I’ve been making close to $1000 a month using the Shopify Affiliate Program. In this post, I’ll walk you through the exact steps you need to follow to become a Shopify Affiliate and how much money you can make through the Shopify Affiliate program.
Shopify Affiliate Program
I’m often asked what are my favorite affiliate programs and which am I making the most money from. It depends on the type of products you will promote. I recommend Amazon Affiliates for physical products and Clickbank for digital products. However, one of the highest paying affiliate program that I am making from is the Shopify Affiliate program.
Shopify Affiliate Program
How does it work?
Basically, you earn by promoting the Shopify platform and when they use your affiliate link to join Shopify. Shopify gives you a 200% commission for every person who joins Shopify using your link.
How much money can you make through the Shopify Affiliate Program?
Shopify’s most basic plan is at $29. Shopify will pay you $58 for every $29 worth of plan the customer signs up for. The advanced plan goes as high as $299. When a person uses your affiliate link to sign up for the advanced plan, you get $598 back. This means you could be earning $600 per person when they sign up using your affiliate link.
I have been tracking my progress with Shopify Affiliate program for the past 12-13 months.
To show you how much I’ve made at this time, and to give you an insight on how much you can make, take a look at my Shopify payout screen:
Shopify Payment Screen
Shopify makes payouts to you every two weeks. When I started out, I was getting $29 every two weeks. There have been months where I’ve made $174, $290, $348 and even $666. It starts small and then just grows. It also sort of reflects how Shopify is growing as a platform.
If you are targeting an audience who is interested, Shopify affiliate program can turn out to be very fruitful for you and it can really pay you out some significant affiliate income.
How to join the Shopify Affiliate Program?
Shopify Affiliate Program is completely free to join. You can sign up for theShopify Affiliate program usingthis link. Once you are done, Shopify will provide you with a unique affiliate link. Whenever someone uses your link to join the Shopify platform as an online store or retailer you get a $200 commission payout.
Become a Shopify Affiliate
What I have learned from the Shopify Affiliate Program is that if you are genuinely promoting affiliate products that you are interested in and are passionate about, that’s going to show through. You become successful by creating authentic content to an audience that shares the same interests and passions as you.
Promote good products that you are genuinely passionate about to a passionate audience and you are halfway there to seeing your affiliate success.
If you have made any success using any affiliate program, do let us know in the comments section.
For many of you starting out with Shopify, one of the many concerns is ‘How does Shopify pay you?’. I’ll take you through the process that takes place from the time a customer makes a purchase until the money lands into your bank account. I’ll also be covering different payment providers you can use to accept store payments, the advantages and disadvantages for using each, how long it usually takes to get money to your account and whether the process is automatic or manual. Click on the video link or read on to know more.
Payment Options with Shopify
There are a ton of different payment providers you can use to receive payments. This confuses a lot of people because it seems like a complicated process. If I’m not mistaken, there are over 70 different payment providers. There’s a lot because Shopify’s goal is to cater to everyone’s needs. Wherever you are and whatever type of bank account you have, you are guaranteed to receive money that customers pay you through your Shopify store.
The Process of Receiving Money through Shopify
When you set up a Shopify store, you have to install a payment provider. A payment provider is a company that is responsible for processing payments and for sending money off to your personal account.
Shopify Payments
Shopify has its own payment provider called the Shopify Payments. This is the default integrated payment gateway that you bolt into your Shopify store.
Third-Party Providers
Shopify also lets you integrate third-party payment providers like PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Stripe.
The Step by Step Process
A payment processing period can take a couple of days. The processing period starts from the point the customer provides their card details to the point you get to receive the money in your account.
Step #1 Customer Purchase
The customer pays for the product from the website by giving out his/her credit card information, address along with other personal information to the payment provider.
Step #2 Payment Starts to Process
The payment provider which you have integrated with your Shopify store has to process that payment. The payment provider is responsible for validating payment details like if the customer has money for payment in the bank account or if the credit card payment went through successfully. The process can take a couple of days.
