- Hey, everyone. So due to super popular demand, today, I'm gonna take
you behind the scenes of one of my sources of passive income, my e-commerce business, and
show you my five favorite apps that I use to run my
business, 99% on autopilot. Yep, the only real thing that a human, i.e. me or one of my staff members, have to do is customer service, like answering emails,
which, for one store, would normally take
about 15 minutes a day, and choosing and designing new products to sell occasionally. And actually, I reckon that even if you're a longtime subscriber, you're probably gonna be surprised at some of the ways that I use these apps to earn passive income.
(cash register chimes) And you see, that's pretty
much my goal in life, to earn money as passively as possible, because there are two things that I value. The first thing is anytime
that somebody takes a moment out of their very busy day
to give this video a like, and to subscribe, because seriously, each time that you take a
moment hit that Like button, it really helps with
the YouTube algorithm, so thank you so much to
everybody that does so. But the second thing that
I really value is time, and I truly believe that
time is extremely precious, because you see, as I said
in my Instagram post here, in my opinion, true wealth isn't
about having the most money and the most Teslas or Lamborghinis. Nope. It's about having income
sources that earn money as passively as possible,
because if you think about it, in life, we can always
earn back our money, but something that we can
never earn more of is time. Each day that you spend doing
something that you don't enjoy is a day that is lost forever. And so while most people
obsess over earning more and more money, I instead
obsess over preserving my time. So I try to structure my income sources to be as passive as possible, including my e-commerce business. And to help me with that, I have five apps that I absolutely love that let me do these five things almost entirely on autopilot. So let's look at the first app, and no, for my longtime subscribers, this app is probably not
going to be a surprise. The first app I use to actually
run my e-commerce business and accept payments and
manage orders is Shopify, because you see, when you decide that you're
going to start an online store, you have two ways that you can go. You can either decide to
set up your own website and your own online store, like this example tutorial
store that I've created here, or you can choose to list
the products that you sell on a third-party marketplace, like eBay or Redbubble or Etsy, and, of course, the big advantage to just listing your products for sale on one of these marketplaces like Etsy is that there are millions of
people coming here each month, so you don't have to do
marketing to get customers in the door, since, well, you
know, they're already coming. However, for me, because I already do have a
marketing strategy in place, I prefer to sell privately,
and that's because of this. So you see this Etsy seller here? Well, if you scroll down the page, you'll see that because of the fact that Etsy controls their platform, they just try to sell as
many products as possible, and so to achieve that, they advertise other people's products on your product listings, and so when you sell on a
third-party marketplace like this, it is a compromise. No, you don't have to do marketing, but instead you have to accept
that you will make less money because you are forced to compete with other products and sellers. And so that's why I like to sell privately and use Shopify to do that, and Shopify is an app that is
basically an e-commerce store in a box, no coding or
developers required. And there are other apps
I could have chosen, like WooCommerce to deal with this, but there are several reasons why I've personally chosen Shopify, which will become apparent
by the end of the video. Another reason is because it
helps me do this on autopilot, marketing and sales. Shopify's software has
been built by developers to be extremely SEO-friendly, and SEO stands for search
engine optimization. So for example, if you come to Google and you type in "lawyer mugs", and you do a search for that phrase, an e-commerce store is gonna show up at the top of Google's
recommended websites, Mugdom. Now, Mugdom gets a ton of
free traffic and customers from Google recommending
it in the search results. And actually, Mugdom
is a Shopify flip store that does both print-on-demand
and dropshipping, which is pretty cool. So there are several tweaks
that they've made to this store to make it easy for Google
to find it and recommend it. So for example, one tweak you can see is that they've added related keywords to their page title and description here, like "lawyer coffee mugs"
and "gifts for lawyers," and then on the actual page itself, they've used the keyword
"lawyer mugs" on the page. Well, just like Mugdom,
this is the main way that I drive traffic and
customers these days. There are many keywords my product and category pages rank for, and they bring in customers for
