, if any? How will this affect shelf life?
• Will your products make organic claims? Be sure that the supplier possesses the appropriate certifications.These will differ from country to country.
• What are the labeling laws in your country and the countries where you ship?
• Are any ingredients or oils known as common allergens? For example, many people develop hives or blisters when exposed to bergamot oil.

These are just a few questions to help you get started. If you’re coming up with your own formulations, the learning curve will be steeper as you navigate how certain ingredients or additives behave together—especially if you’re using essential oils for aromatherapy bombs. In this case, you can hire a third-party to help you with the research and development process.

Choosing the right supplier of essential oils

All your ingredients should be sourced with care, but it’s essential oils that you should be most discerning about. Not all oils are created with purity in mind and they’re not regulated by the FDA, so you need to be your own advocate when it comes to sourcing the good stuff. 

Oils from disreputable sources may be cut with fillers, processed with chemicals, or just filled with “fragrance oils” that don’t have any plant benefits.

Here are a few things to look for when buying essential oils:

• Dark bottles. Since light and heat can damage oil, a quality supplier will sell their essential oils in a tightly sealed dark (usually amber) glass bottle. Never buy essential oil sold in a plastic bottle.
• Plant name. It should clearly state the common and the Latin name of the plant used to make the oil as well as what plant parts were used, how it was extracted (distillation or expression), and how it was grown (a.k.a. organic, wild-crafted, traditional).
• Source. If the label doesn’t outright mention country of origin, you might see a lot number which you can then look up.

If you plan on buying essential oils in bulk from wholesale suppliers, you have to be thorough with your research. Here are a few tips to help you assess an essential oil supplier:

• Check for certification and references. If you go the organic route, check for certification specific to your country. For US suppliers, look for a “USDA certified” label.
• Don’t fall for low prices. It’s natural to want to choose the most inexpensive product when you’re buying wholesale, but if the price is much lower than competitors, this is a sign you’re probably paying for fragrance oils with no medicinal benefits. 
• Talk to aromatherapy practitioners. These professionals can suggest oils, suppliers, and even help you come up with the most effective formulation for your bath bombs.

📚 Read more: How To Find a Manufacturer or Supplier for a Product

How to start a bath bomb business

Once you’ve mastered your formulations, it’s time to start selling bath bombs online. First, you’ll have to think through how you’re going to handle areas like production, inventory management, and customer service. You want to nail down all the logistics before you launch your bath bomb business.

Build an online bath bombs store

Once that’s all sorted out, your next step is to set up your store on Shopify. It takes only a minute to sign up for a free trial, and we’ll give you some time to play around before you commit. 

You’ll want to choose a Shopify theme that puts photos first and displays your colorful bath bombs directly on the homepage. We suggest themes designed for beauty brands like Sense, Broadcast, or Prestige.

Finally, you want to make sure your product photos really pop. Bath bombs are extremely photogenic, so you’ll want to show off their colors, textures, and shapes with high-quality photography. And since the real magic of bath bombs is in their activation, also consider including videos of your products in action on your product pages.

📚 Read more:

Labeling, packaging, and shipping bath bombs

Bath bombs are delicate and have a tendency to crumble if they’re not in the right conditions, so when you’re ready to package and ship your products, make sure you have the following:

• Shrink wrap
• Product labels and/or stickers
• Tissue paper or recyclable paper crinkle filler
• Boxes for shipping

Now, there are three things to keep in mind when labeling, packaging, and shipping your bath bombs:

• Avoid moisture. Any amount of moisture will make a bath bomb do what it does best—activate. Tightly wrapping the bath bomb will lock the moisture out.
• Be transparent in your labeling. No matter where you are, legal requirements ask that you list out all of the ingredients in your bath bombs— and full transparency will go a long way with your customers.
• Pack your products tightly. Finally, you’ll want to make sure your bath bombs can’t roll around in the box and bang up against each other. If they do, they’re more likely to break and crumble once your customer unwraps them. 

📚 Read more:

Marketing for bath bomb businesses

Competing for attention in the beauty industry is challenging for emerging bath bomb businesses. The type of brand you develop will impact your upfront costs, your prices, your target audience, and your marketing strategy.

Still, there are some general tips and advice for getting more eyeballs on your bath bomb products. For one thing, bath bombs were made for social selling, so channels like Instagram and Facebook Shops and TikTok are going to be key for you. 

Marketing ideas for bath your bomb business

You can use a variety of digital marketing tactics to drive traffic to your online store and specific product pages. Try some of the methods and tips below:

• Co-market with a complementary brand. Look to partner with other brands that align with your values. Consider creating a bundle of products to sell as a self-care package via social media, leveraging each other’s customer base.
• Influencer marketing. If you choose to partner with an influencer, opt for local, lesser-known creators with smaller but engaged audiences who will be affordable to work with.
• Giveaways and contests. Giveaways aren’t just great for the winner—they’re an opportunity for you to grow your bath bomb business. With a little bit of product as a prize and some marketing effort, an online giveaway can help your business acquire new customers.
• User-generated content. While your customers are almost definitely going to document their bath bomb experience anyway, encourage them to document it and tag it with your brand or a branded hashtag. This way, their followers can easily find you and become your customers, too.
• Push holiday sales and promotions. Bath bombs make excellent gifts. Get creative with colors and scents around the holidays, and play up seasonal motifs.

📚 Read more:

Selling bath bombs IRL

You don’t need to limit yourself to selling online—many makers also successfully sell IRL, too. Selling in person allows you to access a new audience and receive live feedback of your products.

In particular, market booths and pop-up shops give you the opportunity to have a temporary retail location without committing to high storefront rents and long leases. And selling alongside other talented crafters and DIY masters can serve up some serious inspiration for future products as well.

Why sell bath bombs in person

• Get a live product testing ground. You’ll hear direct feedback and questions from your customers. Addressing their concerns live gives merchants invaluable insights on how to improve products or answer customer pain points.
• Introduce yourself to potential wholesale clients. Other retailers attend markets and fairs on the prowl for new products for their stores. This is an ideal opportunity for smaller beauty merchants to connect for wholesale deals.
• Build an email subscriber list and social following from connections you meet at the fair, market, or festival.
• Connect with fellow entrepreneurs, makers, and business owners. It’s never a bad idea to build your network.

While selling offline may sound a bit intimidating, it’s simple to handle transactions while on-the-go by using a mobile point-of-sale system like Shopify POS. It syncs with your online store so your sales, inventory, and customer data is all up-to-date without any manual work on your end.

📚 Read more: Craft Fairs and Art Shows 101: Sell Products In-Person

Scaling your bath bomb business

The greatest thing about starting your own bath bomb business is how easy it is to expand your product line after your initial success. For budding beauty entrepreneurs, consider expanding from selling bath bombs to creating skin care, tinctures, soaps, and so many other lucrative products. 

You can upsell your existing customers based on the scents they buy often, create treatment-centric care packages, and grow your business to new heights.

Now that you have a viable business idea and guidance on how to execute it, you can work toward building a long-term, sustainable income in the bath bomb industry. 

Feature illustration by Alice Mollon
Step by step illustrations by Brenda Wisniowski

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

With thousands of apps in the Shopify App Store, you have a lot of options when it comes to extending the functionality of your online retail.

Whether you want to add customer reviews, improve email marketing, publish your products to Facebook, or get in-depth analytics, there’s definitely an app for that.

But with so much to choose from, we thought it would be a good idea to highlight 21 of the best free Shopify apps (either completely free or that offer a useful free plan) that retailers and marketers can add to their store. 

21 best Shopify apps for your ecommerce store

If you’re just getting started with a new store or looking to enhance your existing site, then this list is for you.

1. Offset
2. Shopify Email
3. ReConvert Upsell and Cross Sell
4. BetterReplay
5. ESC ‑ Size Charts & Size Guide
6. Jebbit
7. PayWhirl
8. Tip Quik
9. Promo.com
10. Easyship
11. Pre-Order Alpha
12. Change Commerce
13. Shopify Local Delivery
14. Easy Digital Products
15. TikTok
16. Stocky
17. Printful
18. Gameball
19. Secommapp
20. PixPix
21. Smart SEO

Offset

If you want to neutralize your shipping emissions that contribute to climate change, use Offset. Offset is a Shopify app that calculates the total emissions generated by your shipped orders.

That number becomes your Offset cost. The cost is typically low—a few cents per order—and your payment goes toward forest protection initiatives. Offset offers a dashboard where you can see your environmental impact, such as how many trees you’ve protected, and share those statistics with your customers. 

 Shopify Email

If you want to promote your business with email, Shopify Email is a great marketing app for building an email list and managing your campaigns. 

With Shopify Email, you can send branded emails to subscribers from your Shopify admin dashboard in just a few clicks. The app has a variety of pre-made templates that pull your logo, product images, descriptions, and more from your store. You can also customize the text and buttons in minutes. 

Simply import your contact lists into Shopify. Create and send your campaigns, then track results like opens, clicks, add to carts, and purchases to further optimize your customer acquisition and retention campaigns. You get 10,000 emails for free each month then pay only $1 for every 1,000 emails you send after that. 

ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell

Upselling and cross-selling to your customers is a great way to increase cart size and average order value. With ReConvert, you can build a custom thank you page (aka order confirmation page) that turns new customers into repeat ones.

It allows you to customize your landing page with a drag-and-drop website builder and access features such as countdown timers, personalized recommendations, post-purchase surveys, and reorder buttons that help you automatically re-engage customers who just bought in your store. 

BetterReplay

Ever wonder why shoppers don’t convert on your website? BetterReplay provides live recordings of shoppers’ sessions so you can see how people interact with your Shopify store and what items they look at.

With this information, you can see and fix where shoppers get stuck and evaluate new ideas to improve conversions and lower abandoned carts in your store. 

The best part? The app is 100% free and records up to 5,000 sessions per month. No coding required.  

ESC ‑ Size Charts & Size Guide

A must-have for any fashion brand is an easy-to-read size chart. Size guides empower customers to confidently make purchase decisions, helping to recover sales that may have otherwise been lost.

They also help reduce the number of returns and refunds, since sizing issues are less likely to occur when customers know exactly which size fits their needs.

ESC’s size chart app helps merchants create size guides to match the look and feel of their store, and easily paste them into any page on their website.The app has a free plan that allows merchants to create up to three charts and a paid plan is available for merchants who need more.

Jebbit: Custom Product Quizzes

Jebbit helps you create beautiful quizzes that customers love to engage with. These match quizzes, also known as shoppable quizzes, can help people find the best fit products in your store to move them along the customer journey, increasing conversions and sales. You can build product match quizzes, personality quizzes, simple surveys, lead gen forms, and more. 

Jebbit’s visual builder lets you quickly map out and build these experiences. With no-code design elements and omnichannel distribution, you can meet customers where they shop and provide personalized product recommendations that drive sales for your Shopify store.

PayWhirl Recurring Payments

PayWhirl makes it easy to create, manage, and sell subscriptions through Shopify’s native checkout. Customers can set up their own accounts, see their billing history, and make changes to their payment plans any time.

They can also add new payment methods and information associated with their subscription, all without contacting your support team. 

Tip Quik | Tip Pop-up in Cart

Want to make both your employees and customers happy? Tip Quik gives customers the option to add a tip for workers before checkout. You can design a custom pop-up using Tip Quik, then install the snippet on your checkout page in minutes.

Your employees will be happier with more cash in their pocket, and your customers will have the chance to express their gratitude—win-win for everyone. 

Promo.com

Promo.com is a free Shopify app that helps you create product videos that drive sales for your store. Video creation requires little to no effort on your part. You just have to choose the type of video you need and product you want to promote. Then, Promo.com will pull all existing images and video on your website to create a promotional video for your business. 

Easyship

Easyship is an all-in-one shipping app that helps you reach customers around the world with lower shipping costs and higher conversion rates. Over 100,000 retailers use Easyship to save time and money for their delivery services.

When you use Easyship, you get access to pre-negotiated shipping solutions from couriers around the world through a single account. It also provides an intuitive dashboard where you can manage orders, including printing shipping labels, storing product dimensions, accessing invoices and receipts, generating return orders, and more.

Pre-Order Alpha

Pre-Order Alpha provides a fast and flexible way to sell pre-order, out-of-stock, and coming-soon products in your store. Using Pre-Order Alpha, you can highlight pre-order products with customized ribbons, add Pre-Order Now buttons to your product page, and automatically tag pre-order items in your admin, so you can stay organized and keep track of everything. 

Setup takes five minutes, and there’s an excellent technical support team to help you out along the way. 

Change Commerce

Change Commerce is a donation app that lets customers give to a cause, directly from your store. It supports over 1.5 million unique nonprofits. You can place your donation request widget on a product page, a shopping cart, or at checkout.

If a customer decides to donate, Change Commerce manages the entire donation process, giving you the opportunity to create a positive impact with little effort. 

Shopify Local Delivery

Consumer trends show that more people bought online and had it delivered locally during the first three months of the pandemic than ever before. Shopify Local Delivery is a free app that helps any brick-and-mortar business capitalize on this new behavior. 

You can choose your delivery area and price in your Shopify admin. Customers in your chosen area can choose local delivery during checkout. Shopify Local Delivery helps you manage the process by providing optimized routes, automated push notifications, and order status updates.

All delivery stops show up in a list on the app. After a delivery is completed, the upcoming stops get moved to the top of the list. 

Easy Digital Products

Easy Digital Products is a great free Shopify app to increase sales for infopreneurs, allowing you to sell digital products easily in your store. You can attach any files to your products or variants, upload them fast, and track all orders in the app. Simply customize the interface, buttons and text with one click. 

If you’re an Easy Digital Products user, you can import your own license keys or have the app generate unique ones for each order. 