Step #3 Payment lands in Merchant Account
That payment the customer paid lands into your merchant account. It’s not your bank account but a virtual merchant account. This could be your Shopify payment account, your PayPal account or any other virtual merchant account that sits on the internet provided by your payment provider.
Step #4 Money lands in your Personal Account
After the money has been cleared and landed into your merchant account, the next step is to transfer the funds to your personal bank account. Depending on the payment provider you opted to use, this can happen automatically or manually wherein you get to decide when to actually withdraw your funds.
Different Payment Providers to Help You Get Paid on Shopify
The processing period and the choice of whether to manually withdraw your funds or have it sent to a bank account depends on the payment provider. You do not necessarily have to use just one payment provider. This means you can use Shopify payments (which as mentioned earlier is the default) and have a Paypal option(third-party payment provider) on your store as well.
Shopify Payments Gateway
Using Shopify Payments gateway instead of any other third-party payment gateway comes with its own advantages.
Shopify Payments Gateway
No Extra Transactional Charges
Shopify payments don’t charge any additional transaction fee. Third-party payment providers take a transaction fee from every purchase made on your store as handling charges of the credit card payments.
No going Off the Store for Payments
Moreover, the Shopify payment gateway is integrated into your Shopify store. The product is not taken off your store when a customer decides to buy it. They are prompted to fill in the required credit card details and continue to the confirmation screen. Many third-party payment providers require your customers to go off your store to another page to fill in the credit card details for the payment. This can result in loss of sales.
Automatic Transfer of Money to your Bank Account
Another major advantage of using Shopify Payments is that the money is automatically sent to your personal bank account. A customer pays for a product, after a few days of processing, the money goes to your Shopify merchant account and from there directly to your personal bank account. No manual processing required.
Track Financial History
Using Shopify, you can keep a track of your money, how much has been cleared and how much is still pending, all within the Shopify admin panel. You can simply log in to the back end of your Shopify store and get a complete history of your financial payments.
Track Financial History
Limited Availability
All these advantages do come with a little setback. Shopify Payments is only available to stores based in certain countries. If you are outside any of those countries, you’re not going to be able to use Shopify Payments.
These are the countries wherein Shopify payment is available:
United States
Porto Rico
Canada
United Kingdom
Ireland
Australia
New Zealand
Singapore
The payment processing period varies depending on the country you’re in.
If you are in the US, it will only take two days to clear your payments and get them into your merchant account. In Canada, it takes up to three days to process the payments and it takes four days if you’re in the UK. The time ranges from 2 to 4 days. You can find out how long the payment processing period for your country is on the Shopify website.
Once it is in your merchant account, it can take 1 to 3 days to land to your personal account.
Third-Party Payment Gateway
Third-party payment gateway
So, how does Shopify pay you if you aren’t in any of these countries? People who have stores based in other countries can use many of these third-party payment gateways. The payment providers are going to change depending on what country you are based in.
As already mentioned, there are 70 different payment providers that Shopify supports. So, no matter where you are in the world you will have some payment gateway that will help you transfer money to your bank account from the purchases made on your Shopify store. You have two types of third-party payment providers:
Direct Payment Providers
External Payment Providers
Direct Payment Providers
These are third-party payment providers that are integrated into your Shopify store. Using these gateways, your customers don’t have to go off your store to fill in their payment details. Everything happens in your store area on Shopify.
External Third-Party Payment Providers
If you use external payment providers, your customers will be taken off your Shopify store to another page where they enter their card details. Hence, as mentioned earlier, this can reduce trust and result in loss of sales for you.
If you are going to use a third-party payment gateway, you should be using a direct payment provider.
Third-party providers charge a transaction fee for every purchase made on your store. The amount is equivalent to a percentage of the purchased product. These are treated as handling charges. If you are in a country where Shopify Payment is not available, this is a complete disadvantage. Unfortunately, there’s no way to go around it.
Wrap Up
I hope this discussion has clarified any questions you might have on, ‘How Shopify pays you’.