free from Google, hands-off. If you want to do this yourself,
it's going to take time, but now that the upfront work is done, it's mostly just hands-off
traffic and advertising. And this is a big reason
why I chose Shopify, because their goal is to be
the easiest e-commerce software for non-techie people to
use, and it really is. It is idiot-proof. And the same with SEO. They've made it super easy
to make all of these tweaks, and so I can have staff members
that are not SEO experts come in and easily navigate it and make the tweaks that we
need to be Google-friendly. And by the way, if you'd like to dig
deeper into how SEO works, I actually have a free video
tutorial on this channel, but yes, this is one of the
reasons why I've chosen Shopify. It's because its SEO features
are really easy to use. But another reason is because
it integrates super well with my next step. It allows me to package and
ship products to my customers, hands-off on autopilot. So remember how earlier I
said that there are some ways that I use these apps that may surprise even
my longtime subscribers? Well, this is one of those apps. So to package and ship my items
to customers on autopilot, I use this app here, Printful, which has an awesome
integration with Shopify. So I use it in two ways. So firstly, I'll do something
which I'll explain shortly, which is print on demand. But secondly, I use it
to do something else called phase 2 dropshipping, thanks to this little known
feature that Printful has, their fulfillment warehouse. So I'm gonna explain how both
of these methods allow me to package and ship my items
out to customers on autopilot hands-off without be
having to do anything, and to get started, I'm
gonna, first of all, explain how I deal with print on demand, and while I know a lot of
my longtime subscribers already know how this works, please bear with me while I explain it, as most of my viewers are new around here, so I really appreciate the patience. Thank you. So, here's how print on demand works. Now, you see this example tutorial store that I've built here? When I sell these products to customers, I can sell them before they exist. Yup, none of these
products actually exist. I'm basically selling phantom products, and it's because of Printful. So Printful is a print-on-demand app. They have a big catalog of blank items that you can choose to sell. So you could sell T-shirts,
hoodies, fanny packs, face masks, pillowcases,
and even shower curtains. They sell all sorts of custom
products that you can create. So, let's say then that I
went through the catalog and I decided to sell this T-shirt. Well, what I would do
is I would click on it, and then I would just
upload either a picture or a trendy slogan that I
wanted to sell on the T-shirt. Printful then upload your artwork and store digital copy of the
product in their database, and you can enlist that
T-shirt for sale in your store for a markup price for
customers to purchase. And then when a customer comes and, say, buys this T-shirt from you, Printful will see the order
in their computers and go, look, someone bought this T-shirt that was created and
uploaded to our database. Awesome. Let's make and ship this
T-shirt to the customer ASAP. Their merchandise-printing factories will then print your
design onto the T-shirt, package the T-shirt up, and then ship it out to the customer. They'll charge you the production cost, and you get to keep the markup as profit. As you can see, it's super hands-off, because once you've added
your product to the store, you no longer have to worry
about packaging or shipping. You are done. And by the way, if you are watching this and you would like to learn even more about starting a print-on-demand store, they need to be sure to
download my free e-book, "The 6 Steps That 6-Figure
Online Stores Follow to Make Over $10,000 a Month," And you'll find links
download my free ebook in the video description below. But anyway, back to the video. So yes, that is one way
that I sell products with my e-commerce business,
but that isn't the only way. Nope, as I've said, I
also do something else, and that is stage 2 dropshipping. So to explain what
stage 2 dropshipping is, I will quickly explain what
stage 1 drop shipping is. Dropshipping is when you list an item that a manufacturer makes
for a markup in your store. Then when a customer comes
and buys the item from you, you then go straight to the manufacturer and buy that one individual item and have it shipped
directly to your customer, while you keep the difference as profit. So, for example, here is a
store that is dropshipping. Now, they are selling
a super viral product. It's an electronic fish toy that flops and tricks cats into
thinking that it's real. They're selling it for about $30. So every time a customer
bought one of these from them for about $30, what they would do is they would come to the
manufacturer that they found on this big manufacturer
directory, aliexpress.com, and buy it for a fraction of the price. They'd then have their