TikTok

You’ve likely heard of TikTok, but did you know consumers spent $3.8 billion in the app in 2023? If you want in on the action, use the TikTok Shopify app.

With it, you can create video ads, track results, and manage all your orders inside Shopify. It’s a great way to reach a younger target audience and drive sales on TikTok.

Stocky

Smart inventory management is a big advantage to any brick-and-mortar or ecommerce business. If you sell out of in-demand products, it can lower sales—and if you keep too much inventory, you can drain your resources. 

Need a simple solution? Use Stocky by Shopify to optimize your inventory decisions. With one tool to manage and track your products, you’ll spend less time worrying about what to buy and more time increasing your profits with the best product mix for your store.

Printful

Printful is one of the best print-on-demand dropshipping apps for store owners selling print and embroidered goods like t-shirts and pillows. When a customer buys a product in your Shopify store, Printful automatically fulfills and ships it to them.

The company ships over one million items per month and handles all shipping, inventory, and production, so you can focus on building your business.

Gameball: Loyalty & Rewards

Gameball is a customer retention platform that helps you manage loyalty programs to increase referrals and sales. Customers can complete challenges, earn points, and level up through different tiers to earn rewards and discount codes. 

Gameball also lets you trigger pop-ups to encourage customers throughout their shopping experience to promote your program, interact with people, and create more loyal customers. The app offers a free forever version, with paid plans starting at $29 per month.

UpPromote Affiliate Marketing

If you want to run an affiliate marketing program for your store, you can create, manage, and track affiliates with UpPromote. When you install this free Shopify app, you get access to the UpPromote Affiliate Marketplace and find new affiliate marketers for your store. You can chat directly with influencers from the app, generate affiliate links, and track clicks and sales in one place. 

PixPix Image Editor

PixPix is an easy-to-use image editor with a ton of great features. The interface is lightweight and user friendly, so you can crop, resize, and adjust color and lighting issues quickly.

It also provides automatic alt text and optimized file names for search engine optimization. You can integrate PixPix directly into your product pages, giving you the ability to edit photos and get your products live and selling faster. 

Smart SEO

Ecommerce SEO is a challenge for many business owners. It can take time, resources, and money to build a website and rank it high in search engines. But with Smart SEO, you can automate SEO optimization and drive more traffic to your store. 

This free Shopify app automatically generates meta tags and alt tags, fixes broken links, and manages your sitemap to keep your pages Google-friendly. It also provides structured data to Google to boost your search results. All you have to do is choose a template and let Smart SEO do the rest. 

Visit the Shopify App Store for more apps

Shopify apps can unlock new functionalities that will optimize your site for a better customer experience and boost sales.

While the apps above are some of the best free apps available in the Shopify App Store, there are cart abandonment, marketing automation, Facebook Messenger, sales channel apps for Amazon, Etsy, and plenty more to leverage for your unique business and keep ecommerce website costs low. It all comes down to finding the best app and pricing that suits your needs.

Visit the Shopify App Store to browse even more apps by use case, and feel free to share your favorites in the comments. Happy selling!

Illustration by Alice Mollon

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

It’s impossible to make sales through your online store if nobody is visiting it.

The problem: Entrepreneurs fall into the trap of thinking any website visitor is a good one. In reality, sending low-quality traffic—people with no interest in what you sell—dampens conversion rates.

So, how do you attract customers to your online store—those who will actually buy? This guide shares 17 strategies that work.

1. Optimize your social media bios

Social media is a powerful tool to drive traffic to your online store. The only problem? Most social media platforms don’t like when brands divert people off the platform.

Instagram, for example, only allows one link in your profile bio. There’s no way to divert people to a specific page on your ecommerce website, making it difficult to execute social campaigns that increase web traffic.

Work around this issue using Linkpop to create a landing page that diverts people to your most-viewed pages, such as:

• Product pages of bestselling items
• Popular item category pages
• Your brand story
• Lead magnet landing pages
• Other social media profiles

Pink House is one ecommerce retailer using this strategy. It uses Linkpop to explain the brand’s USP and divert people toward its newsletter sign-up page, other social media channels, and retail locations. Its bestselling product, the Face Fix Serum, claims the most real estate on the page—a tactic to drive social media users toward its online store.

2. Partner with creators and influencers

Run an influencer marketing campaign that leverages a popular social media user’s existing audience to drive website traffic. Research shows that 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations (compared to just 38% who trust branded social media content).

The key is to find creators and influencers whose target audience overlaps your own. Find them on TikTok Creator Marketplace or Instagram search, and collaborate with them through:

• Sending free gifts
• Paid sponsored content
• Inviting them to be an affiliate

Richard Clews, founder of Pants & Socks, is one small-business owner using this approach to increase brand awareness. He’s partnered with several famous athletes, including Jason Roy, the famous England and Sussex cricketer, and world class boxer Nick Campbell.

“This is a great way for us to increase our reach, because although we are a specialized niche, our target audience is quite large—men 18+,” Richard says. “Sports has been a perfect way for us to reach different age groups in our target audience.

“With some of our partnered athletes, we have run a really cool campaign where we change the location of our logo on their gear or uniform, announce it on social media, and offer a 15% to 20% discount code to anyone who can identify the location in whatever game, match, or tournament they may be participating in.”

These influencer marketing campaigns generally net a conversion rate between 2.4% and 3.2%—much better than the 1.4% an average ecommerce store sees. But, Richard adds, “The couple of times we have tried this campaign, we have seen week-long increases as high as 7% to 8% conversion rate.”

Read more:

3. Run flash sales and promotions

Research shows that 37% of shoppers often look for coupons before making a purchase online. Use them as a hook to stand out from social media noise and give people an incentive to visit your online store. That could be:

• Percentage discounts
• Limited time sales, such as “30% off for the next 24 hours”
• Free shipping thresholds, such as “spend $50 for free next-day shipping”
• Product bundles, which combine two or more products at a lower price than buying each one individually

Create the coupon using discount apps like Daily Deals, MyBulk, or Wheelio.

Stephen Light, co-owner and CEO of mattress company Nolah, advises to then promote them in Facebook Groups: “Facebook is the home to thousands of private communities, each with niched members. It would be strategic to join a few of these groups dedicated to ecommerce customers in search of deals.

“You can super-charge your website traffic and sales by announcing your promotions within these communities,” Stephen says. “Since most of the members are actively seeking discounts on items, this technique is guaranteed to invite conversion-ready leads to your online store.”

4. Write optimized blog content

Did you know that 48% of shoppers start their shopping journey on search engines like Google? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a content marketing strategy that helps your ecommerce store appear in their search engine results page.

Write blog content that targets keywords your target audience is searching for. If you’re selling Apple Watch straps through your online store, for example, that could be “best apple watch straps for men” or “are apple watches waterproof.”

Follow SEO best practices to get your blog content to rank in search engines. That includes:

• Embedding the keyword in meta tags, alt text, and headings
• Building internal links that direct visitors to similar pages on your own website
• Using a short, clear, easy-to-read URL structure
• Actively distributing the blog post on social media channels
• Build backlinks to your website from external websites

Illuminate Labs, for example, publishes health-related blog posts on its website. President Calloway Cook says, “In July of 2021 we started content marketing as the core strategy to drive traffic to our Shopify store. We began to publish several well-researched articles per week to our company blog, Illuminate Health.

“That month, our site achieved 6,300 organic page views. One year later, in July of 2022, our site achieved 162,000 organic page views.”

5. Optimize your product descriptions

Product pages are existing pieces of content you can optimize to drive organic traffic. Write the product description with your target customer in mind, using the phrases they say, pulling on pain points they struggle with, and referencing keywords they’re searching for.

Take it from Kath Vaughn, owner of Milk Tooth, who says, “Organic search traffic is my number one generator of sales. My website ranks against other toy stores selling the same products as Milk Tooth because I don’t just copy the stock standard product descriptions that everyone else does.

“I take the time—and it does take time, don’t get me wrong—to write my own and, as a mother myself, try to provide information about the toy that would be helpful and appealing to a parent. I also try to upload unique product photos to sit alongside stock photos, although this is even more time consuming.”

Kath adds, “For the 12 months to August 20, 2022, organic Google traffic brought in just over 45% of total orders for Milk Tooth. I didn’t run a single Google ad during this period of time.”

6. Start a free quiz

People like learning about themselves. Personalize your content at scale using a free quiz. Not only do people have a reason to visit your online store, but you collect their email address for future retargeting. It’s a great way to turn first-time visitors into paying customers.

Take Wicked Edge, for example. The knife sharpening brand uses Octane AI to quiz people on which product they need. People are asked to select why they’re sharpening their knives, their use case, and knife thickness. They’re prompted to enter their email address in exchange for their quiz results.

Quiz takers see a list of personalized product recommendations after the final step, with a handy Add to Cart” button that instantly populates their online shopping cart with the recommended products.

Wicked Edge’s quiz does a great job of attracting customers to its online store—and most importantly, converting them. This simple widget boasts a 3.6% conversion rate (compared to the site-wide average of 1.5%). It also has a 67% higher average order value than visitors viewing standard website content.

But remember: while not all quiz takers will convert, you’ve already collected data to personalize future communication. The more specific you are with your quiz, the greater your chances at producing marketing campaigns that drive them back to your online store.

7. Create YouTube videos around trending topics

YouTube is the second-most-visited website in the world, with users streaming 694 hours of video every minute.

Take advantage of YouTube’s incredible potential by creating videos around trending topics. Do market research and uncover the topics your audience is interested in. Choose an engaging format to present your content—such as a “how to” guide or video tutorial—and upload it to your business’s YouTube channel.

YouTube is a search engine and social media hybrid. Increase the odds of your target market finding your videos by implementing the following YouTube SEO best practices:

• Upload a custom thumbnail that encourages users to click your video
• Add video tags to show YouTube which terms are relevant to your content
• Use callout boxes, playlists, and end screens to increase video watch time
• Write video descriptions that include keywords someone interested in your video would search
• Enable the Shopify integration to divert viewers toward products on your online store

Best Price Nutrition is one online store using this strategy to attract customers. Ecommerce manager John Frigo says, “We’re a vitamin and sports supplement store, so we often make videos announcing new brands, new products coming out, new flavors of existing products, as well as doing reviews of products.

“These videos tend to rank high in Google quickly. Everyone who lands on these videos is typically a very targeted customer.”

John adds its video marketing strategy drives results for the business: “We typically make at least two to three videos per week. Sometimes we do videos daily, and typically it drives $200 to $500 in sales per day.”

Read more:

8. Land press coverage

One way to get free online advertising is by landing press coverage on industry news sites.

Journalists are always looking for experts to contribute to their own content. Find requests from journalists looking for sources through a platform like Help a Reporter Out, Help a B2B Writer, or Terkel. Respond to requests with relevant stories featuring your brand.

Alternatively, get free publicity by pitching journalists directly. Shortlist the publications your target audience reads, and find journalists writing for the website. Email the journalist for a potential feature.

If you’ve got something interesting to say, such as a new product line or influencer collaboration, and the topic matches the site you’re writing for, there’s a good chance a journalist will cover it.

9. Build an email newsletter

The inbox is a direct line to your customers. Unlike social media channels, which have the power to tank organic reach instantly, email marketing guarantees a way to contact your potential customers.

But to email prospective customers, you first need them to opt into your mailing list. Do this by giving something away for free. Also known as lead magnets, place the following pieces of content behind an email opt-in form to grow your subscriber base:

• A free quiz
• A coupon code
• A checklist or downloadable PDF

Pearly Drinks combines this traffic-building technique with content marketing. The brand’s strategy is to create high-quality blog posts on the site, convert those visitors into blog readers, then convert them into customers. 

Filip is testing a handful of different pop-up boxes to maximize conversion rates—this one currently stands at 2%. But once a subscriber is on the list, Filip says, “We have a three-step email flow telling them about the contest, our brand, and our products with the goal of conversion.

“So far we are seeing very strong opt-in results for the popup on traffic that we normally get nothing out of. With our large network of articles, we’re able to get hundreds of signups every day, which we’ll turn into customers over time as we send them more educational content.”

Read more:

10. Use SMS campaigns

People have smartphones on them almost all of the time—86% of whom have SMS notifications enabled. If you have explicit permission to email your prospective customers, SMS is a superb marketing tool to drive customers toward your online store.

Start by collecting mobile phone numbers through touchpoints you already have with consumers. Add a phone number option to checkout forms, use pop-up boxes on popular pages of your online store, and ask email subscribers to opt into SMS marketing too.

Run SMS marketing campaigns that divert these subscribers back to your own website. That could be:

• Flash sales and promotions
• Subscriber-exclusive offers
• Text-to-win competitions
• New product or restock alerts
• Loyalty program invites

Not only is SMS a great way to drive website traffic, but it can provide excellent customer service to online shoppers still on the fence. Initiate quick text conversation that asks subscribers to share their biggest sales objection. Have your customer support team ease their pre-purchase anxiety to improve your website conversion rate.

11. List your store on free advertising sites

Advertising increases the odds of reaching your target customer. But you don’t need to invest cash into advertising to get started. Attract your target market by listing your online store on free advertising sites like:

Free advertising doesn’t drain an already-limited small business of its resources. Invest some time into creating a profile, uploading your product listings, and writing a description that encourages them to buy through your online website (instead of the free advertising site). You’ll reach the millions of people who search online marketplaces to discover new products.

12. Run Google Ads campaigns

We already know that 49% of people start their shopping journey on a search engine. Run Google Ads to reach them. They’re people already looking for products you sell, making them a fantastic source of potential customers.