In a nutshell, a customer makes the purchase from the website by filling out his credit card information along with some other personal information. It can take a few days to process and for the funds to land into your merchant account. From there, it can either go to your personal account automatically or manually. Choose a payment gateway that is available in your country. There are Shopify payment gateways or third-party payments you can choose from. If you opt to use a third-party payment, you can decide whether to get a direct payment provider or an external payment provider.
No matter where you are, as long as you put in hard work, time and effort in learning e-commerce, finding a good product that people are going to buy, there is a way for you to make money from an online store.
Are you interested in knowing more about the pricing strategy I used to ride the wave of increase in sales on my 5th month? If so you’ve come to the right place. You can click on the video link or read on below to learn more.
Most of the standard t-shirts come around at $12.87 per shirt. For premium t-shirts, it’s around the mark of $14.87. It definitely goes up for long sleeves sweaters, shirts and for other variations too. I try to find prices that make me no profits but no losses either.
Why do I do that? To get my shirts noticed and bought as soon as possible.
My Strategy To Reach Tier 500
When I was at tier 10, 25 or tier 100, I was purely focusing on increasing my chances of selling t-shirts. My main objective was to get to the higher ranks – reach tier 500 or above as soon as I could.
To do that, I figured customers would want to see my pretty cool designs at such low prices so that right then and there, they can instantly start buying.
The Goal
Simply put, my aim was to get the lowest best selling ranking (BSR) number possible. BSR basically represents how much sales you are making in a day. The lower the number, the better. Amazon rewards those who have the best selling shirts by letting them appear more in the search results. So the lower the rank your t-shirt has, the more visible it is to customers out there. My initial goal was to get a BSR number under 50,000 which is a good indicator that my shirts are selling well.
How And When Do I Price Increase
As soon as I get a sale, I increase the price by $1. If I make a sale at $12.87, I increase it to $13.87. When I make a sale at $13.87, I increase it to $14.87. More or less, you get the point.
I continue with this approach until I reach a limit and stop making sales. By then, I know what my pricing strategy’s sweet spot is. The sweet spot is when I get to make the most sale at the highest possible price. I adjust my pricing to reflect what the sweet spot is and let it be for a period of time.
With this strategy alone, I’ve reached the Tier 500 level, made as much as 270 organic sales, and earned up to $700 profit without any external advertising.
The Cons Of Using This Strategy
Using the strategy made me close more sales and move through the tiers as quickly as possible. I wasn’t earning any profits though.
Like I said, I was pricing my shirts really low and every time I made a sale I slowly increased the price. This also meant that my royalties at the start, during the first 4 months, didn’t have any significant increase.
As you can see below, my earnings in the first 4 months, were all pretty low.
May 2018 Estimated Earnings
Despite this, the strategy was proven effective in increasing my rank, enabling me to reach Tier 500 and earn a considerable amount in my 5th month. It was a quite a long-term investment, but all the efforts paid off by the 5th month.
Alternative Pricing Strategies
I realized after sharing this strategy with my patrons and with various Facebook groups, that there are alternative methods that can be used to avoid having minimal to zero profits in the first few months.
Start High Versus Low
One alternative is to start high versus low and adjust the pricing as needed. In the earlier example, rather than starting at $12.87, start at $19.99. You may not make as much in sales but you get a higher royalty (roughly $5 to $6) in every sale you make. Over a period of time, if you notice you are not making much in sales, then adjust the pricing to a lower amount. You limit the risks using this approach while guaranteeing higher royalty.
Average Pricing
Instead of starting at $12.87 or $19.99, price at $14.99. The price is low enough to potentially get the attention of the buyers but not high enough to turn them off. While most shirts are listed at $18.99 or $19.99 when they see your shirt at $14.99 they’ll be thinking ‘oh I found a bargain here’ and get the shirt. I’m also inclined to be earning as much as $2 for each sale using this method.
That wraps up the Amazon Merch pricing strategy I used and plan on using in the upcoming months. If ever I come across a new and comparatively better process, I’ll definitely let you know.
What pricing strategy do you use on Merch by Amazon? Do you use the same as mine or do you use a completely different strategy? Do let me know in the comments section below.
If you’d like to know more about how I started and learn from my mistakes, download my Amazon Merch Getting Started guidehere.
