Hi everyone,

Firstly, thanks

After my post yesterday here, I was overwhelmed with words of encouragement and pm's saying thanks. No really, thank you. I took a wealth of first hand experience from Reddit to begin with so glad to put back into it.

In pm's I was asked for advice on peoples stores which I didn't feel comfortable dishing out. I come from a background in web dev so always happy to comment on the look and feel of the site, but on the business itself, I wouldn't want to lead people down the garden path being so new myself.

I was asked a lot on where I went to get reliable information when starting out. I should have included this in the initial post, but it was already a novel in itself. Returning today to shoot a few links which I found incredibly honest.

Some may argue there is bias in links given below, and yes I agree there is, in this line of business we're in almost everyone has an agenda, but doesn't stop their information being useful. Just sift through the BS and you'll be fine.

Useful Links

Wholesale Ted - The dropshippers version of overly attached girlfriend. She IS affiliated with Shopify but she is not one of them douchey influencers who promise 6 figures. This video in particular is an absolute must. She had an incredibly likeable persona with a friendly take on difficult subjects.

Orbelo - Yes I know they have an agenda, but theirs is based on your performance so they actually want you to succeed. I found their video on budgeting pretty realistic and honest. They also have a few good videos on how to launch ads with Facebook.

Google Ads - I was fortunate enough to have a 30 minute conversation with a Google Ad advisor, this is the norm after running ads for a couple weeks, they reach out to you. She gave me a link which assisted on keywords and I was blown away with the contrast in before and after results. Smart campaigns may seem easier, but it is based off machine learning and usually swallows up your budget whilst doing so.

Moz - The link provided in the first section requires moz, they have a free first month trial and that is honestly all you need. For the love of god don't forget to cancel if you have no intention of using beyond the month, it costs a pretty penny! They give insights into low competition keywords for SEO and believe me, you're going to want to pick the low hanging fruit on this. Also provides other features such as on demand site crawls. I get 20ish people per day organically, which isn't much but I attribute it to this tool.

Reddit (ofc) - If you are not sure if you're being fed BS in an article or video, check with Reddit. It tends to speak candidly on such topics and the best subreddits for this are r/dropship, r/reviewmyshopify and r/shopify.

Edit: Noticed this site after my first post, they are affiliated with Shopify but are also quite transparent about it. A bunch of easy to digest blogs here, one of the best posts I saw were about product descriptions. I took great value away from it and re-wrote all my descriptions yesterday.

Avoid

Anyone that is pushing a course to buy or are promising a 6 figure result are quite frankly liars. Yes these people do exist but they are not selling courses on youtube, they are running a 6 figure business! Don't buy into this dream,it is complete and utter BS. Expect first month perhaps the second with few sales and be prepared to put in 16 hr days to start with.

When you ask a question here (or Shopify community), do watch out for the cockroaches (god I hate these guys) who will pm you telling you your entire site is trash and you need to pay them to help you, DON'T DO IT, always get a second and a third opinion.

Finally

Please note: I am not in any way shape or form affiliated with any of the above, just highlighting a good experience with their content.

Again, apologies for the wall of text, I hope people can take value from it and thanks once again for the words of encouragement in the earlier post, it was overwhelming.

^(If I have missed anything, feel free to pm me unless you are one of the mentioned cockroaches trying to sell me a service, then don't.)