Why I CLOSED my Shopify + POD T-shirt store

in 2021 i decided to take my best-selling items and one niche to a shopify and print-on-demand store within six months i decided to close down my shopify and pronoun demand store and this is a story i don't tell many people but i decided it was the best for me and here is a video on why i closed my shopify print on demand store and my journey with shopify when i began my store [Music] so guys that's right i had a shopify for an on demand store and to the side here i'm going to show you guys my statistics and how much i earned in my first six months with shopify and pronoun demand now i opened up the shopify and print on demand store i believe it was around july and june time and within six months i grew it to over 30k in revenue which was a take-home profit of about seven to eight thousand dollars so some of you may be wondering right now wow that's actually quite really good revenue for a t-shirt and sweatshirt shopify store which it was and i really loved learning shopify and how to use facebook ads for marketing how to do influencer marketing and even i dabbled really well into email marketing but some of the issues i found with shopify and print on demand kind of ultimately led me to closing down my shopify store and i have many other reasons why i decided to close my store one of the main reasons i closed my store is because i was a solo entrepreneur and i had my etsy imprint on demand store i had my shopify print on demand store and then i opened up my youtube channel and i really have a passion for teaching how to do print on demand and all that comes along with it and at the time my shopify and print on demand store really wasn't seeing the sales and the profit that i wanted to see and on top of that i was getting a lot of customer service issues especially with integration with my shopify store and my print-on-demand provider i just realized it became way too much for one person to handle by themselves especially once i started my youtube channel it kind of dawned on me that i can't do all these things together and i had to figure out what i was most passionate about and for me i was most passionate about teaching how to set up your own print-on-demand business now guys one thing i did want to mention through my journey with shopify and pronoun demand i had a lot of struggles that a lot of people don't talk about as far as print-on-demand goes a lot of people want to talk about the rainbows and butterflies about print-on-demand and yes there are so many great things about the print-on-demand business model but there are a lot of really hard truths about print on demand one of the issues you will come across especially when you open up a shopify store is a lot of issues with taxes there are so many things that you have to handle on your own as a shopify print on demand store and etsy really does make so many things so seamless for you with etsy etsy remits your taxes for you to the state that you hit the sales tax nexus events in and for shopify if you hit a sales tax nexus shopify sometimes will alert you and they will notify you they have recently updated that type of feature on shopify however for you as a business owner you have to go out and register your business in every state that you hit that sales tax nexus for you need to collect taxes and remit that to the specific states that you hit those nexus events for and that was something i realized very soon after i started getting a huge spike in revenue on my shopify store that i needed to figure out some type of automated tax system that could do this for me and there are certain software such as tax jar and avalara that you can register and these types of applications will actually collect and remit sales tax on your behalf however it's still up to you to set this all up and that was something that very much i was having troubles managing with my etsy and print-on-demand store and then once i created my youtube channel i just had too many things i was juggling at once that i couldn't do this all however if i were to only do shopify that would be much more manageable for me but all this together wasn't where i was most passionate about anymore i wasn't really as passionate in starting and creating and growing a shopify store as i was with my etsy and also that i love teaching about etsy and print on demand i think etsy is one of the best platforms especially for beginners and that's what i ultimately wanted to do in my future was teach print on demand rather than grow in shopify store however i will say growing a shopify store with print on demand is so fun to do and i would highly suggest it if some of you have dabbled with etsy and product man and want to go to shopify and print on demand i think it's a beautiful business model still even if you do shopify it just didn't work for me and what i was doing all at once during that period of time on top of that i will say when i had my shopify and print-on-demand store i was working part-time in healthcare too so that's another reason why i just had way too much going on that it was time for me to leave shopify and print on demand and eventually i did put in my two weeks notice with my part-time job and healthcare as well so there was some things i had to say no to when i was in the midst of all my print-on-demand businesses and youtube channel all that that came along with it one of the other reasons i closed my shopify store that i wanted to mention to those of you who may want to do t-shirts with print on demand and shopify is that the cost per action especially if you're using facebook ads to get a purchase