You might be wondering why are chrome extensions important for Amazon Merch. Check out my video or scroll down to the rest of the article to learn more.
When I started using Amazon Merch, I had a lot of problem digging through the tools that could possibly be useful for speeding up my progress, leveling up my tier level and making a considerable number of sales.
There’s a ton of information out there on the internet and it took me a while before I could come up with a workflow. I came across some very interesting Amazon Merch Chrome extensions that actually worked for me.
Amazon Merch Chrome Extensions I Use
These are the extensions I use when doing my research or uploading items to Amazon Merch.
DS Amazon Quick View is a productivity extension which adds ranking and sellers to the Amazon website. DS Amazon Quick View displays the Best Seller Ranking (BSR) number Amazon has assigned to an item.
Why would you need the BSR number? You can use it to find niches, designs, and topics that are selling well on Amazon.
DS Amazon Quick View
When the BSR number is low, it means the item is selling well. When it is high, it means the items are essentially not making any considerable number of sales.
DS Amazon Quick View allows you to use the BSR numbers to lock down which shirts are selling well. You can make sales by focusing your designs on that particular niche.
To have an idea of what people are looking for, search niches with low BSR numbers. The next step is to add more designs in that category. Avoid copying any of the stuff. Be creative and come up with your own designs.
Apart from knowing which items sell using the BSR number, you might also want to look into the keywords that were used to rank in that particular niche. AMZ Suggestion Expander lets you do just that. Here’s how:
On the Amazon homepage, type a word related to the item you’re thinking of selling. Let’s say Croatia. AMZ Suggestion Expander will then let you know the keywords/phrases that people use when they search for that item. You can find out which keywords people used before (red column) and after (green column) your search keyword (Croatia). You will also see the default alternatives that Amazon comes up with. This gives you plenty of ideas on what keywords to use in your listing.
When you have a significant volume of shirts added to Amazon, it’s quite hard to search for a particular item you’d like to do some edits on. You may have to go through several pages before you can get to that one item. Under such circumstances, Merch Tools comes in handy.
Once you have Merch Tools installed, you can click on Merch Tools extension, go to quick editor then type in a keyword in the search bar to locate the item you’d like to do some edits on, make the amends and save it. You’re done! It’s that easy. This extension has saved me tons of time and effort in my experience of using it.
The final Amazon Merch Chrome Extension that I use when I’m uploading shirts is Merch Buddy. This is one of my favorite extensions. There are quite some features in Merch Buddy but, to make the long story short, the best feature is the fact that it speeds up your upload process.
When you are in tier 100, you can upload 25 shirts a day. When you are in tier 500, you can do 50 a day. If you are doing all that manually, uploading items one by one, it’s going to take a long time to upload all the items.
What Merch Buddy does is, it lets you copy and paste text from the previous listings. So, if you have 10 variations of the same design, say a sweatshirt, a hoodie, one for men, one for women and so on, you can copy and paste the product details using Merch Buddy Chrome extension.
Merch Buddy
Merch Buddy literally adds these Copy and Paste buttons to your Add product Details page and makes it so much easier for you. This speeds up your process 10-20 times. It only takes me a couple of hours to upload my 50 shirts in a single day.
You can get this extension for $30. It’s the only one in the list that is not free but it’s probably the most valuable one out there.
These four Amazon Merch Chrome Extensions are what I’ve used to speed up my process of adding my listings to Amazon. These have worked wonderfully for me in terms of saving time in research and uploading my products to Amazon. This is exactly how I got to tier 500 and sold 272 shirts last month.
To everyone who is reading this, stay motivated! Stay committed and you’ll see the results. I had four months of pretty low results on Merch by Amazon but it shot up last month. Stay consistent and you’ll see the results. Keep working. All you need is patience, motivation, commitment, and consistency.
Have you got any chrome extensions you use yourself that you found really valuable in progressing through Merch by Amazon? Let me know in the comments section.
If you’d like to learn more about starting up with Merch By Amazon, then download the free Amazon Merch Getting Started guidehere.
