How to sell your Shopify store like a gangster...
Check out my profile to verify my numbers...
If the idea of an exit plan for your Shopify store at this point sounds ridiculous to you, then you need to read this whole post.
So, why should you even be thinking about selling your Shopify store, you ask?
Well, we’re all going to die, right?
Are you going to take that Armenian buttplug store to the grave with you?
Didn’t think so.
So, as annoying and distracting as it may sound to think about something that you may not be ready (or even able) to do at this point, it’s critically important that you start to conduct your work THROUGH these priorities so that the work you’re doing NOW is in complete alignment with what is needed LATER for a successful sale.
Because you do want to sell your store eventually, right?
The problem with running paid ads ALONE
Ads (can) produce fast results if you know what you’re doing. But, if your store's entire existence is hanging on paid ads, you are sitting on a potential ticking time bomb with nothing to save you.
How so?
Because your entire store is hinged on whether Facebook, Google or TikTok decide to restrict or ban you based on how grumpy their algorithms are. Your sales stop cold. Then you’re forced to beg and plead like a little bitch to the Bay Area brogade.
I don’t need to go into how often that happens, because you see the stories everywhere and I've had it happen to me as well.
When you’re only doing paid ads, you’re always playing this stupid cat and mouse game with Silicon Valley douchebags for the privilege of driving people to your store in the hopes that you can sell those Armenian buttplugs you spent months researching.
Paid ads as your only traffic source don't build a properly diversified traffic foundation for your store, WHICH IS WHAT BUYERS LOOK FOR.
Your store needs more than just ads; it needs INTRINSIC VALUE and ads do not create intrinsic value for your store, because ads are about ARBITRAGE.
I'm not here to shit on paid ads, because they clearly CAN work and produce a lot of money fast if you know what you’re doing. If your ads are working, KEEP THEM GOING. But it’s time to branch out...
After analyzing dozens of online businesses for sale, I noticed a common trend: they all have a substantial amount of traffic coming from diversified sources (at least 2-3) and many times a significant portion of that traffic pie is organic traffic from Google.
Meaning...buyers want assets that STAND ON THEIR OWN. Not that can get shut down if Zuck decides he hates you, while sipping his chocograndematchalatte with chia milk out of a Shopify peasant's skull.
Do you think a buyer wants to give you a big fat check for your store with the very real possibility that the day after they pay you, the whole store can get shut down, while you moonwalk to the bank with a mushroom cloud of your former store in the background?
Nah bro. Don’t work like that...
At some point, you're going to want to move on for one of these common reasons…
- Burnout or boredom
- Need capital to fund your next venture
- Unsustainable/tight margins/competition/COGS/Ad costs increase
- Need money for personal things (buy a home, start a family, health, pet giraffe…etc)
A store that's addicted to ads alone will have a harder time selling to a buyer, because all the buyer is going to see is RISK.
You will wonder why nobody wants to buy your store. But here I am, telling you why that's bound to happen because I’ve gone through 2 of these deals myself and had the very extensive conversations with buyers that turned into actual checks and wire transfers to my bank.
And the common theme from the buyer is: "How soon can I make my money back with the least amount of risk possible?"
So, how do you transform your Shopify store into a highly sellable asset that buyers will literally fight over?
Here are the basic things that buyers want and that can even get them to compete over your store (as what happened with my last store)...
Diversified traffic sources with sales trending UP
Your sales should be trending in the 'up and to the right' direction. While, it's still very possible to sell your store when sales are trending down, it's preferable and easier to 'sell into the strength', but with additional room for a buyer to run with it further.
One of the easiest ways to increase sales fast with not much work is to...
Convert your existing traffic BETTER
It's not always about getting more traffic; it's about converting those EXISTING VISITORS BETTER. If you suck at converting your existing visitors, why would you want to drive even more traffic to your store?
Slapping a blurry logo on the stock theme and calling it a day is lazy, entitled and you deserve to be tarred and feathered for thinking it's that easy.
Consumers are not stupid.
This isn’t 2007. Consumers are highly sophisticated compared to 5, 10, 15 years ago and they know flaming basura when they see it...
If your color scheme makes no sense, you have only a single product, no policies or support email in the footer, no live chat, confusing variants, poor photography, a domain name that makes no sense or any of the other atrocities I see constantly, then they will rightfully bounce and go to the competitor who actually obsessively cares about their brand and does these relatively easy things.