supplier ship this one item directly to their customer. So it say that you have a floppy
fish and you've done this, and through stage 1 dropshipping, you have found an item
that is selling great. Awesome. Now you can move on to
stage 2 dropshipping, which is when, instead of
dropshipping them individually when customers order them, you instead buy a bunch of them in bulk and then ship them into
a fulfillment warehouse. So for me, because I use Printful as my number-one print-on-demand app, I also use their warehouse
services too for my dropshipping. So all you do is add the product
to your Printful dashboard and then create a shipment order. You tell Printful how much of the product that you intend to ship
into their warehouse. So I'm only gonna be shipping in five of these floppy fish as an
example for this video tutorial, but I'd usually send them
hundreds of products. You create a shipment order, and then once your supplier
has shipped the items to Printful and given you a tracking code, you can add it into your
Printful shipment order, so that they can track
and collect your products once they have arrived. So I'll send them several
different products, all in one box, and
Printful's warehouse team will collect my box and
then separate off my items and store them on their shelves. And so then, of course,
when the items have arrived, you just add them into your store. And when a customer buys, say,
this floppy fish from you, Printful's warehouse will receive
the order, and they'll go, yep, let's find that fish sitting in Sarah's storage container. And then, without you
having to do anything, they'll go and pick that
fish out of the container, package the fish up, and
ship it out to the customer, and then they'll send
the customer an email with their tracking code,
all within one business day, automatically, completely hands-off. So those are the two ways
that I package and ship items to customers on autopilot
with the Printful app. I also have another
print-on-demand app that I use, Printify, which is my
third app on this list, and this is my backup app that
I use, because occasionally, especially because of
COVID-19 issues unfortunately, Printful has sometimes run out of stock for some of the items that I sell, but that's okay, because when they do, I'll just order from this
app here, Printify, instead. So it's a nice backup app to have. So even if Printful runs out
of, say, one type of T-shirt, Printify always has me
covered, just in case. Inside my premium video training course, The Ecomm Clubhouse, I
show you my techniques for spying on top selling
print-on-demand products to get inspiration to create and sell your own top-selling products, too. If you're interested in seeing if this course is right for you, I'll have a link to it in
the video description below. But yes, on to app number
four, and this one's a doozy, because, you see, a lot
of people often say to me, "Sarah, I'd love to run a store, but I am way too nervous to run one because I don't know
how to pay sales taxes." And I'm always like,
"Guys, don't you realize that collecting and paying sales taxes, especially in the USA, is
actually surprisingly easy?" And it's thanks to this app here, which also has an awesome
Shopify integration, TaxJar. Now, just to clarify,
when it comes to taxes, there are two main types of ones that you need to be concerned with. First, there are income taxes. This is when, at the end of the year, you calculate what your
profit was and pay income tax to the country or state you live in. So I pay my income tax to
New Zealand's government. And then secondly, there is sales tax. Each time a customer
buys an item from you, if they live in a country
or state that requires it, you need to charge them an additional fee on top of what they paid and pay that fee, i.e. that sales tax, to
the state or country. Most of my customers do
not live where I live, which is New Zealand. Instead, they live in the USA,
and this app here, TaxJar, makes it very easy to collect that fee, i.e. that sales tax,
and pay it on autopilot. Now, there are two ways
that it helps me do this. Firstly, it helps me figure
out which states in the USA I have to collect and pay
sales tax to, because, guys, seriously, chances are,
for most of you watching, you don't even have to worry
about doing this at all. To be required to
collect and pay sales tax in a state in the USA,
you have to have achieved what's called nexus in that state. Nexus means that you are now
required to collect and pay sales tax from customers
that live within it, and if you don't actually
live in that state, oftentimes, the sales
thresholds that you need to meet to become eligible for nexus
within a state are huge. So for example, you only need to worry about registering and charging sales tax to customers that live in the state of New York if you've sold over
$500,000 worth of products to New York customers. This is a huge threshold. And in New Mexico, a state
with two million people living in it, if you
don't live in New Mexico, you have to sell over $100,000
