Why Bloggers Make Great Shopify Ecommerce Sellers

The Shopify platform allows you to build an ecommerce website using a technology concept referred to as "What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG).

Via WYSIWYG you edit your site to create a unique homepage, product pages, blog posts, and other pages like the About Me page. The editing system is not overly complicated and it has enable millions of non-coders to manage websites effectively.

And Shopify has fantastic tutorials to help you at every step of the journey.

Learning Website Basics

But using WYSIWYG functionality is a trade skill that does take time and talent. I call all of the skills associated with this topic the website basics. These are things you need to learn to operate a site effectively. They include:

• Making draft pages, reviewing them, then publishing them
• Text size and placement
• Image size and placement
• Linking to other sites, products, and posts
• Embedding items from other sites like contest widgets
• Using add-on tools from 3rd party providers. These are called "Apps" on Shopify, and "Plugins" or "Widgets" on blogs

You Can Never Fully Outsource The Basics

Just as with the ecommerce basics mentioned in the prior chapter, website basics are important to learn.

I've noticed over time that lots of people want to have an ecommerce website, but want to immediately "opt out" of the website basics work. Their first question is,

Can I just hire someone to do the basics?

That mentality can be a predictor of bad things to come. Of course, if they ask that question on Facebook, then some "know it all" will respond by saying, "yeah, just go to fiverr.com and hire someone really cheap, or get a VA."

Yes, you can hire a Virtual Assistant from the Philippines, or someone off of Fiverr.com to do basic things for your website.

But if you don't know how to manage them, or what to tell them to do, how will they know what you want?

Additionally, I don't know about you, but I don't particularly like the idea of giving the keys to my livelihood to strangers. Most people who give the "find someone on Fiverr" advice make little to nothing via their ecommerce website - I've never heard a veteran ecommerce website manager give that advice.

It's like having a service repairman come into your home and snoop around while you're not there. I don't care for that much.

Hiring Real Talent

Of course the real answer to the question depends on how much money you have and how well your business is doing. Money helps.

If you have plenty of money because your new ecommerce website is dispensing cash faster than a broken ATM machine, then of course you can hire someone to do the website basics. Scale up, build your team and include someone with that duty. That's awesome - you're a mogul.

Or you can find and work with a trusted partner for the long-term as a contractor. Finding an ecommerce pro that can help manage your site is helpful because it allows you to pay them as a contractor, avoid payroll costs, and quickly start, stop, or modify the arrangement based on finances.

At my consulting company, Online Selling Team, we work with business owners like this in three core areas: Ecommerce, Social Media, and Paid Advertising. So we cover the basics for sites we manage, but it's always best if the business owner knows the basics too.

If you don't have mad money - then you need to learn the website basics yourself. And maybe that's a good thing.

My point is simple. Even if you hire someone - you still have to serve as the manager of that duty and ensure it is done at a professional level.

For all of these reasons, we've found that people who have taken the time to learn website basics will be able to quickly apply those skills to Shopify.

If you launch into a Shopify site without knowing the website basics - you'll spend a lot of time learning them. Your focus on the ecommerce basics, and the Primary Site Hypothesis work will suffer until you get good at these entry-level skills.

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Grateful for the chance to be of help,

Jason & Kyle