Experiment with different types of Google Ads, including:

• Search ads, which appear in Google search results either as text-based or Shopping ads
• Display ads, which appear on sites in the Google Display Network
• Video ads, which appear on the Google-owned YouTube platform

Catherine Wilson, owner of Essential Derma, says, “We highly recommend boosting how well-known your brand is within your target market, even if this costs a large percentage of your budget.

“Once you become a genuine brand in your space, a Google Ads paid brand search campaign will bring spectacular results and help Google’s machine-learning algorithm find more customers similar to your converted customers. We average a 78¢ cost per conversion and a 31% conversion rate with our brand search campaigns.”

Read more:

13. Host a referral marketing program

It’s getting more expensive to acquire new customers. Take the pressure off and let happy customers do your marketing for you. They know what you offer, the type of person most likely to buy it, and what someone needs to hear before hitting Purchase, making them the perfect salespeople for your online store.

Build a referral marketing program using apps like Referral Candy, Yotpo, or Bloop. Reward your customer base with gift cards, store credit, or commission in exchange for every new customer they refer.

The best part about this marketing strategy is that you only pay for results. Instead of risking $1,000 in a new influencer program you’re unsure will pay off, you only pay for rewards once a new customer purchases.

14. List your business on review aggregator sites

Some 93% of consumers actively look for reviews before trusting a new business with its credit card information. Join the more than 500,000 businesses listed on review aggregator sites like TrustPilot to reach customers actively looking for products you offer.

Platforms like Google Business, Trustpilot, and Yelp exist to roundup the best businesses for a specific industry or use case. If your online store sells home furniture, for example, collecting customer reviews would influence your position on Trustpilot’s roundup of home furniture brands.

New Era Factory Outlet has a brick-and-mortar store that runs parallel to its online store. Its marketing manager, Flynn Zaiger, says, “We make sure to ask for reviews on local review sites, like Yelp.

“This might sound counter-intuitive: why would local review sites for walk-in business increase Shopify website traffic? We’ve found that people looking for stores near them are interested in buying online, saving themselves a trip to the store once they’ve found that you have a Shopify store that makes things easy.”

Flynn adds, “Referral traffic from local sites like Yelp are often some of our best-engaged traffic on the internet. It typically outperforms organic search, and other more traditionally thought of as high-engagement sources of traffic. According to our analytics, the average site duration and pages per session are higher for Google than they are for organic search (Google, Bing, and Yahoo.)”

15. Go local

Experiential retail is a way to provide experiences to shoppers in-person. Almost a third of customers said they’re likely to engage with branded experiences, hence why 40% of brands plan to make it a top priority this year.

You don’t need a permanent brick-and-mortar store to take advantage of physical retail, though. Drive in-person shoppers toward your website by attending local events such as:

• Craft fairs
• Trade shows
• Local markets
• Pop-up shops
• Chamber of Commerce events

Hand out your business cards at each event or have people scan a QR code from your signage—ideally stamped with an incentive, such as “Get 10% off with this card at yourwebsite.com.” That way, you don’t need to carry or sell inventory in-person.

You can use physical retail as a way to get people into the top of your marketing funnel, and process all sales through your online store.

Read more:

16. Host a giveaway

Organic social media can sometimes feel like shouting into a void. The secret to attracting attention is to share something people want to engage with.

Competitions are a prime example. Instagram giveaways see 3.5 times more likes and 64 times more comments than standard posts because users are in with a chance of winning something for free.

Bundle your bestselling products and give them away to one lucky winner. To enter, have them do some form of marketing for your brand. That might be:

• Liking the post
• Following your business’s social media account
• Sharing the post to their own Stories
• Tagging a friend in the comments
• Subscribing to your email or SMS list

Granted, it might sound counterintuitive since people enter the giveaway to win something for free. But if you have email subscription mandatory for anyone who enters, you have potential customers’ details further retargeting once the competition ends.

17. Run retargeting campaigns

Once you implement these tactics to attract customers to your online store, don’t fall at the final hurdle. Do one last push to convince previous website visitors to return (and purchase) with retargeting campaigns.

Retarget website visitors who have:

Let’s put that in practice and say you’ve had 200 website visitors in the past 14 days, but only 20 have made a purchase. Upload your customer list to Facebook and create a Custom Audience to retarget them through the platform. Use the dynamic ads feature to promote the item they previously viewed on your online store.

Studies show three out of five online users notice ads showcasing products they’ve previously reviewed. They’re also 43% more likely to convert, which could result in extra paying customers from the same initial website visitor base.

I focused on making creative ads and hired a creative to help me come up with different angles for my marketing such as featuring my customer’s product reviews. Data to support the fact that it works: my Facebook ads have an average conversion rate of 5.4%, and I was able to earn 15% better traffic on my Shopify store, with 18,682 site visits.

Read more:

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Under certain circumstances, it’s possible to conduct business as a sole proprietor without registering your business. However, choosing to incorporate and register your business inspires more confidence in your customers and offers protections that a sole proprietorship doesn’t.

If you’re still in the planning stage with your business checkout our how to start a business guide to help you get off the ground.

If you’re ready to go, read on to learn how to register a business with state and local agencies.

How to register your business

1. Pick your business name
2. Choose a business structure to register
3. Register for an employer identification number (EIN)
4. Check requirements for each business location
5. Register for taxes
6. File for any trademarks

Whether you’re registering your business as a sole proprietorship or a different business structure, registering your new business is a fairly straightforward process. Nevertheless, it’s important to register your business properly in order to avoid complications down the road.

1. Pick your business name

It probably goes without saying that your online store needs a name, and choosing a legal name for your business that’s both available and on brand can be challenging. When brainstorming your business name, it’s best to cast a wide net at first, then hone in on your top ideas. (Need some help coming up with ideas? Consult Shopify’s business name generator).

Once you’ve nailed down a few favorites, you’ll need to check if they’re available. Conduct a search in your local jurisdiction’s business database to see if any other businesses have registered under a similar name.

Other important considerations when choosing your business name include:

• Social media. Are relevant social media handles available, or is someone else already using your chosen name?
• Domain name. Conduct a quick domain name search to see if your branded URL is available.

2. Choose a business structure to register

Before you can register your business, you need to choosing your business structure and incorporate as such. Popular business structures include limited liability company (LLC), corporation (including C corp and S corp), general partnership, and limited liability partnership (LLP).

For more on the most common business structures, read our guide, The 4 Most Popular Types of Businesses and How To Choose One.

Each business structure requires a different process for registration. Sole proprietors, for example, don’t need to do anything. Corporations, on the other hand, need to file articles of incorporation or similar corporate documents. Opting for an LLC? See our state specific guides for California LLC, Texas LLC, and Florida LLC.

3. Register for an employer identification number (EIN)

Regardless of business structure, an employer identification number (also known as a tax ID number) is critical. It protects your Social Security number (SSN) and establishes your business as a separate legal entity. This means your business can build credit and hire employees.

You can apply for an EIN on the IRS website.

4. Check requirements for each business location

Just as each business structure has its own registration process and requirements, each location has its own parameters as well. It’s important to check with federal, state, and local government agencies to find out what you need to legally register your business.

Additional steps may include permitting requirements, licenses, articles of incorporation, forms, and fees, among other things.

5. Register for taxes

In most places, businesses have to pay sales tax and potentially other applicable taxes or fees. Because sales tax varies by state, you’ll need to register in each state where you plan to sell.

Some states don’t collect sales tax, which means store owners do not have to register a business for tax purposes. These states include:

• Alaska
• Delaware
• Montana
• New Hampshire
• Oregon

For the remaining states, check with them directly to find out what the process entails.

Get started: Shopify uses default tax settings for your online store, but you can customize your sales tax settings in your admin dashboard.

Learn more: Basics of Small Business Accounting: 12 Steps to Get Your Company on Track

6. File for any trademarks

If you’re launching a brand or product with a unique name, logo, feature, or slogan, you may qualify for trademark protection. A trademark is “anything that’s considered a source identifier,” helping consumers recognize your brand or products.

While you can establish a trademark “unofficially” by doing business and establishing a reputation, the safer approach is to register with the corresponding trademark office, either on your own or with the help of a trademark attorney. This ensures that your trademark is protected from any other businesses that might seek to use your idea for their own benefit. At minimum, be sure to trademark your business name with both the state and federal government.

Tips for registering your business

As you proceed through the process to register a business, here a few things to keep in mind.

Get organized

Before you start filling out any application, create a list of what you need. This will include things like your basic personal and business information, EIN, forms, licenses, permits, fees, etc. Have this information handy so you can fly through the application process.

Hire help

For more complex business registration (e.g., for heavily regulated industries), you may want to enlist the help of an expert. Qualified tax professionals and business attorneys can guide you through the process, answering questions along the way and even taking care of some of the steps for you. Shopify Partners offers a directory of tax professionals who can provide assistance with US state sales tax and liability.

Stay up to date

It’s always best to check directly with official location- and industry-specific sources for the latest information regarding business registration requirements. Make it a habit to check on your licenses, permits, and registrations each year—for accountability and to help you remember, you might do it at tax time. Set up calendar reminders for any expirations or renewals as well.

Kickstart your business with Shopify

Now that you know how to register a business, you can begin thinking about how to run it. Shopify offers tools and integrations that make it easy to manage every aspect of your business. With thousands of third-party apps and integrations to choose from, you can build a virtual business command center.

DISCLAIMER: These guides are for informational purposes only and do not constitute professional legal or tax advice. Please consult independent legal advice and your own tax adviser for information specific to your country and circumstances. Shopify is not liable to you in any way for your use or reliance on these guides.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

This post is for information only. You are responsible for reviewing and using this information appropriately. This content doesn’t contain and isn’t meant to provide legal, tax, or business advice.*

There’s an abundance of information out there about how to start a business. Sometimes, all you need is a simple, straightforward step-by-step guide to take you from square one directly to your goal. That’s what we’ll do in this post: show you the six steps it takes to create an LLC.

How to start an LLC in 7 steps in 2024

1. Choose a name for your LLC
2. Choose a registered agent
3. Obtain your EIN and check tax requirements
4. Prepare an LLC operating agreement
5. Open a bank account for your LLC
6. File the articles of organization
7. Create and launch a website for your LLC

1. Choose a name for your LLC

The name of your LLC is the first contact many have with your brand, and you want it to make a good initial impression.

Naming your online store may take some time—the perfect name doesn’t come to everyone overnight. Sometimes it requires lots of brainstorming and even collaboration. There are also lots of free tools, like Shopify’s business name generator, to get your creativity flowing.

Once you’ve landed on a name, check to ensure someone else hasn’t claimed it first. Many states have business directories you can search. You’ll also want to look outside your state, especially if you plan to sell to a wide audience. Scan Google, social media, and available domain names to see what’s out there.

2. Choose a registered agent

The registered agent (also called resident agent or statutory agent in some states) is responsible for receiving legal paperwork for your business. You can act as your own registered agent in some states, or you can hire an entity to act as your registered agent for you.

What’s important is that they reside in the state you are registering your business in, and are available to receive documents on your behalf.

3. Obtain your EIN and check tax requirements

Your federal employer identification number (EIN) separates your personal identity from your business identity. It acts like your business’s social security number (SSN), so to speak. In other words, it’s a unique numerical combination the government uses to identify your LLC.

To get an EIN, go to the IRS website and fill out an application via online form. The process is free, takes under 15 minutes, and is completely online. You’ll get your EIN immediately upon completion.

You also need to inform yourself of any tax obligations. This includes income tax, sales tax, use tax, value-added tax (VAT), and other potential tariffs.

4. Prepare an LLC operating agreement

An LLC operating agreement is a written contract where members of an LLC can define specific responsibilities, compensation, equity, and more. Members of an LLC can customize various terms to be more specific to the needs of the business.

Some states require this document when filing your LLC. And even though it’s not mandated in every state, it can be helpful—particularly for multi-member LLCs. An operating agreement provides a clear approach to how profits and losses are handled, along with the rights of each member.

You can write the operating agreement yourselves or, better yet, start with a template or hire a registered agent service or attorney to do it for you.

5. Open a bank account for your LLC

It’s easier to keep personal and business finances separate. Separating your finances also provides more protection to your personal assets. You’ll need your business information, including your EIN, to open a business bank account.

Read more: How To Choose the Right Business Bank Account

6. File articles of organization

Articles of organization set out legal rights, capabilities, fiduciary duties, potential liabilities, and other official aspects of the relationship between each member of an LLC. The legal documents are filed with the state, and help create a public record of your business information and existence.

Depending on the location and nature of your business, you may have to file additional paperwork as part of your articles of organization. Additional LLC formation documents could include:

• Permits and business licenses, especially for food-based businesses
• Workers’ compensation if you’re hiring employees
• Insurance policies required to operate legally
• Your LLC operating agreement

7. Create and launch a website for your LLC

When you’re ready to share your new business with the world, you can launch and promote your online store. We’ve created an online store launch checklist to help you remember everything from marketing to inventory to fulfillment. Drive traffic to your site to make your first sale, and invest in small business loans to grow your business.

Register to do business in other states (if relevant)

Once you have your EIN and business name, it’s time to officially register everything. Registering your business is a fairly straightforward process, though there may be extra steps required for merchants operating in certain industries, like food and beverage or CBD. You may also need to get a business license, depending on your niche and location.

Why form an LLC: pros and cons

When it comes to sole proprietorships versus LLCs, sole proprietorships have an advantage of simpler tax filing over other business structures—owners pass business taxes through as part of their personal tax return, and income is only taxed once.

The downside of a sole proprietorship is that since the business and its owner are legally considered the same entity, owners are 100% responsible for any debts or lawsuits incurred by the business, potentially putting personal assets at risk.

Meanwhile, when comparing LLCs to corporations, both offer protections of owners’ personal assets. Corporations can offer public stock options as well as enjoy taxation flexibility. However, corporations are typically more complex to form and operate, as they have additional paperwork, a board of directors, and shareholder meetings.

