 Hey, what's up guys, welcome to a new video. So today then I'm going to show you eight different things that everybody should be doing before they start selling on Shopify. Probably because then a lot of these points, they're going to save you some heart rate down the line. They're going to save you some money. And more importantly, they're going to save you some time. So if you haven't started selling on Shopify before, make sure you stay tuned for every single point. Even if you have started selling, I can guarantee there's going to be at least one point on this list that you haven't considered before. So make sure you stay tuned because there's something for everyone in this video. Before we jump into it, though, I just want to very quickly mention, as always, I am giving away a free one-to-one consultation call in this video. So chats for me and you then to have a chat one-on-one on Skype or however you choose. And you can ask me whatever you want then about your dropshipping business. So for example, then yesterday's one-to-one winner, all we did was go through his store one-on-one and I just gave him half a dozen points to work on. So if that is the kind of thing you want the chance to win, it's dead easy to do. All you simply have to do is like the video and leave a comment down below. Tune into tomorrow's video where the winner will be announced. And with that being said then guys, let's get straight into today's video. So point number one then is set up a company or at the very least, I recommend setting up a separate bank account. So one of the most popular questions I get asked is, do I need to set up a company before I actually start selling? And in short, the answer is no, you don't have to. However, depending on what your circumstances are, setting up a company may be the best thing to do. And then the reason being for this then or at least certainly in my circumstances and my situation, there's two main advantages for me doing so. Number one is financial. So currently in the UK now, corporation tax is 20% and I believe it's about to be reduced very soon or at least next year. And at the moment as well for what the current tax rate is for dividends, then for how much I pay myself, it actually turns out financially better to pay myself through a company like I do. Now everybody's circumstances are going to be individual. I'm not given financial advice in this video. Ultimately, the advice I give in recommendation to this point is to seek your own financial advice as everybody's circumstances are going to be different. Now the second main reason for me setting up a company every time I open a new store is purely because when you set up a new company, essentially you're setting up a new legal entity, which then separates you from that. So should that company become liable for a significant amount of money it has to pay, then the company is liable and not me myself. Whereas if I was operating as a sole trader or I believe it's called a sole proprietor in the US, then any debts or any monies that have to be paid would be have to be paid by me. So any assets, any cars I own, any property I own, I could be forced to sell those in order to pay that money if I can't afford to do so. So they're kind of like the two main reasons. But like I mentioned earlier, whatever you do, the best thing to do is seek advice from an accountant, which you can usually pick up for free. Certainly in my local area, there are a couple of different firms that are willing to do free 20 minute consultations over the phone. So whatever questions you have, you can put to them. So anyway, that's point number one then moving swiftly on to point number two. I don't want to make these videos too long. I just want to make them to the point and as much information as possible. Number two then so is have money or a credit card for fulfillment of orders only. So make sure you set aside X amount of money or have a credit card that you have available to yourself so you can afford to fulfill orders. If you do go down the route of getting a credit card, make sure you stay strict with it and only use it for covering the cost of your orders because at least then that way you know there's enough money coming in the door to then pay off that debt, which you're going to be accruing on your card. Now the reason I've put this in there is just because I've spoken to a few people before who have started drop shipping businesses. One of the attractions to doing so is you don't need a lot of money to start it, which is great. But you need to have money to fulfill your orders. There's no good having orders come in the door than having to wait for the payouts before you can actually process them orders. The delivery times aren't great as they are having to wait a week, which is what the strike payouts are before you can actually place the order itself with a supplier is only going to result in having upset customers. So just make sure you have X amount set aside to pay for those orders when they initially come in. Number three then, which is one of the most important points I'm going to mention in this video, which is get feedback on your store before you start spending on Facebook. Purely because it doesn't matter how good your product is, how good your ads are. If you've got a dodgy looking store, a rubbish, poor quality, unprofessional looking store, it doesn't matter how much traffic you drive to it. Nobody's going to buy your product. To give you an example then, I had a one to one with somebody either last week or the week before and they'd spent six grand on ads and they'd seen, I think it was something like 10% of what they'd spent on ads they'd seen in sales, which is just a crazy, crazy loss. So rather than actually focus on Facebook ads, which they wanted to do so, we went