worth of goods to people that live within the state. So, you know, all of you guys who have just opened stores
and are worrying about this, yeah, you might be overthinking
it just a little bit. But, once you do have a successful store, TaxJar can automate this process for you and figure out where
you should be collecting and paying sales taxes in. So to show you how, I have
set up a tutorial store and added over 200 draft orders into it from New York addresses
that total around $529,000, and I connected TaxJar to the store. Well, if we use TaxJar's
sales tax calculator, it will import all of my transactions and figure out which tates
that I owe sales tax in based on the sales for the past year, and of course, because TaxJar is smart, it figured out that the
store only owes sales taxes in New York. So once you know this, you can then just go
into Shopify tax settings and tell it to start charging
and collecting sales taxes for you automatically from customers that live in the state of New York. So this is another nice feature
that I love about Shopify, and when you combine it with TaxJar, it makes collecting
sales taxes super simple. But that's not the only thing
that TaxJar automates for me. In addition, it will also keep
track of how much sales tax that you were collecting and owe, and then when it comes time to actually pay the state the money, TaxJar also does this for you. They have an auto-file feature, so once you've registered
for this and set it up, TaxJar will file all
the paperwork you need and it'll also pay the correct amount to each state and jurisdiction for you. Boom. It also saves a huge
amount of time and fees that you'd previously had to
have spend with accountants. TaxJar, the app that accountants hate. And, of course, there is
something else my store does on autopilot, and that is to
get customers to come back and buy from me again. And the app I use for that
is CM Commerce Marketing. CM Commerce Marketing is my
favorite email app for Shopify, and the way that I use
this app is I use it to take my existing customers and market to them automatically to get them to come back
and purchase more products. Now, there are many ways that you could use this app to do this. We could have an entire
video on this app, easily, but for the sake of brevity, we're just gonna focus on two
features that this app has. One way that I use this is through my customer
receipt email sequence that I've added to it. So immediately after
buying an item from me, the customer will get a receipt, which tells them which
items they have bought and recommends other products in my store that they would like, too. CM Commerce Marketing will also create a discount coupon code within Shopify that is active for 72 hours, and they will track if the
customer uses it or not. So this receipt tells my customer that they have three days to use my code. Well, as CM Commerce
Marketing tracks coupon usage, if the customer does not use
that coupon within 48 hours, CN Commerce Marketing will
then automatically trigger another email to go out, this time reminding the customer that they have just 24 hours left to use the discount coupon, which is a great way to use
scarcity to get customers to come back into the store to buy again while they are still a hot engaged lead. And there is another way that I use this, and that is to send out
abandoned cart emails. So each time a customer
comes in and adds an item to their cart and then reaches page two of the checkout process and
enters their email address but it doesn't complete payment, CM Commerce Marketing will
log their email address in their systems. You can send them through an
abandoned cart recovery process and customize it to be
exactly how you want it. So this is the standard one that I use. First, after one hour, they
will get an email from me asking them to come back
and complete their order, and it will show the items
that they've left behind. And if they don't come
back within 23 hours, they'll get another email, but this time, CM Commerce Marketing will generate a three-day discount coupon
code inside of Shopify, and this email will remind
the customer of the products in their cart and tell them
that they have just three days to come back and claim
their discount coupon. And I then set it to wait 48 hours, and then if they still haven't come back to complete the order, the customer will get
one final reminder email. This email will remind the customer that their discount coupon
code only has 24 hours left to be claimed for the discount, and it's a great easy
method to save sales. So did this video help you
learn about some new apps that you would like to use
in your e-commerce business to run it more passively? If it did, please hit
that Subscribe button and click the little notification bell so that you don't miss
out on any of my videos. And if you'd like to learn even more about my sources of passive income, you should be sure to watch my
video, "The 5 Income Sources That Earned Me $1,000 A Day in My 20s." So go ahead, watch my next video, and I'll see you over there.