Pros of starting an LLC

Some advantages of incorporating as an LLC include:

• Protection. Establishing an LLC creates a legal separation between business and owner, similar to a corporation—offering business owners a layer of personal asset protection.
• Convenience. It’s a relatively simple and inexpensive process to become an LLC.
• Validation. Starting an LLC can impact you as an entrepreneur, making it a great first step to making your ecommerce venture official. It also legitimizes your brand in the eyes of potential customers.
• Capital. Legitimizing your business can also boost your ability to secure outside funding, such as loans or investors—and even business partners down the line.
• Taxes. LLCs can choose how they want to be taxed. No other entity type comes with this choice. And—unless you elect to be taxed as a C corporation—your LLC is taxed as a pass-through entity, bypassing the federal corporate tax rate of 21%. So instead of paying corporate taxes and personal income tax, LLC members take profit shares and pay personal income tax on the earnings.

Cons of starting an LLC

On the other hand, there are also disadvantages to LLCs:

• Startup costs. Forming an LLC usually comes with a small incorporation fee. You might also have the expense of hiring a tax professional to handle the formation paperwork.
• Protection exceptions. While LLC members’ personal assets are considered to be separate from the business, and thereby protected from any litigation involving the business, a judge may rule otherwise. It’s important to separate personal and business finances and operations, as well as avoid committing fraud.
• Taxes. LLC owners are subject to self-employment taxes in addition to income tax. The federal self-employment tax rate for 2023 was 15.3%.
• Paperwork. Being part of a member-managed LLC partnership adds an extra layer of paperwork to your taxes. You’ll need to file an IRS K-1 form, and each member must file a Schedule K-1 (Form 1065).
• Dissolution and reformation. If you or a member moves states, you might be required to dissolve and reform your LLC. This requires paperwork and potential fees.

Different types of LLCs

Single-member LLC/sole proprietorship

Single-member LLCs and sole proprietorships have one owner. While single-member LLCs can hire employees, sole proprietors don’t have that option. Owners can avoid double taxation by passing business taxes through as part of their personal tax return. Sole proprietorships don’t offer any personal liability protection.

General partnership

A general partnership is an informal business arrangement where two or more people agree to own and operate the LLC equally. This means they evenly divide all profits and losses. Each partner is legally considered the same entity as the business, meaning there’s no personal liability protection in a general partnership—but partners can pass business through on their personal tax return.

Family limited partnership

Family limited partnerships, or FLPs, are formed by family members who combine resources to establish and operate a business. FLPs typically have two different types of owners—general partners and limited partners.

General partners are responsible for operation, whereas limited partners don’t have any management responsibility, but can still buy into the business to get income. These are a popular choice for families who want to pass down generational wealth.

Series LLC

A series LLC is a type of business structure that allows an owner to separate business assets and operations into different subsets, called series.

A series LLC allows each subset to function as a regular LLC while also protecting the individual series from any liabilities that another one might incur.

Not all states allow series LLCs, so be sure to check with your local legislature.

L3C company

An L3C, or low-profit limited liability company, is a hybrid structure that combines elements of an LLC and a nonprofit business. While L3Cs are allowed to generate a profit, this income must be used to benefit a charitable cause. Not all states recognize this business structure.

Member-managed LLC or manager-managed LLC

Member-managed and manager-managed LLCs, unsurprisingly, refer to how an LLC is managed. A member-managed LLC is when all owners, also called members, share responsibility for day-to-day operations. Member-managed LLCs are common with small to midsize businesses.

Manager-managed LLC structures are more common for larger-sized businesses, or with owners who want a less active management role. In this case, members might either designate one or more members to handle day-to-day activities—or hire employees to take on these responsibilities.

*Requirements are updated frequently and you should make sure to do your own research and reach out to professional legal, tax, and business advisers, as needed. Businesses outside of New York will have different steps and requirements. To sell products using the Shopify platform, you must comply with the laws of the jurisdiction of your business and your customers, the Shopify Terms of Service, the Shopify Acceptable Use Policy, and any other applicable policies.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Do you know how many different ways there are to fund your company? Angel investors, crowdfunding, loans—the list goes on. It can be hard to decide what’s right for you and your brand. 

In Vicky Pasche’s case, she needed the money to fund Dapper Boi, a body inclusive, gender-neutral fashion brand. She and her co-founder, Charisse Pasche, turned to Kickstarter in 2015 to launch the company. Five years later, they raised $300,000 through equity crowdfunding alone. 

Whether you’re trying to secure your spot in the market or find the best way to bring your concept to customers, Vicky’s advice will help you fund your business. 

4 ways to fund your business

1. Run a crowdfunding campaign 

If you want to start a business but don’t have the capital, look for your ideal customer to help fundraise on a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter. 

“When we went on Kickstarter, it was just about connecting and relating to people. We were solving a problem, so we had to find people that had the same problem,” Vicky says. Kickstarter allowed her to connect with people facing the same challenges, and they were excited about her solution. Vicky and Charisse raised $26,000 after their initial ask of $18,000.

Try using crowdfunding tools like Kickstarter to find like-minded people who will help you achieve your vision.

2. Take pre-orders

While a great business idea can be lucrative, you’ll need money upfront to get production started. A way to solve this issue and bring in capital is to take pre-orders. 

“At the start, we offered [pre-orders] with an intro price discounted by 30%, for three weeks only,” says Vicky. ”Customers went nuts.” The limited time pre-order model raised demand and brought in a quick influx of cash for the founders. 

The money from a pre-order campaign will fund product production and give you a positive runway to keep growing the business. 

3. Connect with investors 

Vicky recommends using LinkedIn, signing up for networking events, and taking courses to meet as many people as possible. “You need to connect early and often,” Vicky says. The odds of finding an angel investor is higher with each new person you meet and share your vision with. 

There is no shame in asking people for help or for an introduction that will result in you raising more money. Vicky asked a mentor for advice and ended up meeting Dapper Boi’s first investor, who infused $250,000 into the company. Meeting more people will raise your chances of finding the right person to invest in your brand. 

4. Open up equity crowdfunding 

Attracting the right angel investor can be challenging and take a lot of time. That’s why equity crowdfunding is a great option once you’ve found your target audience. Vicky and Charisse usedStart Engine to offer customers partial ownership of Dapper Boi.

This approach is debt-free and allows for an influx of cash into the business, without having to exchange physical goods. Contributors receive a financial stake in the business for showing their dedication and support of the company’s growth. 

It’s intimidating to allow one investor to own part of your business. This route will allow you to feel the support of the community while gaining cash for the company. 

To learn more about Vicky’s journey, and discover how the brand manages a 50% customer return rate, tune in to the full Shopify Mastersepisode.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

At Shopify, our goal for accessibility is to make commerce accessible to everyone. This includes all entrepreneurs of any ability or age, and anyone within the Shopify ecosystem, including shoppers!

Shopify Checkout is a highly accessible user experience by default. This means shoppers with disabilities can buy with confidence using their own assistive devices and technologies; no third-party apps or plug-ins are required.

Before we get into the details of Checkout’s accessibility, let’s first define what we’re discussing.

What is digital accessibility?

“Digital accessibility” refers to the access of digital content. The definition we share reads as:

“Web accessibility is the practice of designing and developing a website or web application to be usable for as many people as possible, regardless of physical impairment or cognitive ability.”

When digital products are made with accessibility baked-in, people with disabilities can equally perceive, operate, understand, and interact with it. This not only helps with usability, but builds confidence and trust in the digital product and brand.

Why is accessibility important to my business?

When it comes to businesses of any size, accessibility helps to enable greater success in entrepreneurship. It does so by making your product open and available to more people. More people means greater growth opportunities, increased revenue, and positive public perception.

An industry report from 2020 estimates the number of people with disabilities to be 1.85 billion, which makes it a “market larger than China.” This represents a market opportunity in the trillion-dollar range. (Disability touches 73% of consumers and controls more than $13 trillion in annual disposable income.)

Disability touches 73% of consumers and controls more than $13 trillion in annual disposable income.

Let’s review how this helps your business regarding brand loyalty, competitive advantage, and conversion opportunity.

Brand loyalty

A recent study shows how consumers identify with and remain loyal to brands that reflect their own values. A key takeaway states 82% of shoppers want a consumer brand’s values to align with their own.

Some of the values mentioned in this study reflect the idea of inclusivity, which is at the heart of accessibility.

Competitive advantage

Implementing accessibility and inclusive design into your product can help you have a competitive advantage.

The WebAIM Million, an annual study that reviews the accessibility of the top one million homepages shares that across the one million homepages, almost 50 million distinct accessibility errors were detected—an average of 50.0 errors per page.

This reflects how accessibility is, unfortunately, not the norm. If your business provides an accessible user experience by default, this will set you apart from your competitors. People will take notice and recognize this is a part of your business values.

Increase conversion

Two studies conducted by Shopify partner Fable Tech Labs share compelling data for entrepreneurs.

The first looks closely at the relationship with disabled users and accessible apps on mobile platforms. This study reveals 94% of respondents factor the accessibility of apps and mobile sites into their decision around which businesses to support.

The other study looks at the state of online shopping for people with disabilities. This also shares more revealing data points, including:

• 71% of assistive technology users will abandon a digital experience that is difficult to use.
• Confidence building user experience is key to repeat purchases and customer loyalty.

What these studies reveal is how deploying an accessible user experience helps to increase conversion. Shoppers who are able to use your website or app with ease and confidence will do so and likely become loyal, repeat customers.

These important insights provide a sense of what the online shopping experience is like for disabled customers, and why it’s important for your business.

How does Shopify ensure an accessible checkout?

Shopify Checkout is not only the world’s highest-converting checkout, trusted by the biggest brands, it’s also highly accessible by default. Our Checkout design and engineering teams take great care in crafting accessible and usable components in conjunction with people with disabilities who rely on assistive technology.

Our Checkout design and engineering teams take great care in crafting accessible and usable components in conjunction with people with disabilities who rely on assistive technology.

Checkout Extensibility can add customizations to Checkout, including new visual elements built using a component library provided by Shopify. The components in this library are continuously tested to ensure they meet our internal accessibility standard. However, app developers still need to apply accessibility best practices when using these components.

Accessibility review

Accessibility of Checkout is reviewed on a continuous basis, the primary focus being usability with assistive technology and the coverage of core user flows. This is achieved through:

1. Design review of new components when required.

   Our internal accessibility team works with Checkout designers when new components or features are being created. By catching potential accessibility issues earlier in the product creation lifecycle, the team accelerates time to market by avoiding shipping defects and sprints to retrofit. It also means wider adoption by shoppers using assistive technology from day one.

2. Automated accessibility testing at the component level is continuous.

   Our component library and CI environments include accessibility testing via automation. These tests report high-level, objective accessibility defects.

3. Usability test sessions with people with disabilities are conducted quarterly (or on demand when required.)

   Test results disclose usability issues: subjective accessibility defects or blockers that may prevent task completion. These are triaged and sent to the team responsible for remediation.

   This task is contracted out to Shopify partner Fable Tech Labs.

4. Internal, manual assessments are conducted bi-annually (or on demand when required.)

   Deep-dive reviews are completed by Shopify’s internal accessibility team. By working through Shopify’s Accessibility Assessment Checklist — success criteria that reflect the latest WCAG standards — both design and code are thoroughly scrutinized in order to reveal defects that may have been missed otherwise.

Conducting accessibility reviews on a continuous basis means our Checkout teams are able to monitor for and remediate accessibility defects in a timely manner. This helps to ensure Checkout flows are highly accessible and usable by assistive technology users, further building confidence and trust in your brand.

Usability statistics

Regular usability testing of Checkout provides metrics and insight into where we prioritize effort. It also reveals blockers that need immediate attention.

A recent usability test session of Checkout revealed:

• 100% completion rate across varying assistive technologies; screen reader, voice dictation, and alternative navigation
• 86/100 accessibility score across Checkout state: guest, logged in, and mobile
• A total of two reported issues for a single usability test session, which were promptly sent to our engineers for remediation

As we continue to innovate and increase the extensibility of Checkout, we anticipate that these metrics will be consistent/improve across future test sessions.

Accessibility is good for business

Shopify Checkout is the world’s highest-converting checkout, trusted by the biggest brands, and is highly accessible by default. An accessible ecommerce solution means additional brand loyalty, giving your business a competitive edge and increased conversion opportunities.

By conducting accessibility reviews on a continuous basis, our Checkout teams are able to monitor for and remediate accessibility defects in a timely manner.

Up to 27% of adults in the United States have some type of disability. With more than 10% of all US ecommerce powered by Shopify, you’re well equipped to support your customer’s needs from day one with Shopify Checkout.

Accessibility is good for business. Start, run, and grow your business with Shopify!

Resources

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Whether you’re a business owner or an individual creator, developing a TikTok strategy takes a little planning and a lot of experimentation. After creating your TikTok content, you’ll need to find the best times to post on TikTok to maximize engagement from TikTok users.

Luckily, data can help you reach the right audience at the right time. 

Ahead, learn what the experts think are the best times to post on TikTok for each day of the week, within the US and beyond. And, find out how to analyze your own TikTok data to discover the optimal posting schedule for your social media calendar and specific target audience.

Best times to post on TikTok in the US (in ET)

The best times to post on TikTok vary by day. Here are the best daily times:

• Monday: 6 a.m., 10 a.m., 10 p.m.
• Tuesday: 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 9 a.m.
• Wednesday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 11 p.m.
• Thursday: 9 a.m., 12 a.m., 7 p.m.
• Friday: 5 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m.
• Saturday: 11 a.m., 7 p.m., 8 p.m.
• Sunday: 7 a.m., 8 a.m., 4 p.m.