right back to the beginning, had a look at his store and he made some fundamental mistakes that he wasn't aware of and we were able to correct those mistakes. So he has a better foundation for moving forward. I can't stress this point enough before you start spending money on Facebook, post your, ask people in Facebook groups if they'd be kind enough to do it. Certainly, you can join my group. It's 100% free and you're bound to get some feedback in there. The people are pretty active. They're more than willing to help each other out. So just make sure you get some kind of feedback before you start spending money on Facebook. Number four then, also an extremely important point, certainly one to consider if you don't want to get sued. I see it time and time again within the fashion industry, within the fashion niches where Chinese suppliers being in China, if somebody tries to sue them, there's no chance in hell they're going to get hold of them. They'll just go underground, shut their store down and open up as a different name. Whereas, if you're in the UK, if you're in the US, then it's going to be more difficult to dodge and you shouldn't even attempt to dodge it because there's just so many different legal, legal, pre-percussions that you just want to avoid that whole situation to begin with. So avoid any product images with models. So just to give you an example then, all I've done was go to women's clothing and you can see now if it's a Chinese model, then there's a slimmer chance, the chances are they've just got one of the girls in the factory or in the office to do so, but you'll clearly see some of these products have the chance that could be some sort of Instagram influencer. It could be some model from a modeling agency wearing a particular piece of clothing and if they catch you using their images, then they will sue you and they will try and extort money from you. People do this as a full-time living. They will take pictures like this, distribute them across the internet and literally just spend the majority of their time trying to find the people who have used their images, sending them pre-written emails or pre-written letters, asking them for money basically. I saw it in a Facebook group recently. Somebody had received one of these letters saying from a company saying you used our images, we want to pursue legal action, but to make this go away and to resolve the issue, then just send us $4,000 and it's quite a frightening thing to receive. So just make sure you cover yourself, be safe and if needs be, just ask your supplier where they got their images from. It's a dead easy thing to avoid and yet something that could potentially save you a lot of stress and a lot of money. Moving on to the next point then, number five is check if you're working with a manufacturer or a trade company and this can be difficult to do on AliExpress. On Alibaba, it's really easy because they have to say so, but on AliExpress they don't. So one of the easiest ways to do it, I've got a couple examples to show you guys, is look at the products on the store. So for example then taking this store as an example, they're called Dear Beauty Store. So to me that doesn't really strike some kind of branded name. If we look at the products, the products are all random. There's no branding to them. If there is a product that's branded, it's not universal through the store. So what that would tell me is these guys are buying tons of different beauty products from different manufacturers and then advertising them as a store on AliExpress. Now it's not the end of the world if you do work with a trade company. All it means is just bear in mind that they aren't the manufacturers. So if they run out of stock, they then have to go back to the manufacturer and if their manufacturer is busy and this trade company is a small time company, they might have to wait four to six weeks. So if it's a product you can't easily source somewhere else, then you're going to be in trouble. Also you have to keep in mind is that with these companies, they're obviously having to put on their margins as well. So they may be more expensive than if you can actually find a manufacturer of the same product. When it comes to spine and manufacturer then generally it's a lot easier to do. For example then if we have a look at this store here, we can see it's called Raise Me Up Official Store. The fact they've stated and called themselves an official store is a good sign. But then if we just take a look at the kind of products they're selling, you can see all the images are branded with their logo and all of their products are called Raise Me Up and then the name of the product or at least Raise Me Up and then they've put the keywords in there to try and rank in the search ranking. So to me this would hint the fact that they're all kind of similar styles, similar shapes etc. It would hint to me that these guys are actually manufacturers. So number one you'll probably struggle to find the exact same shoe on another store and number two if you did then you probably won't be able to compete with these guys prices because they're probably the manufacturer. Moving on to number six then guys, which is having a domain and an email to match. So if you're still if you're trying to advertise a store that finishes with .myshopify.com I think you're really going to struggle. At the same time if in your contact us page you're having it at gmail.com or anything that doesn't match your domain then to a customer it hints that you're not very professional and that could be enough to put people off. So my solution to this problem then is get a G Suite account. Now setting up a G Suite account it can be a bit tricky however if it's something you might want a video on make sure you leave a comment down below and if