Everything aggregates up into the form of TRUST. Why should they trust you?
Note: Installing live chat on your store really helps improve the trust factor.
And yes, that means you need to actually answer live chats yourself. Don’t leave it up to AI or chatbots, you’re not fooling anyone with that shit.
When I was running my store I was answering live chats and making sales at 3am on my phone with one-eye open in the dark. I didn’t use a chatbot, the live chat representative was ME.
Sell more to people who JUST PURCHASED
The best way to increase conversions and AOV fast is to sell more to the people who JUST BOUGHT FROM YOU.
Example: ‘Cha Ching’!
You: Cool! Time for taco Tuesdays with my friends to celebrate my big $28.72 sale!
Wrong goomba.
Sell that mofo AGAIN in the order confirmation and shipping notification emails (cross-selling related products) that they are about to receive! Look into some of the apps that can do this.
Think about it...
After they buy from you, you have at least 2 additional touch points where they NEED to pay attention to you (confirmation and shipping notification emails). That means you are (almost) guaranteed to have their attention again 1-2 more times when they check those shipping notification emails. If you don’t optimize those opportunities you’re losing easy sales.
Next, we want to diversify your traffic sources so that we're not only doing paid ads.
Entering the chat...
Shopify SEO
Edit: Take a look at my beginner's guide to Shopify SEO.
Even though I have some decent experience with paid traffic, I come from the SEO world and have always preferred generating organic traffic that sustains itself over time...
- More work? Yes.
- Takes longer? Yes.
- More sustainable? Yes.
- More SELLABLE? YES.
On-site SEO
On-site SEO is something you have complete control over and gives a great ongoing return on your efforts.
This means making sure you've done proper keyword research on each of your products (use Ahrefs/Google Keyword Planner/Amazon Suggest...etc). Implement your keywords in your title tags, description tags, URLs and product page ad copy.
Don't be sloppy about this, there is an art to writing good title tags, description tags because when you craft them well, people click on them more, which increases your CTR (click-through-rate) and thus improves your rankings. The URLs of the products specifically are critically important to get right for long-term sustainable results.
Example:
Product: Armenian buttplugs
URL: /armenian-buttplugs
Title tag: Boutique Armenian Buttplugs | Your Brand Name
Meta description tag: High quality Armenian buttplugs to win her over for good. Colors that POP. Free shipping and returns (ew, we know)...
Product page copy: At least 200 words of keyword-rich copy.
Do that for all of your products and then do a forced-crawl in Search Console of your whole site to get those changes indexed FAST. That will save you at least a few days if not a couple weeks in indexing delays.
Build backlinks:
Strong backlink profile = higher rankings = organic traffic = INTRINSIC VALUE.
Backlink building should be prioritized like this:
1. Product pages
2. Homepage
3. Collections (fairly hard to get and almost worth ignoring)
There are dozens of ways to get backlinks but for Shopify stores I would strongly suggest doing product review outreach campaigns to get natural, contextual, organic links. It takes some time up front to get these going but once you're in a rhythm, you can start to see very good results.
Pro tip: Since competition on longtail searches for products is MUCH less, you can sometimes rank a product in position 1 with a single backlink pointing to that product or even no backlink at all, but only with good On-page SEO as shown above.
>>> DO THIS WITH YOUR BEST SELLING PRODUCTS FOR BIG ROI <<<
Even without backlinks, you can still pull in longtail traffic through your product pages with the simple SEO 101 basics I noted above and start to see that traffic trickle in and convert.
When is the right time to sell your Shopify store?
When your store has diversified traffic sources, is trending up in sales and there is still ADDITIONAL room to grow for a buyer...that's when you want to have the conversation with yourself about selling, because you're in a prime position to negotiate and get the best price. Knowing this now will hopefully make you aware of when that time comes so you don't overstay your welcome and miss that sweet spot.
Pricing your Shopify store correctly
No buyer is going to take you seriously if you don’t know how to price your store.
Yes, you can go through a broker and they will give you an idea. But if you want to save 15% in broker fees, then you can do this yourself, and I highly recommend that you do, especially now that the Shopify Exchange is defunct.