Let’s take a deeper look at these best times to post, broken out by day.

Daily TikTok posting schedule

Follow this schedule of optimal posting times to get maximum engagement from your audience:

Best time to post on TikTok on Monday

In general, the best times to post on TikTok on Mondays are 6 a.m., 10 a.m., or 10 p.m ET.

These times cover a global audience while also fitting into daily schedules in the US, such as when users are scrolling TikTok videos before school or work, before lunch, and before bed. 

Best time to post on TikTok on Tuesday

The best times to post on TikTok on Tuesdays are 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and 9 p.m ET.

This suggests people are checking TikTok when they wake up, and again late in the evening. Posting during these hours will ensure fresh content is ready when users open the app.

Best time to post on TikTok on Wednesday

The best times to post on TikTok on Wednesdays are 7 a.m., 8 a.m., or 11 p.m ET.

If you post video content on TikTok during these times, you can catch people on the platform before work or school—and then again right before bed.

Best time to post on TikTok on Thursday

The best times to post on TikTok on Thursdays are 9 a.m., 12 p.m., and 7 p.m. ET.

Your content may receive extra reach if you post them on Thursdays around lunchtime. Many sources recommend scheduling the majority of your posts for early mornings, midday, and evenings across the midweek.

Best time to post on TikTok on Friday

The best times to post on TikTok on Fridays are 5 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. ET.

More engagement in the early evening suggests viewership reduces on Friday nights, when some people may switch to other forms of media, such as streaming, or head out for a Friday night activity. Post on TikTok earlier on Fridays when more of your audience are checking their socials.

Best time to post on TikTok on Saturday

The best times to post on TikTok on Saturdays are 11 a.m., 7 p.m., or 8 p.m. ET.

TikTok’s viewership decreases on the weekends. However, you can make the most of Saturday posts by scheduling them late morning and later in the evening.

Best time to post on TikTok on Sunday

The best times to post on TikTok on Sundays are 7 a.m., 8 a.m., or 4 p.m. ET.

Schedule video content to go out early on Sundays to capture people who rise and shine for a morning workout, jump on social media before grabbing breakfast with friends, or who just like to scroll in bed.

The best time to post on TikTok by location

The best time for you to post on TikTok won’t be exactly the same as the best time for Shopify’s social team or for other TikTok users—it will depend on your time zone and location of your target viewers.

If you have a global audience, pay attention to when people are most active across multiple time zones, and try to calculate time differences so that you can post content when the largest section of your audience is online.

For example, if your TikTok audience is primarily located in the UK and most active around 9 a.m. GMT, the best time for you to post on TikTok is 2 p.m. ET.

Keep scrolling for information on when your TikTok audience is most active.

When do the experts say is the best time to post?

Not everybody agrees on the best time to post content. Here’s what several social media management companies found when they analyzed the timing and reach of TikTok posts sent via their platforms.

SocialPilot TikTok study

After analyzing seven million TikTok posts published by more than 50,000 accounts connected to SocialPilot, the team at this social platform found that top-performing content was most often posted at these times (ET):

• Monday: 6 a.m.
• Tuesday: 2 a.m.
• Wednesday: 7 a.m.
• Thursday: 9 a.m.
• Friday: 5 a.m.
• Saturday: 11 a.m.
• Sunday: 7 a.m.

Buffer TikTok study

When the team at Buffer analyzed more than a million TikTok videos sent through their platform, they found that hourly reach peaked during these times:

• Monday: 2 p.m.
• Tuesday: 10 a.m.
• Wednesday: 4 p.m.
• Thursday: 4 p.m.
• Friday: 10 a.m.
• Saturday: 8 a.m.
• Sunday: 10 a.m.

The study concluded that TikTok videos posted on Tuesdays have the widest reach, with the lowest reach occurring on Saturdays.

Influencer Marketing Hub TikTok study

To determine the best times to post on TikTok, Influencer Marketing Hub analyzed more than 100,000 TikTok posts and looked for engagement trends. They found that the best times (ET) to post are:

• Monday: 12 p.m, 4 p.m.
• Tuesday: 4 a.m., 8 a.m., 10 a.m., 3 p.m.
• Wednesday: 1 p.m., 2 p.m.
• Thursday: 5 a.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m.
• Friday: 1 a.m., 11 a.m., 7 p.m., 9 p.m.
• Saturday: 5 p.m.
• Sunday: 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 10 p.m.

Arguably, these studies reveal that there is no single best time to post on TikTok. In other words, the best posting time for you is likely to be unique, based on your audience’s viewing habits.

Next, let’s go beyond the general advice and look at how to use your TikTok app to find personalized data that will tell you exactly when to post.

How to find the best time to post on TikTok for your target audience

If you really want to find out the best time to schedule posts for your audience, you’ll need to use data analytics from your TikTok account.

General posting schedule recommendations are good for those crafting their initial content strategy and posting their first TikTok videos. If you’ve been a TikTok creator for some time, however, you can access personalized analytics to see when you should post to reach specific target audiences.

Leverage your TikTok posting data by following these steps:

1. Create a TikTok Business account
2. Open your TikTok analytics dashboard
3. Find your follower activity
4. Check your activity on individual TikTok posts

1. Create a TikTok Business account (formerly TikTok Pro)

First, you need to make sure you have a TikTok Business account set up on the app. It’s free and simple to switch back and forth with your personal account. Just go to Settings and Privacy, then Manage Account, then tap Switch to Business Account. This gives you access to analytics as well as other features.

2. Open your TikTok analytics dashboard

Next, you’ll want to look at your TikTok analytics. You can get there by clicking the menu at the top right of your profile screen, clicking Creator Tools, then Analytics. This opens TikTok’s analytics dashboard in your Business account, which offers insights into your account and your followers.

Here’s where you’ll find information like the average watch time of video content and other TikTok insights that will help you determine when to post videos across multiple time zones.

3. Find your follower activity

If you’re looking to find the best time to post on TikTok, you’ll want to check the Followers tab at the top. From there, scroll down, and you’ll see a pane titled “Follower activity.”

This is what it looks like on mobile:

This is the best TikTok analytics pane to use if you’re trying to figure out when your followers are most active.

Convert times from UTC

In the image above, the graph shows that follower activity increases during the day and peaks at 8 p.m. TikTok always displays times in UTC, so remember to convert any data to your local time zone.

For example, 8 p.m. UTC converts to 3 p.m. ET. So this account should aim to post around that time for the best chance at maximum engagement.

You can also find this information on a desktop by logging into your account and selecting “View analytics” under your profile. This gives a more detailed view (see below). You can download your data from the desktop dashboard.

Find the right times for your global audience

TikTok’s analytics dashboard shows not just when general users are active, but when your own followers are most often online. This can help you figure out the best posting schedule for your brand when you need to hit multiple time zones.

Bear in mind that your followers and TikTok customers may have different peak activity times compared to the general TikTok viewership. If your target audience or customer base is parents, for example, their activity might peak in the evening when they have more free time. If your target is students, their activity might peak after school hours.

This is the method that Shopify’s TikTok team uses to determine the best time to post. Shopify’s community of entrepreneurs is most active in the late afternoon but, again, this might be different for your audience.

The dashboard will also show where your followers are located. If, for example, you’re based in the US but notice you have a lot of followers in the UK, you may want to split your posts to target different time zones.

4. Check activity on individual TikTok posts

You have the best chance of receiving likes, comments, and views when your followers are most active. To get more detailed information about follower activity from your analytics dashboard, navigate to the Content tab.

From there, you can see data on individual posts from the past seven days, including:

• Total play time
• Average watch time
• How many people your video reached
• Where your video was found (your profile or the For You page)

This tab also shows the time and date your videos were posted. By combining your follower analytics with your TikTok account data, you can figure out when to post your TikTok videos for the most views and engagement.

After looking at your data, you may find that certain content does better at particular times of the day compared to other posts. Again, activity is likely to be highly individualized, so digging into your personal dashboard is key to finding the best TikTok posting times for your business.

💡Tip: The best time to post on TikTok may not be the same as the best times for other social media platforms. Check your analytics across each platform to find the optimal time to post content.

Learn more:

How to optimize your TikTok videos for engagement

Finding the best time to post on TikTok for your brand is only valuable if your content can successfully engage your audience.

Success on social media platforms like TikTok goes beyond posting your content at the right time. Quality content that offers value to your target audience and has clear goals. Even if you schedule content to go live at peak times, the content won’t perform if you don’t have a great strategy and brand voice.

Here are some ways you can optimize your TikTok content.

💡 Did you know? You can manage TikTok ads directly from Shopify.

Optimize TikTok video length

One of the key factors that impacts TikTok engagement is the length of your videos. As of spring 2024, TikTok will allow video uploads of up to three minutes in length, but what is the optimal video length for maximum engagement?

Data suggests two potential strategies for optimizing TikTok video length. One approach is to make videos shorter than 10 seconds. These videos received an engagement rate of 6.09% from March to August 2023.

For maximum engagement, however, videos should be longer than 54 seconds. Posts of this length saw a 6.7% engagement rate over the same time period.

Why short videos can work

Even though longer videos are the best overall engagement play, a short or micro-video strategy can work well on TikTok, thanks to the platform’s fast-paced nature. Users typically scroll through their feeds quickly, so posts that instantly capture attention are likely to generate engagement.

Short videos are worth considering, given that they may be easier to make, consume, and share. The more videos you post, the greater your chances of making content that goes viral.

Tailor video length to your audience

While general rules can guide you, optimal video length can vary depending on your audience. It’s important to use your analytics dashboard and experiment with different video lengths to find the right format for your most-valued audience.

💡Learn more: TikTok for Ecommerce: How To Convert Fans to Customers.

Follow TikTok trends

Another aspect of maximizing engagement on TikTok is staying up to date with current trends. Whether or not you follow TikTok trends can influence the best times for you to post.

The impact of trends on posting times

TikTok trends can dictate the type of content users interact with. For example, if a trending song or dance challenge becomes viral, videos featuring that trend are more likely to see higher engagement. This may affect the best times to post, as users may be more active during times when they can participate in trends or challenges.

Content featuring trending challenges often receives engagement during after-school hours (3 p.m. to 5 p.m.) and in the evening (7 p.m. to 9 p.m.). Posting content related to a trend during these times could increase your engagement.

Keeping up with TikTok trends

You’ll need to use TikTok regularly to stay up to date with the latest trends. Join the TikTok community by:

• Following creators: TikTok creators start and propagate trends. Following them can give you early insight into what might become popular.
• Using the Discover tab: Discover shows trending hashtags and sounds, providing a snapshot of what’s currently popular on TikTok.
• Engaging with your audience: Pay attention to the trends your audience is participating in. This can provide ideas for relevant content that your audience is likely to engage with.

The best time to post on TikTok is now

Insights from Shopify’s social media team and other studies can give you a general idea of the best time to post on TikTok for your brand. Even better, analytics from your TikTok account will tell you when your audience is most likely to engage with your posts.

However, the best thing you can do to build engagement on TikTok is to post consistently over days, weeks, and months. TikTok recommends that businesses post authentic, engaging content between one and four times per day for best results. 

The more you post on TikTok, the more data, feedback, and followers you’ll gain—and the more you’ll be able to pinpoint the best time to post on TikTok for your business.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

In 2009, the Polder family decided to become farmers. At the time, they were living on a half-acre property in Melrose, Florida, and had no prior farming experience. They made the small space work for them, raising rabbits, making jams, and selling them both locally.

Today, the Polder family lives and works on a 115-acre farm, where they run a successful handcrafted wooden home-goods business, Old World Kitchen.

The business makes most of its sales on its Shopify store, but this wasn’t always the case.

Old World Kitchen began offline, before launching on Etsy. While the Polder family credits Etsy helping establish the brand, it was a move to Shopify that unlocked growth. After moving platforms, conversions increased and Old World Kitchen was able to expand into resale goods and email marketing.

Here, business manager Loran Polder speaks about her family’s journey and the benefits of moving from a marketplace to an online store.

Meet Old World Kitchen

After dabbling in basket weaving, blacksmithing, and leather work, Loran’s dad, Trevor, found his stride with woodworking. The family began selling his handcarved wooden spoons at local farmers markets, garnering positive reception. The success of the spoons prompted the family to pursue the farming business in a serious way.

“We just went for it,” says Loran of the family’s early days. “We certainly weren’t getting rich doing it, but it was moving in the direction of our dreams.”

You just don’t see people bringing this kind of product to your doors these days.

Loran Polder

The Polder family then packed their bags and moved to a larger farm property in Tennessee, adding dairy cows and beekeeping to their scope. True to their Old World approach, their initial sales channel was also a throwback. The Polders packaged their honey and handmade goods into gift baskets, and sold them door to-door. “You just don’t see people bringing this kind of product to your door these days,” says Loran.

The Polders found surprising success with the approach, but it was time consuming and unsustainable. That’s when a neighbor suggested an Etsy store. But at the time, the family didn’t even own a home computer. “We were going to the local library to check emails,” Loran says.

“We knew nothing about marketing,” says Loran. “It just seemed to us, sheltered as we were, that you put up a website and people got to it somehow.” The main benefit of a marketplace, however, is that high-intent buyers are built in. And three days after launching, they made their first sale. “That was hugely encouraging to us,” says Loran.

Building a brand on their own terms

It was when a pop-up opportunity landed on their plate that the Polder family began investing in their brand’s image, honing in on a message and vision for the company as a whole.

The effort to build a brand led to more success—until the family hit peak production capacity. That’s when they asked themselves: How do we scale?

I think that a lot of crafters have this idea that you have to be the poor struggling artist, like there’s something wrong with figuring out how to make your business profitable.

