How to Get Your First 100 Sales in 2026

[00:03] is one thing and actually having them purchase from your Shopify store is another. And so in today's video, I'm going to break down some strategies, both free and paid methods for you to be able to get people to your store and

[00:17] things that you can do to really optimize and actually get them to make purchase from your online store and in specific Shopify. So, first let's talk about once you have your Shopify store set up, how you can actually get traffic

[00:33] to come to your store. Because when you do post your Shopify store with all of your products and you hit publish, you hit live, and it's out there, it can just going to start randomly coming to your store. And while that can happen

[00:48] where you're going to get the most traffic. The traffic that you really want to have a successful store is going to come from some sort of marketing strategy. And before I say the marketing strategy, I think something on your

[01:03] Shopify store that you should really take a little bit of time to do is to make sure that everything is optimized to the fullest. Now, what I mean by optimized is that everything on your store of what you're selling is going to

[01:15] have keywords in your titles and descriptions. So, if you are selling a Coette bow mug, you need to put as many keywords that are relevant to a Coette mug in your title. Make sure that it says pink bow, coette mug. And then in

[01:31] things about the mug, that it's pink, that it's ceramic, that it's a great gift for people who like Coette things, great gift for college. Utilizing those things that would make sense for your actual product in your description. And

[01:45] a great way to do this now is using chat GPT. I use chatgpt all the time to help me get keyword ideas and really ask it what are search terms that someone would find for this product. It's a really effective way what I've seen to get free

[01:59] traffic because your Shopify store traffic from SEO will come from Google and other search engines like Bing or Yahoo or and I'm sure there's others as well. And as always, when you scroll down on your product page when you're

[02:13] editing, you will be able to see what the first few lines of your listing look like as they appear on Google. So, double check that it makes sense and those keywords. So, that's the first and foremost thing that I can say before you

[02:27] start your marketing is to really make sure that your website is optimized. And I know I've talked about this in a few other videos if you are subscribed here at the channel, but if not, just a bit of a recap with your branding. That

[02:39] your online store because if your online store just doesn't look that great, it's not cohesive, your logo is not nice, your banner or, you know, the product pages, we want to really take the time to make those look good because then

[02:52] every other strategy that I'm about to share with you isn't as relevant. So, towards the end of the video. So, make sure you stay tuned. But just overall making sure that it's good before we

[03:04] start marketing. So, going into a few strategies to get traffic to our Shopify store. One of my favorite ways and is a free way is to use Pinterest. So, so

[03:16] many sellers and people sleep on Pinterest and I really don't understand Pinterest and I really don't understand why. I myself have had so much success using Pinterest for free marketing. Now, I will say Pinterest is not a immediate

[03:29] response for marketing and to get people to your store, but it does work very well and your pins stay around for a long time. Now, for reference, I have had an Etsy shop that I've used for Pinterest marketing and I have pins on

[03:43] there that literally I posted 3 years ago and people are still clicking and coming to those listings from that pin. So, Pinterest works differently than a social media platform. On social media, if you are to post a picture of your

[03:58] product and nobody clicks on it or likes it, it doesn't engage and push it more. Pinterest is treated as a search engine. So, even if people aren't reacting to your pin, sure, it might not get pushed as much as a pin that's being, you know,

[04:11] reacted to a lot, but Pinterest is still going to keep it on there and move it around to relevant searches. And so, that's why I find Pinterest very, very great. And also, not for nothing, it even says on Pinterest that they have an

[04:26] be something in itself to tell you that it's a really reliable method. Now, with Pinterest as well, it's also not as complicated as you would think to create pins quickly. When you do make your pin, you only need a few things. So, the

[04:40] first thing that you need, obviously, besides a Pinterest account, is you will need your mockup photo. So, you already most likely have a mockup photo or product photo for your product. Don't need a video for this. You can take that

[04:53] best mockup photo that you have, the one that you use as the first one. You know, something interesting, not just like a stock mockup. And you're going to want to put that on your pin, right? And then you'll need a title. And you can pull

[05:06] this title directly from your website as long as it has those key words. Or you can also go over to chat GP2 again and type in a bunch of keywords and ask them description. That's a really fast and effective way as well if you don't want

[05:20] to use as much brain power, but make sure that your SEO is good. You can then paste that title and description in your pin. And then the magic here is taking the link from your website product page of that product or just to your website

[05:35] homepage and linking it directly to the pin. Now, once you post this pin, if someone clicks on it after they're just scrolling Pinterest for ideas and inspiration, they click on it, they're going to get redirected directly to your

[05:48] online store, which is an incredible way of marketing and especially because it is free. Okay? So, if you take an hour out of your day, you create 50 pins of your products doing the same process and post them or even schedule them because

[06:03] This is a really great marketing strategy. Now, moving along, another way that is really great to get traffic to your online stores is social media. But with social media, something that I find a bit more complicated about it is kind