Generally speaking, the valuation of your store is a function of TTM profit (trailing twelve months net profit) TIMES a multiple. For online businesses it’s usually in the 1-3 range depending on various factors, which is represented in terms of years. (Note: You can also do valuations on a monthly multiple).
So, as a simple example, if you did 50K in net profit in the last 12 months and use a multiple of 2, then a reasonable value of your store is roughly 100K and you should expect to negotiate in that range with a buyer.
This means it would take the buyer of your store 2 years to earn back what they paid you and break even on their investment, assuming the performance of the store stayed exactly the same.
Remember this is the big thing buyers are thinking about..."how soon do I make my money back?". They are highly risk-averse.
My last store: $0 - $700K in total sales WITHOUT ADS
Check out my profile to verify my numbers...
I took my last store from 0 - 700K in total sales with only organic traffic sources (primarily Google organic search) over the course of about 3 years by implementing everything I've written in this post (On-Site SEO, Backlinks, CRO).
After getting burned out on that store, I was ready to move on...
I approached who I thought were good candidates to buy my shop from me...
I was able to get a couple of them to compete against each other...
THEN I chose who I wanted to do the deal with and sold it to them myself without paying a 15% fee to an expensive business broker.
I got the funds wire-transferred to my bank and the buyer got an extremely well-built brand to add to his existing brand line and carry the store even farther than I had...
Align what you do now to what is DESIRABLE later
Am I sharing some grand secrets of the universe here? Nope.
I'm simply telling you what I did and what I've learned after getting acquired twice and what will help you get your store in shape for an acquisition, whether that's next month, next year or in 3 years.
There is A LOT that goes into selling a Shopify store or any online business and this post barely scratches the surface, but it's hopefully enough to give you some things to chew on.
While I’m throwing a lot of different things at you to do, when you build a strong foundation for your store like this, it stands on its own, sells itself and BUYERS WILL COMPETE FOR IT when you put it in front of them.
That means when you've decided you're ready to move on, you can potentially walk away with a big payday instead of getting repeatedly bitchslapped by Facefook, Doogle or DikSock.
The time to start preparing your Shopify store for sale is BEFORE you are even thinking of selling.
Hopefully this gives you some basic pointers on how to start organizing the work you do now to align with what buyers are looking for in the future, so that you can start building towards a future successful exit.
Start preparing your Shopify store for sale NOW and let me know how it goes!
Highly praised comments：
C1.
As someone who's following this blueprint but only at year 1 and sales of 13k/month, I appreciate this post. Very well written, informative, and inspirational.
C2.
Damnn this is probably the most well written post I've seen in this subreddit. Thanks so much for this info man really appreciate this !!
C3.
I suddenly have an itch to buy Armenian butt plugs, what in the gorilla marketing advert.
C4.
Wow, great post. Thanks for sharing. I definitely plan to do a full SEO makeover for organic traffic.
C5.
Damn boi, i dont know what the fuck half of those terms mean, and the ones i do know th emeanig of i dont know how to work on that, thanks for showing me what i didnt know i didnt know
C6.
Q：Interesting post, thank you for sharing.
You don't need to give a link or tell the exact product(s) but can you tell us a little about the store you got to $700k?
For "product review outreach", what exactly do you look for or who do you target? Is it blogs? product sites?
Again, thanks for sharing what you did.
A：It’s in the men’s fashion space.
Yes, bloggers who cover the niche you’re in or a related niche. Essentially you’re outreaching to them to review your product > ship to them > they review with contextual link to your product page and home page most of the time.
Some may ask for money, but if your products are quality enough you can just let them keep the product. There are even more innovative versions of that campaign that has more of a virality effect but it’s rather narrow on which niches it can work for.
C7.
Thanks for the reminder about SEO 👍🏻
C8.
Q: So you stacked zero inventory All drop ship correct ?
A: No inventory, correct.
C9.
People are paying 700k for an Armenian butt plug website? wtf 🔌🍑
C10.
Q: Best credible sources to learn more about dropshipping according to you or ones that helped you throughout your journey ? Very well written, i appreciate you handing out free gold nuggets.
A: As cocky as it may sound, I didn’t have sources I learned from. I just dove in and got punched in the face for a whole year until things started to work. I can’t vouch for any courses specifically.
C11.
Q: Tips on product research?