Loran Polder

The family considered investing in a CNC machine to create another line of wooden spoons at a lower price point. The move, however, would contradict the brand’s by-hand ethos. The alternative? Increase their prices. “I think that a lot of crafters have this idea that you have to be the poor struggling artist,” says Loran, “like there’s something wrong with figuring out how to make your business profitable.”

Their customers are happy to pay the higher prices for products rather than buy from other producers selling comparable products at a fraction of the cost. That’s because the family behind Old World Kitchen isn’t selling just a spoon. They’re selling a way of life, their story, and an experience.

As their brand grew, and their prices became more aligned with a luxury brand, the Polders found Etsy could no longer meet the needs of their growing business. Loran felt the typical Etsy shopper—younger and more budget conscious—was no longer their target audience.

The Polders began to grow their social channels in an effort to build a customer base outside of Etsy. In the meantime, they upgraded their camera and editing skills to improve their product photography.

When they were ready to move away from Etsy, they tried alternative marketplaces and platforms before deciding to build a store with Shopify.

The new Old World Kitchen

Moving from Etsy to a new store on Shopify was a game changer. “We were just absolutely blown away, because our conversion rate went up so much,” says Loran.

While the family needed to learn marketing on the fly, the efforts meant their visitors were high-intent. “There’s a huge amount of distraction on Etsy,” Loran says. “It’s more like strolling through a crafts fair rather than intentionally driving up to a brick-and-mortar store.”

Old World Kitchen held firm with the new pricing strategy and continued to grow its following. The pricing model allowed the business to scale while staying true to its craft origins. Each year, as they hit production capacity, the family regroups to decide how they can continue to grow while maintaining brand integrity.

One of those strategies was partnering with other brands as resellers—an avenue of growth that was not possible with Etsy. Now, complementary products like cast iron cookware and tea towels are available in the store.

When (and why) to move from Etsy to Shopify

Loran credits Etsy for getting the family’s business off the ground. The platform was a good place to experiment with ecommerce, learn about online customer service, and bring their product to an existing audience.

But they quickly outgrew it. In contrast to Etsy’s marketplace structure, the freedom and flexibility of running a business on Shopify let the Polder family scale their business and automate Old World Kitchen’s commerce processes—so they could focus on what they do best: making.

The right time to migrate from Etsy to Shopify and build your own ecommerce store depends on your goals, growth rate, and the features your business needs.

As a store owner, you might be ready to move your handmade business and open a new Shopify store if:

• Brand is integral to what you make. If your brand story or visual design are important to you, it’s more challenging to center these on Etsy. Port your products to a platform, like Shopify, that allows you to own your brand and customize the experience for your customer.
• You want to scale by converting your handmade production to a manufacturer. While Etsy now allows some mass-produced goods, the audience is still predominantly those looking for handmade or vintage goods. When you make this move, you may have outgrown the Etsy customer.
• Your target audience exists outside of the Etsy community. This may be the case if your brand decides to target a more luxury-focused customer. Setting up an online store lets you optimize for the search terms that are relevant to you.
• You’re interested in expanding your brand beyond products you make yourself. Etsy prohibits reselling, except in the case of vintage items. If you’re looking to partner with other brands to curate products, your own Shopify store will give you more flexibility to do so.
• You want to have control over your own marketing and customer lists. When you build on platforms like Etsy or some social channels, you often don’t own your audience or customer lists. Owning a store on Shopify lets you collect customer emails and market your business your way. Communicate directly to your loyal customers to ensure repeat business.
• You have surpassed a certain number of sales per month. Etsy’s pricing model relies on per-listing and per-transaction fees. This is ideal for new businesses, but the costs may not be worth it for large-volume stores. Once you’ve crested a certain sales threshold, Shopify’s monthly plans and lower transaction fees may be more attractive.

You can also maintain a presence on Etsy and Shopify at the same time. It’s a tactic the Polder family employs, using their Etsy store as a secondary sales channel.

A business for generations to come

Today, Loran handles all of the tasks involved with keeping the online store running, including everything from social media to email marketing. Her younger sister manages the shipping and fulfillment, while most of the family makes up the production team, with Trevor at the helm. Matriarch Angela Polder heads up quality control. “If anybody’s slacking, she makes sure they know it,” says Loran.

Old World Kitchen is a business designed to support generations to come, with room to incorporate future spouses and children into the mix.

The Polder family’s own story is one and the same with the brand. Being able to tell it on every page of their own site is critical to the success of their business and the preservation of their legacy.

Photos courtesy of Old World Kitchen

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Thousand founder Gloria Hwang never used to wear a helmet while commuting on her bike. She thought they looked a little goofy—and too “I’m a serious biker”—for riding to work.

But when a friend died in a bike accident, Gloria decided she could design a better helmet. “If you can make a helmet people actually want to wear, you can help save lives,” she says.

That philosophy has always been at the heart of Gloria’s company. Even the name—Thousand—is a reference to the company’s mission to save 1,000 lives of people on wheels.

Thousand surpassed that milestone last year. The company has a lifetime replacement policy, where it will send customers a new helmet for free if theirs is damaged in an accident. Thousand sent out its 1,000th replacement under the policy last year. “It was a really special moment in the company, just knowing that every day, we are achieving our mission,” Gloria says.

To do so, Gloria knew she needed to design helmets more people would wear. Ahead she shares design principles that helped her grow Thousand. 

5 design principles to guide your brand

To sell enough helmets to reach the 1,000 replacement goal, Thousand had to grow the market for helmets. “It’s not just to invite people who are currently wearing helmets,” Gloria says. “The goal is, at the end of the day, can you get people to wear helmets for the first time.”

Here’s how she went about designing helmets for new users.

1. Don’t sacrifice style for safety

Gloria found that recreational bikers didn’t necessarily want all the bells and whistles of other helmets on the market. Above all, they want something that was functional and safe.

Gloria worked with an industrial designer to create a helmet that met safety standards but leaned into a more minimalist and retro-inspired design. “There’s a way to elevate style so you’re proud to wear the products,” Gloria says.

2. Give customers the opportunity to personalize

Gloria says customers started picking Thousand helmets over other brands because the products better fit their personality. The company leaned into this by offering more customization options like colors and monograms. “It’s all centered around this idea of, “How can products help you express your personal style?’” Gloria says.

3. Build in convenience

Another pain point for many helmet wearers is that they have to lug it around. There’s often not a safe way to leave a bike helmet with the bike. 

That’s why Thousand patented the PopLock. It’s a feature built into the helmet that gives riders a way to attach the helmet to a bike lock. Plus, if the helmet ever does get stolen, Thousand will replace it for free.

4. Make your products inclusive

Part of expanding the market for helmets was designing a product that would appeal to everyone. 

Gloria says Thousand has intentionally created more inclusive products—and not just by offering a wider range of colors. She says most small bike helmets don’t actually fit women because they weren’t designed for them. “Our size range really takes into account different head shapes and genders,” Gloria says. 

5. Iterate, iterate, iterate

Gloria says it’s important for founders to be the advocate for their customers, especially when working with manufacturers. Even if a design may be more arduous or complicated for a manufacturer, it will pay to push for the features you really want. 

Thousand often goes through many iterations to find just one piece of their product. “We’ll sample 10 different versions of a similar color to settle on the final one we want,” Gloria says.

Still, the final version may change again after customer feedback. For example, Thousand’s popular Heritage helmet is on its second version.

After finding success designing helmets, Thousand is planning to use the same design principles to put its own spin on other bike and travel accessories.

To learn more about how Thousand used design to make safety products more approachable, listen to Gloria’s full interview on Shopify Masters.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

For as long as you can remember, you’ve been building wooden birdhouses or sewing tote bags or hand-pouring candles from scratch—simply because the act of making brings you joy. 

But over time, you’ve become somewhat of an expert at your craft, prompting friends and family to demand, “Take my money!” Maybe you’ve even dabbled in selling, either through a local marketplace or online selling site, or to friends for cash.

It’s probably time to ask yourself: Could this hobby become a business? There are several benefits to turning your passion into an honest-to-goodness brand—and factors to consider before taking the leap.

Ahead, learn the differences between hobbies and businesses, the legal and financial implications of making the switch, and the steps you can take to turn a hobby into a business today. Plus, get expert advice from hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs running thriving businesses.

Hobby vs. business: What’s the difference?

In some cases, a hobby and a business can be one and the same. Your hobby is the thing you engage in after work hours and in your spare time, but you also may exchange the results of those hobbies for cash.

In the eyes of the government, that hobby income is real income that you may need to claim. The true difference between a hobby and a business comes down to tax law. The laws vary from country to country and depend on many factors. For example, in the US, the IRS looks at the intention to turn a profit and history of profit. If you have profited from your hobby in at least three of five consecutive years, the IRS will see this as intentional and, therefore, qualify your activity as a business. 

While claiming income may seem like a hassle, the benefits to upgrading your hobby to a business can balance the negatives. Business owners can claim expenses like material costs, a portion of utilities (for home-based businesses), or other specific expenses applicable to the particular business—hobbyists cannot. 

Once you make the distinction that your hobby is now a venture, tracking and organizing your business finances will set you up for success at tax time.

Which hobbies make great businesses?

There are some fairly common hobbies you can monetize—selling finished handmade goods, like knit wool mittens at a craft market, for example. Many entrepreneurs start this way. But there are other types of hobbies that have a marketable angle. A few examples include:

• Musicians can sell music samples or teach guitar classes.
• Gamers can join the creator economy and build a business around streaming.
• Gardeners can grow seeds into plants to sell or harvest fruit to make jams and pies to supply local restaurants.
• Dancers can set up summer camps to teach kids the art of movement.
• Bakers can sell cookies, baking kits, or virtual baking lessons online. 
• Home décor DIYers can grow social media accounts with helpful content and eventually earn money through partnerships, affiliate links, and sponsored posts.

Turning a hobby into a business in 9 steps

1. Conduct market research
2. Determine your business model
3. Develop your brand
4. Consider funding options
5. Streamline your processes and workspace
6. Set up an online store
7. Launch and market your brand
8. Create boundaries
9. Set yourself up to scale

Now that you’ve either determined that you are in fact an accidental entrepreneur or you want to become one, let’s make it official. Here’s how to turn a hobby into a business in nine easy steps.

1. Conduct market research

“Everyone has this million-dollar idea,” says entrepreneur and YouTube chef Wil Yeung, “But not everyone has a million-dollar execution.” Pulling off great execution starts with doing the groundwork. To turn a hobby into a business, there are a few questions to ask yourself about your motivations and the viability of your idea.

The best way to validate your business idea is by conducting market research. This includes a number of steps such as evaluating your competition, researching your target customer, looking at market and consumer trends, and understanding your unique selling proposition.

Answering a few questions about your audience and competitors will tell you if there’s space for your product or service in the market. Can you offer something your competition can’t? Is there an underserved market that your specific brand can target? What trends in your industry indicate that it’s the right time to launch?

2. Determine your business model

What kind of business can you run, based on the nature of your craft? Determine if you will run your business from home or if you will run it solo or with a business partner, and if you need to outsource or hire for any part of the process. Will you sell finished goods or services? Do you plan to sell online or in person? Or maybe some mix of the above?

Writing a business plan will not only answer these questions, but will also help determine factors like required funding and path to profitability. If you choose to seek outside funding, a business plan helps frame your pitch to investors.

3. Develop your brand

Say you’ve been dabbling in jewelry design, maybe gifting or selling your pieces to friends. As you transition that hobby to a business, your work should be anchored to a brand. A brand defines everything around your product or service, including what you stand for, your brand voice, visual guidelines, and your brand story.

A strong brand will inform your website, branding assets like logo design, social media content, and product packaging. Even if you’re selling a product in a crowded market, branding can set you apart from the competition if you can tell a compelling story that resonates with your target audience. 

That story can also attract press attention. “If you are not dedicating time and energy to storytelling, then the media doesn’t have a story to tell,” Omsom founder Vanessa Pham says.

4. Consider funding options

If your business is born from a hobby, you likely already own much of the equipment required to produce your product. However, in order to transition, you may need to upgrade machinery, buy supplies in bulk, or even transition rooms in your home to dedicated workspaces. 

For example, if you’re a fitness buff looking to parlay your love of movement into virtual classes, consider that you’ll have upfront expenses for lighting and camera equipment. Also consider other costs like website hosting, accounting software, and online advertising.

In some cases you may need to apply for a loan, small business grant, or capital offer, start a crowdfunding campaign, dip into your savings, or seek other types of funding.

Hobby businesses, however, are usually conducive to a bootstrapping method—or funding the business on your own by investing profits back into it. Even if you start a business with no money, as you grow your sales, you can use those profits to slowly upgrade equipment or invest in marketing.

5. Streamline your processes and workspace

Tinkering with furniture making in your garage is one thing, but is the space set up in the most efficient way to transition to a woodworking business? You’ll be spending more hours in the space than you did as a hobbyist. 

Consider ergonomics (a better chair, anti-fatigue mats), the flow of your workspace (how things are arranged for efficiency), and whether or not your space and processes meet legal requirements for ventilation and safety. 

When Melissa Butler started making lipstick in her kitchen, she was still working on Wall Street full time. When she left the financial industry and made a real go of her small business, she realized her kitchen lab was no longer sustainable. The Lip Bar operations moved to a factory, allowing Melissa to scale and follow beauty industry regulations.

6. Set up an online store

Many hobbies can translate into a business that sells goods and services online. Setting up an online store on a platform like Shopify is a great way to launch your business without a lot of upfront cost. Once you’ve done that, consider other sales channels to expand your reach.

The right sales channels can help you reach the right audiences, even if your marketing budget is low. If you make handmade goods, set up your own website so you have ownership over your brand and email list, but also try selling on a marketplace like Etsy, where handmade buyers can discover you. 