on your online store can be over ten dollars per action so a lot of the times with t-shirts your profit and take-home profit is five to ten dollars so to pay for an ad to get a purchase on your shopify store can cost as much as your profit so that was something that i noticed when i had my shopify and print-on-demand store running was i sold mainly t-shirts and although some customers bought two or three t-shirts a lot of the times i'd have a lot of one t-shirt purchases so i didn't have any profit on most days with my shopify and print on demand store that was something that struck me that i can't really keep a shopify and print on demand store for only t-shirts sweatshirts and hoodies is another story though i think if you sell sweatshirts and hoodies you can get a higher profit margin that it's worth it as far as ads go and if you're using facebook ads but generally if you have a shopify store for t-shirts then your best bet is just getting organic traffic and that's what i eventually started doing i started building my following on instagram and i even gave free items away to influencers to market my brand and that was really bringing in a main source of my traffic over time and i stopped using facebook ads because it was so expensive for cost per action if i were to redo my shopify store i would have just done influencer marketing and maybe i would have considered affiliate marketing as well i think affiliate marketing would be the best route as far as marketing t-shirts because it's very very hard again to get a take-home profit at the end of the day with just t-shirts alone you really have to branch out into other items or maybe make sure that your customers are doing upsells such as adding on a second t-shirt or a sweatshirt along with their purchases i think that is something you really have to consider if you're going to do shopify with print on demand and then marketing your items to bring in traffic and essentially get sales at the end of the day in my specific shopify and print on demand store i will say that most of my purchases were actually through people who found me on instagram so again if i were to redo this whole journey i would have just done instagram and not paid for ads and if i did pay for ads that would be primarily focused on instagram however instagram and facebook are owned by facebook so in general you're still paying the same amount of money for instagram ads they are very expensive now so that's something that i would have changed the other thing that i would have done differently is i would have maybe done tick-tock ads and focused more on tick-tock videos as well because tick-tock is just one of the rising platforms where you can grow your social media following to thousands of followers and it can be done very easily through just having one video that goes viral on tick tock so guys at the end of this video i hope this doesn't discourage anyone from going to shopify and print on demand the reason why i really wanted to share my journey with shopify and print on demand on my channel was to warn those of you who may want to start a t-shirt and print on-demand store with shopify i think that shopify and print on demand is really great for other higher profit margin items such as jewelry or hoodies and sweatshirts or maybe blankets i just don't think it is worth your time if you're doing only t-shirts t-shirts are just such a low profit margin item and you're not going to get as many sales as you may think to bring in enough for a really nice side income or full-time income i don't think t-shirts are the best bang for your buck so to speak as far as that goes and for me i put in a lot of time and energy into t-shirts and i saw a profit at the end of the day but it just wasn't enough for me to keep that store running and i hope you guys can learn from my mistakes and maybe start a shopify and print on demand store that has a lot of high profit margins at the end of the day one thing that i really want you guys to think about is with t-shirts for example if you sold 20 t-shirts you may come out of that day with 100 in profit when in comparison you can sell maybe 10 hoodies or sweatshirts and come out with 100 in profit and then again if you were to sell only five pieces of jewelry with a profit margin of twenty dollars per jewelry item you sell then you can get one hundred dollars by selling five pieces of jewelry and one of my favorite print on demand providers for jewelry is shine on and i think they're a really good print on demand company to use if you're looking to go into jewelry for this specific example so this is something i just want to share with you all and for you guys to really think about if you're looking to start a shopify and pronunciation store i think there's so many better higher profit margin items that you can sell that aren't t-shirts and i really encourage you guys to go out there and research different products that you can make higher profit margins on if you're looking to sell on shopify so guys at the end of this video don't forget to subscribe comment down below if any questions you guys may have for me and i will see you all in the next video here one of the main reasons i i decided it just wasn't ultimately where the so guys the other thing i wanted to mention is with shopify the cost of shopify was through just hitting this is something that i really want you guys to think about before you stop start [Music] [Music] you

Channel: heatherstudio

Views: 13,607

Keywords: passive income, printify, printful, pod, etsy pod, etsy, shopify

Id: 8OT8XcX3UjI

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022