Merch By Amazon has rolled out some changes in 2018 that are going to help you sell more shirts. If you want to know what these are and how it helps you make more sales, click on the video or read on below.
What Is Amazon Merch?
Amazon Merch is an online platform created in 2015. It was created by the company Amazon Inc, in the USA, which allows designers and creatives from all over the world to sell textile products, specifically branded t-shirts, with their own designs, produced, sold and shipped by Amazon. Content creators are entitled to royalties or certain profits for every T-shirt sold.
2018 Features To Watch Out For
2018 promises to be a fantastic one for content creators on the platform. Amazon has rolled out exciting new features to help you experience better shirt sales in the quickest possible time.
I’m going to share with you some new exciting features I’ve noticed on Merch by Amazon. If you can adequately exploit the opportunities they offer, these latest changes can prove to be game changers.
Daily Uploads
For those familiar with the platform, we already know that Amazon Merch has a Tier system in place (Tier 10, 25, 100, 500 and PRO).
When I started using this program as a Tier 10 content creator, I was limited to one shirt upload a day. When I moved up to Tier 25, the number of shirts I can upload should have been limited to 2 shirts a day. However, I received a notification from Amazon Merch that they have increased the limit. Hence, they’ve given me the luxury of a 5 shirt upload instead. Even better, when I moved up to Tier 100, I was allowed to upload 10 shirts a day. This was double the previous quota, which was 5 shirts a day.
The improved feature of Merch by Amazon has given content creators the opportunity to scale up their businesses, boost sales and level up as fast as possible. It’s all about numbers on the Amazon Merch platform. The more designs you have out there, the more sales you are likely to make. With each Tier, you now have more shirt uploads per day, compared to what was previously offered.
Quick level up
Prior to the Merch by Amazon 2018 update, to move from one Tier to another, the required number of shirt sales to close were higher. For instance, there should be at least 10 shirt sales in order to move up from Tier 10 to Tier 25. There’s a need to close 25 shirt sales if the goal is to move from Tier 25 to Tier 100.
The good news is that all this has changed with the Merch by Amazon 2018 update. I was able to move up from Tier 10 to Tier 25 by making just 6 shirt sales. By March, I was able to jump from Tier 25 to Tier 100 by making just 11 shirt sales.
It doesn’t just end there. A lot of content creators out there are doing even fewer shirt sales and scaling up quicker than ever. We’ve seen people move up to Tier 100 after making 3 – 4 shirt sales. Others have also been known to reach Tier 500 after making 50 – 60 shirt sales rather than 100.
As you may have noticed, Amazon Merch is really bringing down the requirements needed to move up the Tier ladder. This allows more content creators to unlock strategic features that can aid them in boosting passive income.
Shirt lifetime
Amazon Merch is programmed to take down any uploaded shirt which fails to make a sale after 90 days (3 months) of upload. It is seen as a nuisance on the platform.
In the Merch by Amazon 2018 update, the shirt lifetime has been increased to 6 whole months! If your shirt doesn’t sell in the 3rd month, you have an opportunity to make sales in the 4th or 5th month before Amazon Merch decides to pull it out from the marketplace.
This increase in shirt lifetime is no doubt, a great way to give content creators a better chance of making sales and being successful on the platform.
Hoodies and Sweatshirt
I was only allowed to sell T-shirts and long sleeve T-shirts from January to April. I was allowed to add hoodies and sweatshirts to my designs when I reached Tier 100.
Now, the Merch by Amazon 2018 update allows content creators to add hoodies and sweatshirts to their designs no matter what Tier they are on. It increased the number of products that can be offered to customers as a result. It also boosts the potential to make a greater income.
Wait Time
If you’ve been following my channel for quite a while, you know that I submitted my application to Merch By Amazon in December 2016. It was only in December 2017 that I got approved. These days the wait time to get approved has decreased. Some are getting approved as early as within the week of application submission.
Merch by Amazon is continuing to improve its features and making changes to enhance the experience.
Check out my YouTube channel and subscribe to know more about Amazon Merch. You can also like and share this blog post with those you think might benefit from it.