If you’re a hobbyist online creator, like a comedian, or you sell virtual class subscriptions for DIY home renovations, consider channels where your personality can shine. TikTok has been a springboard for several influencers-turned-brands—and you can sell on TikTok with Shopify’s integration.

💡 Tip: Start with our guide on how to start a business and follow step-by-step instructions to create an online store for your new brand.

7. Launch and market your brand

It’s time to launch! If you’ve been at your hobby for many years and have had support from family and friends, start with these loyal fans to help promote your new brand through word-of-mouth marketing. Treat these folks as your first customers and nurture the relationship as such. 

Set up social media accounts and a Coming Soon page in advance of your official launch to generate buzz and grow your email list and followers. There are several organic marketing ideas for creative small business owners with even smaller budgets.

8. Create boundaries

Hobbies often integrate seamlessly with life—knitting in front of the TV, gaming in your bedroom—but if you’re considering upgrading to a business, those spaces may no longer work for you. Separating your work spaces from your life spaces will help you create boundaries and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

9. Set yourself up to scale

Embrace optimism and blue-sky thinking: your hobby-turned business could catch on, leaving you scrambling to meet demand. That’s the dream! Don’t get caught by surprise and risk annoying your new fan base with slow customer service and sold out products. 

Consider how you will scale at each sales milestone. And, get help early, even if it just means outsourcing your least favorite tasks to a VA or part-time employee so you can focus on the big picture.

As you develop your own hobby business, look ahead two, five, and 10 years—can your business scale sustainably, and what will you require for it to do so?

Questions to ask before starting a hobby business

Maresa Smith

Before you take the necessary steps to turn your hobby into a business, there are a few key questions to ask yourself to understand if the move is right for you.

Does your hobby have the potential to become a viable business? 

Your hobby may be close to your heart, but are there others who share your love of this craft? Validating your product idea through research will help you determine if there’s demand for what you’re offering and if you are bringing value to the market. This is also where you ask yourself if your hobby is sustainable as a business—is it something you can scale? A business plan can answer many of these questions for you.

Are you in it for love, money, or both? 

A common pitfall for those who turn their hobbies into businesses is that the thing that once brought distraction from work and stress can suddenly become work and stress. When your craft is a hobby, you only answer to yourself. Expectations from customers, vendors, and retail partners can add pressure. Is your hobby something you will still enjoy if it becomes your full-time gig? 

Your business doesn’t necessarily need to scale exponentially, however. If you’re in it for the love of your craft, a business can serve as a way to pay for itself or generate a little extra spending money.

Will your hobby become a side hustle or a full-time business?

It’s possible to keep your business small, running it on the side while you still work. Consider whether this is enough or if you plan to scale your hobby into a full-time business. It may also become your early retirement plan as you transition to an income source that’s more flexible with fewer hours. 

Hobby to successful business examples

Many entrepreneurs found their start by transforming their passion into a brand. They saw potential in what they already loved to do in their free time as a viable business capable of making enough money to become a success. Here are a few hobbyists who became their own boss. 

Mush Studios

The height of the rug tufting trend collided with the COVID-19 pandemic and Jacob Winter was looking for a new hobby. He took to the craft immediately and started sharing his processes and creations online. When audiences took notice, Jacob saw that his newfound passion could become his own business. Jacob launched Mush Studios, selling amorphous rugs to his TikTok fans. In explaining his viral success, he says, “People wanted something they had never seen before in terms of shape and texture.”

Floof

When Hannah Perry became a single mom after a divorce, she needed to find a way to support herself and her family. She had already been experimenting with baking and cotton candy creations when the idea for a rainbow cotton candy cake took hold. The cake went viral online and Hannah realized it could be a real business. She launched Floof, selling her cakes across the country including to celebrity clients.

Prairie Sage Soap

Trisha Trout made soap as a hobby while staying home to raise her children. When her husband passed away unexpectedly, the family needed a new source of income. Trisha turned to her passion as a way to support herself and built Prairie Sage Soap into the thriving business it is today.

Jaswant’s Kitchen

Jaswant Kular raised her daughters on traditional Indian cooking. But when her kids moved out on their own, she realized they struggled to recreate the dishes of their childhood. Jaswant made spice blends to help her daughters more easily cook curries and other traditional dishes. That’s when she discovered demand for the product beyond her own family. Jaswant’s Kitchen is now found online and in grocery stores everywhere.

Craft your career around what you love

There’s nothing more relaxing and satisfying than losing yourself in your favorite pastime. When you know, you know. If you’ve ever wondered how to harness that feeling and turn it into your livelihood, you’re at an exciting crossroad. 

As a creator or as someone passionate and skilled at your favorite thing, you already have an important advantage. You have the product, you have the knowhow, you have the drive. What’s stopping you from making the leap from hobby to business?

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

In 2010, Mimi Ikonn co-founded Luxy Hair, a line of hair extensions and accessories, and grew the brand’s YouTube channel to reach over three million subscribers. She later sold the multimillion-dollar company and launched Intelligent Change. Again she found success, selling more than two million copies of the company’s Five Minute Journal. 

Mimi’s success as a serial entrepreneur can largely be attributed to a YouTube strategy that has allowed her to build communities online. After using YouTube for business for more than a decade, Mimi has perfected her growth formula for creating a successful channel.

The blueprint for a winning YouTube strategy 

Mimi knows firsthand how powerful a YouTube community can be when it comes to building a business. Ahead, she shares six key tips to help you grow your brand on YouTube. 

1. Focus on your interests 

“It’s never too late to start a YouTube channel, as long as it’s a topic you’re really interested in,” Mimi says. Even if somebody already has a channel like yours, you can differentiate with your own unique perspective and unique experiences.

When it comes to launching and growing a YouTube channel, you’ll want to focus on topics you’re passionate about to avoid burnout. It will also inspire you to keep going, and motivate you when your subscriber growth is slow or stagnant. “It’s about enjoying what you’re doing, because that will resonate with the audience,” Mimi says. If you get bored of the content, your viewers will probably feel the same way. 

2. Keep it simple and clear

“If you can simplify your topic, people will watch and engage [more],” Mimi says. For Luxy Hair’s YouTube channel, Mimi documented her own journey as she learned how to use different styling tools and hair accessories. She broke content up into small segments so viewers could replicate the techniques themselves. Incorporating a clear beginning, middle, and end will make it easier for viewers to watch and help you grow your channel over time. 

3. Build trust 

“Building trust with your audience is extremely important,” Mimi explains. One of the best ways to do this is through a consistent posting schedule. If you can share videos regularly, then people will know when to return to your channel or look out for new content. 

Creating authentic content will give your audience the confidence and security they need to subscribe. Having genuine excitement in your videos will highlight your conviction and give viewers faith in your ability to provide value and expertise.

4. Have fun with it 

If you’re going to grow on YouTube, you also have to engage on the platform as a user. Choose to grow your channel because you genuinely like YouTube as a social media platform. If you spend all day scrolling on Instagram, chances are you should be trying to grow your business there instead. “If you don’t like the platform it will be difficult to put in long-term, consistent effort,” Mimi explains. 

5. Mix up your content (length)

Mimi loves long-form videos because they allow her to go deeper into a topic. But it’s important to experiment with different lengths and formats. “You can repurpose the [long form] content into smaller videos for YouTube Shorts,” Mimi says.

Since the algorithm on YouTube is constantly changing, mix up the length of your videos to connect with different audiences. If you normally post a full 20-minute video to your channel, try slicing it up and sharing shorter versions along with the full-length video. Different content styles will attract different audiences. 

6. Learn from other creators 

Look out for trends that resonate with you and your industry. “Watch other creators and see what works for them. Don’t copy [them] but do similar things with your own content that you put out,” Mimi says. 

It’s OK to learn from other successful channels, but remember to make it your own. Add a personal touch or incorporate an idea you saw used in a different genre or industry to make your content unique.

Establishing a large YouTube channel won’t happen overnight. Mimi’s tips will help you to start cultivating a dedicated audience that will fuel your growth. 

Tune in to the full Shopify Masters episode to discover Mimi’s tips for converting subscribers into customers and launching one successful business after another.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Passive income may not make you a millionaire overnight, but it can supplement your salary and help you build wealth over time.

Through investments, royalties, rentals, and revenue, passive income is money you earn without the need for ongoing work. It’s not linked to a regular job and doesn’t require your constant attention. This means more freedom, flexibility, and cash for you.

Explore these passive income ideas to strengthen your financial portfolio.

29 passive income ideas

1. Start a dropshipping store
2. Create a print-on-demand store
3. Sell digital products
4. Teach online courses
5. Become a blogger
6. Sell handmade goods
7. Run an affiliate marketing business
8. Sell stock photos online
9. Become a social media influencer
10. Buy a rental property
11. Invest in the stock market
12. Rent out your spare room
13. Rent out your car
14. Lend money to peers
15. Earn while shopping online
16. Buy and sell websites
17. Start a YouTube channel
18. Invest in REITs
19. Sell designs online
20. Invest in businesses
21. Rent out unused space
22. Create a job board
23. Create no-code apps
24. Earn royalties through inventions
25. Record audiobooks
26. Invest in vending machines
27. Build and sell spreadsheets
28. Open a high-yield savings account
29. Rent out your parking space

1. Start a dropshipping store

Dropshipping is a great way to make money from anywhere, even if you’re starting with a small budget.

In a dropshipping business, you set up an online store where customers browse and buy products. When you receive an order, you forward it to your dropshipping supplier, who ships the product.

Dropshipping suppliers handle everything from manufacturing to packaging to fulfillment. And, since you don’t need to send money to your supplier until your customers pay, this passive income business has limited cash risk. You can use a platform like the DSers to find trending products in different niches to sell in your store.

💡 Tip: With Shopify, it’s easy to start a dropshipping business and sell online without the hassle of managing inventory, packaging, or shipping.

2. Create a print-on-demand store

If you’re an artist, designer, or entrepreneur, print on demand can be a profitable income stream and monetize your creativity. It involves working with suppliers to customize white label products like t-shirts, posters, backpacks, or books and selling them on a per-order basis. 

Similar to dropshipping, you only pay for the product after you sell it. There’s no buying in bulk or inventory needed. Print-on-demand stores are a good passive income stream because:

• You can create products quickly and put them up for sale in minutes
• Shipping and fulfillment is taken care of by your supplier
• Once your store is set up, you can automate many marketing and sales processes

With a print-on-demand company like Printful, you can quickly and easily create products to sell in your Shopify store. Overall, print on demand is a simple, low-risk passive income source you can get up and running fast.

3. Sell digital products

Digital products are assets or pieces of media consumers can’t touch physically. These include downloadable or streamable files such as Kindle books, templates, plug-ins, or PDFs. 

Digital products are great income sources because they have high profit margins. You only have to make the asset once, and you can sell it repeatedly via your online business. There’s no storage or inventory needed. 

You can sell as many digital products as you want. Many creators scale passive income from digital assets by selling kits, printables, files, and other materials professionals can use.

4. Teach online courses

It’s easier than ever for educators to create an online course. Whether it’s marketing, illustration, or entrepreneurship, you can create pre-recorded courses and start selling with few limitations. You can sell online courses repeatedly without holding any inventory or stock, generating passive income.

Teaching online requires some upfront investment in time. You’ll need to outline your course, record it, and create downloadable assets like templates for students to walk away with. 

Whichever way you look at it, teaching an online course is a great way to generate income at a low startup cost, other than investment of time.

5. Become a blogger

Starting a blog can be a challenging venture, but the blogging business model is only becoming more successful as a passive income stream. 

It takes a little bit of time to build a blog. But if you create quality content and promote it through your platforms, you’ll build an audience big enough to generate a significant income stream. 

You could earn passive income from blogging by:

• Selling affiliate products
• Creating sponsored posts
• Selling your own products 
• Running ads through Google AdSense

The best part? You don’t need any design or coding skills to start a blog. With a content management system and hosting service like Shopify, you can get a blog up and running in no time. 

6. Sell handmade goods

There are hundreds of online sites you can sell on. Some have specific niches, like video games or handcrafted goods, while others let you sell whatever you want. 

Some popular online selling sites include:

• Faire
• Amazon
• eBay
• Ruby Lane
• AliExpress

The upfront investment is twofold. You’ll need to invest in materials and time to make and sell DIY goods like pottery or clothing. You’ll also want to create an online store to house your products.

Selling from your own store reduces the amount of fees you pay on each sale, plus, you can create a brand for yourself. The benefits of building a brand compound over time as you grow an audience and connect with more customers. It’ll help you sell more over time and make money online.

7. Run an affiliate marketing business

Affiliate marketing involves recommending a product or service to an audience. It’s a great source of passive income because you earn a commission whenever someone uses your referral link to buy the recommended product or service.

Online entrepreneurs become affiliate marketers for a few key reasons:

• It’s easy to execute. You just handle the marketing side of things. The brand will develop products and fulfill orders.
• It’s low risk. There’s no cost to join an affiliate program. You can sell established profits without any upfront financial investment. 
• It’s scalable. Affiliate marketers typically don’t hire extra help. You can introduce new products to an audience and create campaigns while your past work makes money in the background. 

Earning money with affiliate marketing can be a rewarding way to add new revenue streams to your business. All it costs is your time. Once the hours are invested, you can reap the rewards continually.

8. Sell stock photos online

Unlike many of the other passive income ideas on this list, photography is a service-based business, which typically means you get paid for your time. You must be at an event or photoshoot to make money with photography, which, even if you’re making a killing, can be tiring after a while. 

However, if you’re a full-time photographer or own a good camera, you can generate passive income from photography by selling photos online. Stock photo sites like Pexels, Shutterstock, and other online media houses will pay for high-quality photos and videos.