[06:18] of, as I mentioned, where if the post does not take off right away, you're not going to see that immediate traffic and it can be harder to build a brand. Social media is also going to require a lot more consistency, if I'm being

[06:31] transparent, than something like a search engine like Pinterest. Now, it business. I'm not going to say that it's not. I'm just saying that it it is going to be more of a consistency thing. You want to make sure that you do your

[06:45] social media page at a time where you can continually post pictures and videos of your products. I don't recommend just starting your Instagram page, posting once a week, and expecting it to grow. It's not a strategy that works with

[06:58] of different accounts, and the main thing is consistency. So the algorithm starts to understand you. Now I feel maybe doing something on Pinterest. However, the virality is, you know, more

[07:14] likely when using a social media app. Now when I say social media, there are a few options. There are, of course, Tik Tok, Instagram, and then Facebook Facebook reels. I have had more experience with both Instagram and Tik

[07:28] transparent. But I know some other sellers have done really great sales be something that you look into to get free traffic that maybe is not as complicated as creating, you know, content for Instagram or Tik Tok. But

[07:44] now that being said, Instagram and Tik Tok also do allow you to post just photo content or photo slides. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be a video, which media not as complicated if you just want to use your mock-ups. And then

[07:59] using relevant keywords in your title and description and your hashtags. And of course, we want to use a Instagram or Tik Tok account that is also branded for our business rather than using our personal just because it's more cohesive

[08:14] if you really want to grow a long-term brand. Now, with all of that being said, I do want to say that I know how overwhelming it can be to jump in and your brain, if your brain works like mine at least, is, you know, you're

[08:29] I'm going to do Tik Tok. I'm going to do Instagram. Then I'm going to do Facebook." That's very overwhelming. So, definitely give yourself some time and you. Are you somebody that's on Instagram a lot? maybe Instagram method

[08:44] understand it, you know trends, you follow a lot of trendy people and you feel you'll be able to make Instagram or if you're kind of up in the air and you recommend starting with Pinterest. But what I would say is to not overwhelm

[08:59] yourself and try to do all three at once because odds are you won't be able to consistent and then it's a waste of time. So, whatever one you do choose to do, pour your time into that and that's where you're going to see that

[09:13] consistency bring you the sales and bring you the traffic. So, when it comes to once we already get the traffic to our site, a lot of times what I've noticed when helping people is that the problem actually isn't as much getting

[09:26] people to the site, it's getting them to purchase. And I think that this falls purchase. And I think that this falls short in people's website abilities of how to build a Shopify store that is effective and converts. And I think that

[09:38] spend more time. And that's why I mentioned in the beginning of the video making sure that we're optimized before we do all these outside strategies. We good and it looks like somewhere that we would buy from. I tell people this all

[09:51] the time. Would you buy from your website? Like really ask yourself, have you gone, you know, go to websites that you buy from? What is it about that website that you like? And then implement that into your store. Does the

[10:04] website have different coupon codes that you can use? Does the website have a live chat that is, you know, something that you can um interact with? Does the website have moving pictures or videos on the homepage? What is it that you

[10:17] like? Is it a color scheme? you can implement those things into your online business because they clearly work for a reason. I think professionalism is something that a lot of, you know, business owners, especially new, just

[10:31] overlook, like they kind of get tired because, yeah, it's a lot to create you've listed all your products, you've done all your mock-ups, yeah, of course, to make sure your website looks good. I would argue that that's the most

[10:44] important part. You know, you can sell really crappy products for high prices if you are showcasing them as valuable. Like it really is true. If your website is beautiful and pristine and maybe your product is just a mug, odds are people

[10:58] will buy that because it adds value having a beautiful cohesive website. And then also implementing different Shopify apps that make your store better and make your store more convertible. And one of those ways that I feel is

[11:13] important is customer support. And I find that a lot of people's websites don't actually have customer support. And people have questions, right? And but a lot of times people won't look for

[11:26] you can offer customer support, it's actually really great for conversions. So the Shopify app that I recommend having on your store for customer support is called Tidio. So, Tidio can help you to automate your customer

[11:41] service. And while it can do this in a few ways, my favorite way is to do this with a live chat. Because if you have a live chat that pops up on your online store, it can really help customers feel connected and can also take some of the

[11:55] time away from you having to answer the questions by automating it completely. something called the Lyro AI agent, which I was so impressed by and have been using on my online store to really help answer questions again that

[12:09] customers may have when they're coming to the shop. And this just takes a few minutes to set up. You just have to sign up for your account on Tidio. And then Shopify store. It just asks you a few questions and then you can start setting

[12:23] up your chatbot. So here's an example of how the Lyro AI agent works. And you know, your customer can ask it pretty much anything. So, let's say we wanted to ask it, "What is your current shipping time?"

