- 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.