If you run your photography business on Shopify, you can also easily tie in digital products like prints or print-on-demand products like shirts and hats, giving you even more passive income streams so you can work less and make more.

9. Become a social media influencer

To become a social media influencer—someone who can sway another person’s buying decisions—you’ll need to build a community of people who enjoy similar topics. 

Are you a comics fan? You can create an Instagram account and start posting consistently about the latest Marvel and DC shows. The same applies if your interest is in sports, scuba diving, home décor, or even general culture. 

If you have an engaged audience, you use that engagement to support a variety of passive income ideas. For instance, you can partner with large and small businesses to promote their products to your followers. Or you can make money through selling your own merch.

💡 Tip: Shopify Collabs makes it easy to find brands that match your vibe, build affiliate relationships, get paid for what you sell, and track everything in one place.

10. Buy a rental property

Real estate investing is one of the oldest ways to build long-term wealth in general, and passive income in particular. 

If you have enough money, you can buy apartment buildings or some other form of real estate and lease them out for rental income. But since the job of being a landlord is pretty active, you can hire property managers to manage tenants, maintain properties, and collect monthly payments or rent.

As a bonus, your properties will appreciate as the housing market rises, increasing your profits in the event of a future sale.

11. Invest in the stock market

Although the stock market might have a steep learning curve and can be confusing, it’s a great way to build lasting wealth. A common mistake most people make with investment funds is thinking short term instead of playing the long game to reach financial goals. 

The goal for investing in stocks is to diversify your portfolio and reduce risk. You can do this through investing in mutual funds, index funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and high-dividend stocks that earn you capital gains over time. 

To start investing in the stock market, you need to open up a brokerage account at a quality financial institution and fund it. It’s recommended that you also speak with a financial adviser to help plan and hit your passive income strategy goals. 

12. Rent out your spare room

Maybe you don’t have the startup capital to invest in rental properties. But do you have an extra room in your apartment? Or are you going on a three-week road trip and don’t want to leave your house empty? You can partner with a rental company like Airbnb or VRBO to put your free space up for rent.

Airbnb connects homeowners with people who are looking for their next getaway. People prefer Airbnbs because they’re sometimes cheaper and often more convenient than hotels, meaning a high demand for your free space as an Airbnb host. 

While renting out one spare room to earn passive income is great, renting out 10 is even better. If you want even more income from Airbnb, you can (depending on local laws) buy apartments for the sole purpose of renting them out. You should note, though, that renting your space out often requires work upfront. You might have to furnish or renovate your space before putting it up for rent.

13. Rent out your car

Your home is not the only thing you can rent out to earn passive income. You can also offer your car up for rent with a service like Turo. If you already use your car as an Uber, you can sign up with platforms like Carvertise or Wrapify to earn extra money as you take trips around town. 

Another way to turn your car into a income stream is to look for someone who needs a car for Uber or Lyft. So instead of actively driving around in your free time, you can pull up a Netflix show while your car works for you.

14. Lend money to peers

Have extra cash that’s not working for you? Try peer-to-peer lending as a side hustle. Peer-to-peer lending involves lending money to borrowers or small businesses. 

To make the process easy, you can sign up on a website like LendingClub, Prosper (for individuals), or Worthy (for businesses) that connects borrowers with lenders. 

These sites usually host loan requests along with interest rates based on the borrower’s history. The return on these loans is usually around 5% to 6%. The more you lend, the higher your cash flow will be.

15. Earn while shopping online

Cashback reward sites like Swagbucks, MyPoint, and Rakuten allow you to generate passive income when you shop online. After signing up, you don’t have to do anything extra, aside from shop, to make money from these sites. The more you shop online, the more points you gain. And the more money you can make.

A note of caution: don’t exceed your monthly spending budget or max out your credit card in a bid to earn some reward.

16. Buy and sell websites

Websites abound on just about any topic you can think of. The best part? A lot of them make a healthy income through the likes of affiliates, ads, memberships, or products—and they’re often put up for sale. 

Sites like BizBuySell make it easy to buy and sell online stores securely once you open and verify an account.

It’s a great way to own a business that already has some sales and traffic coming in. Once you complete your purchase, you also get access to seller support afterward to ensure you do well. 

17. Start a YouTube channel

It’s not too late to start a YouTube channel. A whopping 2.7 billion people around the world use YouTube every month. That’s a lot of eyeballs to capture for passive income. The catch? It’s a lot of upfront work for little to no return in the beginning. 

Yet, if you’re a long-term thinker and don’t mind frontloading your efforts, the income potential of a successful YouTube channel is high. Affiliate sales, sponsorships, branded integrations, and ad income can all add up passively as you accumulate content, clicks, and views and grow your audience. You can even easily spin off into starting a podcast and earn more money through sponsorships. 

18. Invest in REITs

What if you don’t have money to buy entire apartment buildings? Can you still earn rental income? Yes, you can. 

With a minimum investment of $500, you can use a real estate investment trust (REIT) platform like Fundrise to invest in a variety of real estate assets—and earn more passive income as the assets appreciate. A REIT is a company that owns and manages profitable real estate. It’s a great way for smaller investors to pool their money to afford investments they wouldn’t be able to afford by themselves. 

As a long-term investment, real estate investment trusts are one of the best income ideas to look into if you have startup capital. Besides upfront capital, getting started also takes some in-depth research. This isn’t an investment you want to walk into blindly. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources, like this guide, to help you get started.

19. Sell designs online 

Design websites like 99designs, ThemeForest, or Creative Market are great places to generate a passive income stream by selling digital designs online. Whether you use a website builder to build website themes, logos, branding resources, templates, illustrations, or even fonts, these platforms offer a built-in market that is already looking for design resources.

For instance, if you wanted to start selling designs on Creative Market, you’d need to apply and wait for approval. From there, you get your own storefront, where you can start selling your branded designs.

20. Invest in businesses

Today, getting started investing in historically inaccessible business opportunities is absolutely possible. Platforms like Mainvest make it easy to invest passively with a $100 initial investment without any of the investor fees.

The returns? As with any investment, it depends. But Mainvest aims to earn you anywhere from 10% to 25%. You don’t even have to vet the businesses yourself. Mainvest takes care of the vetting process for you. You simply invest the capital to get started. 

As a passive income idea, this is a great, safe way to step into the business investment world and learn as you go.

21. Rent out your unused space 

Have a basement or garage you aren’t using? Rent it out as storage space! It’s possible to do this safely and efficiently with storage rental platforms like: 

The storage industry is projected to grow to as much as $64 billion by 2026. In other words, this isn’t an income idea that’s going away anytime soon. You can store a variety of items, including cars, boats, RVs, or even business inventory. 

Using storage rental platforms is also a great way to avoid liability issues, as they provide safe payment options, contracts, and storage provider and client information.

22. Create a job board

A job board is a great way to earn passive income as an online entrepreneur. These websites are used by employers to promote job vacancies to job searchers. 

Job seekers can look for new job opportunities online or in-person. You can charge employers to post on your job board and offer premium features like sponsored jobs or unlimited access to your candidate database. 

Even if you don’t want to design a job board from scratch, you can buy a job board theme and start generating passive income right away. Now, building the website is the easy part. Creating awareness of your job board is where the bulk of the work is.

Once you get the flywheel going and your job board becomes established with return customers, you can count on a large part of your income to be passive. Check out sites like ProBlogger, Dribble, or Construction Jobs for inspiration.

23. Create no-code apps

The fact that any novice can create a basic to advanced mobile app with today’s no-code tools is beautiful. Platforms like Appy Pie, Adalo, or Bubble make it possible to get started.

To start, you’ll have to decide whether you want to create a website or mobile app. Besides the concept of the app (what niche it will serve and what problem it will solve), there’s also monetization to think about.

You can generate passive income with a mobile app using:

• Subscriptions
• Ads
• Pay to download
• A marketplace model

If you aren’t sure what problem your app should address, here’s a great list of research tools to help you get started.

Ubersuggest can give you insight into what keywords have high search volumes.

From there, it’s a matter of setting up your digital guide to collect sales, whether that’s through your own storefront or a seller platform.

24. Earn royalties through inventions

Inventors aren’t a thing of the past. You can make passive income through your unique inventions. Though this isn’t a passive income route that’s talked about often, it’s a real one.

Getting started is probably one of the hardest parts of the inventor’s journey. You want to make sure you have a worthy invention that’s useful and solves a problem. Start by checking out the US patent website to make sure your idea hasn’t already been created. 

If you want to outright sell your invention, sites like Invention City can help you get started. Depending on the deal you strike, you can passively earn a percentage or payouts from the income generated through your idea once it’s on the market.

25. Record audiobooks

Audiobooks have to be created by someone. Why can’t that someone be you? Once you break into the industry, it’s possible to create passive income in the form of royalties—which is how most audiobook narrators get paid. 

To successfully make income from audiobooks, there are a few things you need to master first. These include learning:

• How to audition
• Proper narration technique
• What niche you’ll work in
• Some editing skills

You don’t have to go at it alone. Some platforms make it easier to get started and land your first few gigs. Check out sites like ACX to learn what you need to make it in the industry.

26. Invest in vending machines

Ever wonder who takes care of all those vending machines that are always stocked? The owner of those machines is earning (semi) passive income from your snack and soda cravings.

Starting a passive source of income through vending machines does require an upfront time and money investment.

Marketplaces like Craigslist, eBay, and BizBuySell can help you gauge the upfront investment you’ll need to buy your first set of machines (as well as how many you can afford to start). Once you secure areas where you can install them, a route of vending machines makes for a great cash-flowing source of largely passive income.

27. Build and sell spreadsheets

Some of us are natural-born spreadsheet masters. If that’s you, it’s possible to put your spreadsheet skills to work to earn passive income. 

Whether you create spreadsheets with Excel or Google Sheets, there’s a market that will pay for you to create spreadsheets for all kinds of purposes: budgeting, profit projections, habit tracking, or even P&L spreadsheets that business owners don’t want to create from scratch. 

Pair a Shopify storefront with the Digital Downloads app and you have yourself a passive income stream ready to earn money. For that to happen though, you do need to drive traffic to your storefront. Thankfully, we have some resources to help.

28. Open a high-yield savings account

A high-yield savings account generates passive income by offering a higher interest rate than traditional savings accounts. By depositing money into this account, you earn interest over time without any additional effort. Some high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposits offer over 4% APY.

This interest is essentially “free money” that accumulates as your savings grow. Although the returns may be lower than other investments, high-yield savings accounts offer a safe, low-risk option for beginners to start earning income and building wealth.

29. Rent out your parking space

Renting out unused parking spaces can generate passive income, requiring minimal effort. By listing your available spot on a parking-sharing platform or through local ads, you can monetize the empty space. 

Renters seeking convenient parking will pay a fee, creating a steady stream of revenue with low maintenance, while you enjoy the financial benefits.

Find the right passive income idea for you

There is only so much time in a day, and finding ways to make a lot of money more efficiently can give you flexibility in your personal finance to hit the next level. That level might be taking a nice vacation or buying that awesome pair of shoes, but whatever it is, adding passive income streams with different underlying economics can give you the freedom to explore it.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Jazzi McGilbert didn’t exactly start out with a business plan, but rather a vision of a space for Black people in Los Angeles. She wanted to create a place where they could gather as a community, inspired by her own childhood in the city. “I was just a creative, bookish, introverted Black girl growing up and always needed spaces to just feel safe. And I lacked those,” Jazzi says. “So I went out and built one.”

With just $20,000, Jazzi started Reparations Club, a bookstore and community space. In just three years, the store has grown into a seven-figure business. Much of that growth has happened organically, driven by creativity, curation, and careful risk-taking.

Harnessing her creative side

Jazzi is an artist who works in multiple mediums. She was a fashion magazine editor and a creative director before starting Rep Club, and brought a similar artistic sensibility to designing the store. “I approach my business like an artist in that I am thinking about color and texture and how people are going to resonate with the work,” Jazzi says.

For Reparations Club, Jazzi wanted the store to have a 1970s-inspired aesthetic, similar to the décor of her childhood.

Curating with purpose

Reparations Club sells books and products from Black-owned brands. “I think every bookstore is ultimately, in some way, a reflection of its owner,” Jazzi says. She explains that her interests and identity, as well as the interests and identity of her staff, are reflected in the products on the shelves.

The ups and downs of entrepreneurship

When she started, Jazzi had a vision for Reparations Club and knew the community she was building it for, but she didn’t know how it would be received. When she did find her first retail space, she went in expecting the worst. “If nobody walks in this space and buys anything, how much do I stand to lose?” she asked herself.

When the building’s roof had a leak, Jazzi almost did lose it all, with water damaging almost all of the store’s inventory.

Jazzi kept going, though. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Reparations Club to shut down its brick-and-mortar location temporarily, but Reparations Club opened an online store and started making book deliveries around the city.

And Reparations Club was able to meet customers’ needs when people were looking for resources amid the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. “This was the summer of anti-racist reading. People were really seeking out education that they were now realizing they lacked,” Jazzi says.

Growing through word-of-mouth marketing

Reparations Club hasn’t spent any money on advertising. Instead, the brand’s growth has been organic. “I just wanted to focus on people having such a good experience that they told somebody else about it,” Jazzi says. Creating that experience is sometimes as simple as recommending a book to a customer or helping an author celebrate their first release. 

The indie bookstore business can be challenging at times, but Jazzi does see some hope in the amount of books that people are reading and how many films are based on books. “There is this return to reading that I’m deeply inspired by,” she says.

To learn more about Reparations Club and Jazzi’s journey to becoming a business owner, listen to the full interview on Shopify Masters.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.