Have you been dabbling in selling your handmade creations or perhaps some really awesome boutique items you found in your travels that you’ve been able to purchase wholesale? Are you ready to start on a new journey of being a small business owner? Are you ready to open an online shop? If you’ve been considering taking that leap, but you aren’t quite ready for your own website like I have today – you may be trying to figure out what you need to do in order to move forward.

Etsy, Amazon, and eBay are not for everyone. Etsy for the longest time was purely handmade and vintage. Recently they’ve extended into a lot of other areas and many of the once successful shops aren’t seeing the revenues they previously had. Amazon can be quite expensive and overwhelming – not to mention, you would be one in a sea of thousands – maybe millions – of sellers. And, eBay also has a lot of sellers and if you are not yet established you may not be prepared for all it takes to set up your shop with Amazon or eBay.

There is another option out there that you may or may not be familiar with – Shopify! I’ve been keeping my eye on them for a while and have been considering setting up a shop with them along with my current shop here on GeminiRed Creations. Shopify will provide another opportunity for me to share my shop with more people and…

They now have an interface that allows you to sell on Pinterest! You know…the very same Pinterest that people spend hours and hours scrolling over to find the next best thing.  Imagine them searching for a gift idea and coming across one of your items! Boom! That’s a sale for you.  Using the Buy It button on their mobile device they are taken to checkout to buy your item…right there, in real time.  On a laptop or desktop computer they will be able to click over to your shop and purchase in that manner.  They no longer need to click out of Pinterest, Google your shop, and search for the item they found on Pinterest.

Shopify Pinterest selling

 

Since I feel like I need to provide you with open and honest information I have signed up for the 14-day trial to give Shopify a try.  And here is what I have learned…

  • They have something for everyone.
  • Yes, there is a monthly cost involved, but in most cases if you should be able to easily recoup it with a sale or two depending on the price of your items.
  • It is fairly easy to set up, but it’s possible I found it easier since I have experience with my own website and Etsy already.
  • They offer demo webinars (which I attended AFTER already taking the step of setting up my shop) that are very helpful if you have no experience at all
  • They have a ton of documentation on just about everything you can think of related to setting up your shop
  • If you already have an Etsy shop it’s as easy as exporting the listings from Etsy and importing into Shopify
  • You will have to make some tweaks to your listings if you want to track inventory, which I am doing because I have also set up an account with SKULabs to track my inventory and sales from ALL my shops (in one place). *shout out to SKULabs for that*
  • You can also set up a shop on your Facebook page.  I originally had a link on Facebook to shop right here on my website, but opted against renewing it because of the annual fee.  If my monthly fee with Shopify includes Facebook and Pinterest then I’m getting more bang for my buck!
  • And here’s what I really like…if I decide to open a physical shop OR do a pop-up shop I can process my sales right from my iPad.  There is an additional cost for this functionality, but if you will have all your listings RIGHT THERE on your iPad and can easily ring them up and track your inventory! With their POS system you can get add-ons such as a cash register, bluetooth scanner and more!

If you are on the fence, sign up for Shopify’s 14-day trial, add a few products and see what it looks like – then start sharing!  To be fair to yourself and your business commit to at least 6-12 months to see how it goes.  You need at least that amount of time to make sure it works for you.  Anything shorter than that would not do the product justice.  Everything takes time – especially starting a small business or using a different platform to share that business.

I hope you will join me on Shopify so we can grow our businesses together! And, if you do sign up, be sure to leave the link to your shop in the comments so I can share it through social media!

This post contains affiliate links, and I may be compensated for any purchases made via that link. GeminiRed Creations disclosure policy.