A: Keep products under a single category that are all related to each other. This helps with cross-selling. Don’t try to do multiple categories when starting out.
C12.
pinning to save.
C13.
I read the whole thing because of how entertaining it is. Informative -yes, but so many other posts are. Entertaining ? One in a million. Thanks, man
C14.
I don’t know if i’m inspired by the Armenian butt plugs, the message behind the post or both. But either way, I’m sold! Great post!
C15.
Q: Quality post. Still haven’t had my first exit, but do plan to in the next 1-2 years.
Couple questions:
1- Does updating or switching shopify themes affect SEO rankings? I plan on doing a website makeover in the next month, and want to be sure my organic traffic isn’t negatively affected (Currently doing $3-4k/month organically).
2- I plan on releasing a new version/model of my main product, and discontinue the current (eg 1.0 > 2.0 version). Should i hijack my existing, SEO ranked product page and update it to the new product version, or create a separate product page (with new slug, etc)?
Thanks again for the post!
A: 1. Theme doesn’t matter much. Just make sure the new theme has good architecture and is a step up in terms of UX. Google tracks time on page, so if the new theme causes people to leave your store faster then it will affect your rankings.
2. Hijack the old and insert the new version. Don’t keep dead products on your store as it dilutes your link equity. Just swap them and improve the page more, force re-crawl in search console. Then build a couple links to that product with the strategy I gave.
C16.
Q: What is forced crawling? From context clues I am understanding that you search for specific wording on your website via a search engine to get your site "noticed"
A: In Google Search Console, you force a crawl by searching for a URL on your site you want recrawled. It asks you if you want to submit an indexing request.
C17.
Hey I’m very bad at marketing. I think I have a good store, good niche. I’m DEFINITELY gonna recheck my Keywords bc that’s something I half ignored when setting up. But I really need some help this has been the most useful post I’ve read this whole time trying to learn this.
C18.
Q: A gold mine for beginners, Thank you for this 😊 I have a genuine question, How much time does it take to achieve $1k per day? What realistic expectations should I keep for myself?
A: Pull your head out of the clouds. Try making $100/day first.
C19.
Many people told me to make the posts and story from your website "search-able". If i write in google a single catch phrase and follow it with something (exc. where to buy fake flowers that glow), it will automaticly throw out sites that use that phrase in any tags/sentences on their website.
C20.
Q: How do you find blogs to reachout for backlinks? I’m having a hard time finding blogs that are willing to write about my products.
I know you’re probably exhausted from replying to all these comments, but I’d appreciate it so much if you could help me here!
A: It’s about curating a list that’s related to your niche. Go with path of least resistance, so look for sites that ALREADY have done product reviews that are in the DA10-20 range. A good way to curate the list is using search operators for your keywords + reviews.. on Wordpress driven sites. There are tools to help with that such as Buzzstream.. etc. Or you can find someone on Upwork to make a list for you.
C21.
Q: How do you Aquire vendors or products to sell on your site?
A: Look up wholesalers in your niche or reverse engineer the vendors that competitors use.
C22.
Q: Thanks for this gold info, very valuable for a newbie like me. Would you highly recommend a Shopify store over WooCommerce and if so, why is that? Thanks.
A: I personally hate Woocommerce even though I’m a long time Wordpress user. For commerce I’d stick with Shopify.
C23.
I always wanted to do dropshipping but I keep hearing its dead and long shipping times from Ali Express. I guess the hard part is finding a product that is not saturated which is pretty hard. Man 700K in sales is amazing, I wish I could do that.
C24.
Q: Saw this post late but hopefully you're still in the mood to share. Any tips on finding suppliers, and negotiating a dropship arrangement?
A: Start with the same suppliers the competition has to get traction. Get fancy after that.
C25.
I have to say you just opened my mind in a different direction. My team and I are currently building a store, and now I have an end goal. I need to my brand looks good to customers, and looks great to potential buyers. Thank you for this.
Here are some related articles that may interest you：
1. Here's how to find a "breakout" product
2. Found my first 10k+ winner!
(Should the author find this article objectionable or distressing, kindly reach out to us for its prompt removal.)
How I Did 700K in Total Sales WITHOUT ADS & Sold My Online Business to a Hungry Buyer [Sell Your Shopify Store Yourself]
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