there's enough people voting for the same thing I'm more than happy to produce a video on it. Moving on to number seven then coming into the last couple which is run a page likes engagement campaign to your page to build up the likes to build up the social proof before you start advertising your product. So just to give you an example then here we are inside my ad manager account if you just choose engagement as the marketing objective and then down here you've got these different options you can see you can choose page likes which is essentially going to tell Facebook I want you to go out there show my ad to people who are most likely to actually click on my Facebook page and like it because I can't stress the importance of this enough really because the more likes you have then the more likely people are to trust you if you think about all the big companies all the big celebrities why do people trust them why do people like them it's because so many people follow them so many people endorse them so many people buy into them so the more likes and engagement you can have on your page then the better and then just to finish off this point as an optional extra however I do recommend it certainly if you've got the time to do so is create some decent content to put on your social media pages before you start running ads if a customer comes across your ad and they want to check you out to make sure you're legit and trustworthy if they go into your Facebook page and the last post on your Facebook page was so-and-so change their profile picture or so-and-so change their cover photo in my opinion it doesn't look very professional so put some decent content on there like running a certain competition for a free product it could be linked to a blog post it could be some sort of funny meme just something that looks professional and is going to entice a customer to like your page yourself and actually trust you moving into the final point then guys one of the most important in fact which is mindset and expectations so I'm only going to quickly mention on this because I could do a whole video on the topic but all I want to say then is just don't be unrealistic with your expectations just try not to get wrapped up in the hype of social media and believing everything you see you've got to have realistic expectations and you've got to have a strong mindset there will be failures there will be things that you wear you don't know what to do that you'll just have to go through and it'll be a painful learning experience where it'll cost you money it'll cost you time it'll probably cost you many sleepless nights it happens to me it's going to happen to you just stay strong-willed and just remember why you're starting a dropshipping business in the first place and have those ultimate and bigger goals at hand in terms of expectations if some if you what you see online is not always going to be the truth so don't be dishand if you don't replicate their results again it comes back to mindset have a strong mindset have realistic expectations and try not to rush things have three month goals six month goal 12 month goal if you have those long-term goals then it will force you not to rush into throwing up a store in day one coming up with some products in day one running Facebook ads in day one take your time do it properly and trust me when you achieve those goals you want to achieve it will be worth it that's one thing I can guarantee from this video is that when you get to that point that you've always wanted to get to from the very beginning then it will 100% be worth it no matter how much money it's cost you how many sleepless nights how much time it's cost you it will always be worth it and with that being said then guys with that little motivational speech at the end I hope you enjoyed it I hope it motivates you to go out there now put some more hours into your business don't get dishand just keep doing what you're doing and if you want more information more detail make sure you check out the links in the video description below I've put together like five free ebooks 100% free they've got some really good feedback as well so make sure you head down there and check them out otherwise if you commented on my previous video let's get into announcing the winner of that first one-to-one consultation call so this is the previous video then guys if you've been running $5 facebook ads and I thoroughly recommend you go and check it out it's had some really good feedback with it having 75 likes so a massive thank you I can't thank you guys enough seriously the channel support has been pretty incredible like never when I started a youtube channel did I think I was going to get to 7000 subs so thank you very much if you haven't subbed yet please do make sure you hit that subscribe button less than 50% of the people that watch this are actually subscribed to my channel so make sure you subscribe for weekly videos anyway let's take the video URL then head over to the random comment picker and let's see who the first winner of august is going to be this year so 37 unique comments thank you to everybody who has entered and the winner of the previous video then is sociable sam so thank you very much sam for your comment make sure you reach out on instagram and we can get that call arranged and guys I can't thank you enough for watching if you enjoyed the video please do make sure you hit that like button if you want a chance to win a one-to-one call in tomorrow's video make sure you leave a comment on this one and of course make sure you check out the links in the video description below there's some pretty cool free ebooks there you can download and some other things for you to check out and with that being said then thanks again for tuning in and I'll see you in the next one