[12:36] In just a few moments, it's able to answer that question by using the information that it's synced from my website and anything that I want to put in and give it as a response that it should give. And what I really like too

[12:49] is that it recommends and shows products. So, if I say, "Do you sell mugs?" The chatbot automatically brings up all the mugs that are available and then gives it the clickable link for the customer to go over to that. And this is

[13:03] completely customizable. You can set it up however you'd want. You can also incorporate email and other different actions within here um in the database. So, you'll have to let me know if you want to see a full tutorial of this. But

[13:15] overall, I think it's something that is really, really great. And you can add in all of these different things that you want to for your store. So, see here, I have all the different questions set up and it's able to answer it for me

[13:28] answer every single chat. And then I'm just on my homepage of a website here and I can go over and see how the chat is in the corner, easy, accessible, chat with us. And I can ask it a question or have any of these things here. You can

[13:43] also collect people's emails here if you wanted to. And you can see that it answered the question uh that the customer would have inputed in the chat um just as we set it up. And it uses different AI things, too. So, it starts

[13:56] to understand stuff about your website, which is really nice um based off of different things that customers may ask. I know I always use every chatbot rather customer service. If it's in front of me and I have a question, I'm going to use

[14:09] valuable thing to add to your online store. So, if you would like to try Tidio out, I do have a link in the description for you. But also, Tidio was so kind to give a special code to my audience here on YouTube. So, thanks so

[14:23] much, Tidio. That discount code is going to be money with Mac 20 and it will get you 20% off of your first year using Tidio. So, shout out to them and it is of course, with customer service being very important on our online store, too,

[14:38] and something that I get asked about a lot, along with that, there are so many that, like I said, you can implement onto your store to help you. Whether you want something that is going to offer different bundles or if you want to

[14:52] offer different types of popups to offer discounts, having popups, too, I think, are something extremely valuable. A pop-up is like when you go to someone's website and a little popup comes up and it says, "Hey, would you like x amount

[15:06] off your first order? Enter your email address or your phone number here." These are very valuable because what that can do is when someone inputs their email or phone number to get the discount code that you then provide for

[15:18] them, you now have them on your email list and then you can target them further using email. And email marketing is a whole separate thing that I'm going to make a video about, but it's definitely really valuable and it's been

[15:31] around for a long time for a reason because it works. I do want to talk a little bit about paid methods, meaning ads. And I actually just did a panel discussion or a debate you could say at Printify Amplified about this about

[15:45] bringing traffic to your online stores through paid ads or organic. I'll leave out. It was really cool. I talked with two other really successful sellers. If you find that one of your products is selling really well, maybe um through a

[15:58] Pinterest pin on social media or just on your website, that's a product that would be worth it to start running an ad on, maybe a lowbudget ad. Now, some people prefer to just throw money at a product that they just posted and hope

[16:12] for the best. This strategy can work if you have the capital to do that, but most people starting out in online business don't have that capital. So, if you are going to go with paid ads, first thing I will say is to do more research.

[16:26] Watch more videos talking about paid ads, especially on which platform you'd like to do them. So whether that's Instagram, Facebook, Google, do a little bit of research on that before you throw your money at it. And then what I'll say

[16:40] your money at it. And then what I'll say is to start low budget. So, you know, if you want to start and run an ad on the weekend, because weekend ads do tend to on their phones, they're not working. Uh, that is a time that you can test out

[16:54] ads. You could run it from Friday to Sunday and set your ad budget for, you know, $12 to $15 a day and then you're not really out that much money versus running a monthly ad where you have to commit more money towards that. And not

[17:08] your store. You know, you can put a picture of one of your products and then have the ad bring that customer to your store, but really make sure that you have the budget to do that and understand that with ads, sometimes it's

[17:21] really about data and learning what works. Now, I don't want to knock paid ads, though, because honestly, as somebody that now has capital for them, they work really great. But I have always seen that the ones that perform

[17:33] the best come from content that I've already made of the product. Whether the product or someone, you know, reviewing my product and then pushing that as an ad because I already know that it got traction. So, putting money

[17:46] towards it, it's like not as much as a risk because I already know people were interested in it for that niche. All right, so we have talked about a lot. Hopefully, one of these or all of them were things that you found helpful. I

[17:58] especially a standalone store, rather it can be more difficult to get traffic, but trust me, it's really worth the time and even investment if you are somebody that wants to really grow a brand and

[18:11] you have full control over it. And having your own website is just really, really cool. So, I really hope that this video was helpful. Please let me know if it was. And if there's anything that you have questions on, concerns on, or if

[18:24] you'd like to see me talk more about or even video suggestions, please leave of course, everything I talked about will be linked in the description below, And thank you so so much for watching this video and I hope to see you in the

[18:38] this video and I hope to see you in the next