How to Make Money on Shopify: 15 Brilliant Ideas For 2024

Spoiler alert: this article will teach you how to make money on Shopify. 

But why Shopify? First, Shopify's total revenue keeps growing each year and shows no signs of stopping. Second, it’s a very user-friendly platform. Finally, it can suit any kind of business, from a tiny family bakery to a massive mega-corporation selling anything from musical instruments to motorcycles (if you know, you know).

In this article, we will give you 15 ideas for making money on Shopify. Please note that we will only focus on the ideas here, not the implementation. We have plenty of articles on this topic in our blog.

How to Make Money With Shopify

You can monetize your platform in many ways, as Shopify is diverse and provides plenty of opportunities. Whether starting a new business or running an existing one with Shopify, you must address business-related questions. Each business step must have a particular goal and action to succeed. That's why you need to pay extra attention to the following things:

• Checking your business plan
• Testing your ideas before implementing them
• Finding your niche
• Defining your target audience
• Planning your digital promotion
• Checking your website

Doing these things will help your Shopify store make money. Checking everything before you start selling is crucial, so be patient and attentive! 

1. Start a Dropshipping Shopify Business

If you’re a beginner, this is how to get money from Shopify without high initial investments. 

Dropshipping is a relatively hands-off business, and the niche keeps growing. Just last year, interest in it grew by 50%. Unlike a regular e-commerce store, you don’t need to worry about investing in inventory or shipping since the supplier will handle everything. All you have to do is market your products and test what sells.

To start, you have to find the niche you want to be in and look for unique and interesting items that will be popular among your potential customers. It is important to have many goods that fit your niche; the more items you have, the more people will find something for them.

Shopify has a lot of functions that support dropshipping: you can integrate suppliers, manage shipping, and advertise. You can also synchronize your goods with other channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., which allows you to handle your promotion more easily.

2. Develop a Shopify App or Theme

Shops aren’t the only way to earn money with Shopify. You can go meta and create products for other stores on the platform.

Themes are a perfect hands-off way for a busy entrepreneur to quickly set up a store without bothering with customization. If you’ve got a knack for design, you can make about $150–$400 for every template you create. And if you are taking orders for customized themes, the prices range from $2,000–$10,000, depending on complexity.

On the other hand, if you’re more of a coding and programming type, you can opt to create apps for Shopify. The average cost of a Shopify app is $19.14/month. However, many are free, and others have pricing plans reaching hundreds of dollars per month.

Apps can take on a variety of functions. For example, some can help you handle subscriptions better, others help with inventory management, and others can help you configure different widgets. And you don’t even have to make an app specifically for Shopify. Instead, you can integrate an existing app into the store, like we did with Claspo.

Yes, you can install Claspo for your Shopify website from the app store. We are an intuitive and easy-to-use pop-up builder with 700+ ready-made templates for promoting sales, gathering customer information, collecting pre-orders for upcoming items, and much more. But our killer feature is the smart toolkit that ensures a positive user experience on your website, a guaranteed way to increase conversions. 

3. Flip a Store

Building on the previous point, you can go a step further and develop a complete store from scratch or buy and remake an existing one to sell for profit. This is a tad different than building a theme or an app because you’re taking care of the whole business: you pick a name, create designs, build a social media presence, make supply chains, and more. 

Naturally, you don’t have to do all of that, but the more effort you put in, the more return you can expect. And you don’t even have to sell the store if you grow to like it. You can just keep it and make money that way.

But if you do decide to sell it, we know of a good way to instantly increase the value of your Shopify store. With Claspo widgets, you can increase conversion rate, improve sales, and enhance the customer journey on your website. A website with good results, in turn, will be more desirable to potential buyers.

4. Sell Clothes

Many people worldwide sell popular, trendy, unique, handmade, historical, vintage, haute couture, etc., clothes with the help of Shopify. And you can easily join them. If you are an aspiring fashionista, you will enjoy the experience of doing what you love and making money with Shopify. 

Clothing is the biggest niche on Shopify. It is a highly competitive category, so you will need a lot of dedication and relatively high investments to enter this market. However, when it gets rolling, this train just keeps on giving.

5. Shopify Affiliate Marketer

Becoming a Shopify affiliate marketer is another way to make money without selling anything. You can promote Shopify among your audience if you have a website or blog with enough followers or views. And if people buy a Shopify plan following your affiliate link, you'll get a commission. 

The best way to get the most from such affiliate links is to have a target audience interested in buying the Shopify plan. This means the affiliate Shopify link won't bring much profit if you are a musician or art creator who doesn't discuss creating a business or marketing. But if you actively discuss e-commerce-related topics, Shopify might become a nice sponsor.

6. Start Your Own Brand

You’ve probably seen the sea of clothing with fun or not-so-fun prints. You’d be surprised to know that they are actually quite easy to produce and sell. 

A lot of companies offer ready-made solutions for your potential business. You can find a supplier with plenty of different shirts, accessories, and other items you can sell on your website while they produce the actual orders.

Regarding payment, you set the price that includes the cost of the source material, labor, logistics, and your fee. After a person purchases an item, you pay the manufacturer, logistics manager, and your team; the rest is yours. You can collaborate with different designers to create unique prints or let people pick their own.

Developing a client base is one of the primary tasks of a new brand. There are many ways to deal with it, including pop-ups on your website. Claspo is an excellent tool for quickly creating pop-ups and other widgets to help introduce your brand to shoppers and drive sales from day one. Here are just a few ideas:

• Use the Claspo slider to show your unique products as an animated slideshow on the homepage.
• Place a discount promo code for the first purchase on the Claspo pop-up and motivate site visitors to try your products.
• Is there a video on YouTube describing the brand? Add it directly to your widget and let shoppers view it without leaving your website.

7. Market Hobby Products

Selling something that is not popular with everyone might sound like a difficult task. Yes, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone willing to buy dice if they’re not playing any tabletops, but hardcore nerds will pay fortunes for a nice set of math rocks.

If you put your soul into it and show that you’re genuinely passionate and informed about the specific hobby, fans will flock to your store to get what you offer. It is a less competitive but also a more segmented and nuanced niche that is best suited for those looking to engage in their hobbies in a new and interesting way.

8. Create a Local Online Grocery

Many types of stores go online. You can create an online grocery store that has local goods for local people. And if you have your own farm or even a big garden, you can sell your food via the Internet. Many people value natural, eco, and bio foods and will buy from you if you do the marketing right.

9. Digital Products

As the Internet grows and many people consider their lives to be rather minimalistic, you can make money on Shopify by selling digital products or downloads. Consider promoting e-books, apps, NFTs, podcasts, games, etc. You might require a strong team and a solid budget to create such products. 

However, digital products have the same profit potential as physical goods in the long run. The main advantage of digital goods is that they require no recurring costs, such as production and shipping, while storage is much less of an issue.

10. Promote Your Freelance Service

Many people prefer the freedom of freelancing to traditional workplaces. If that’s you, consider promoting your freelance services online with Shopify. It is perfect for writers, designers, illustrators, developers, translators, etc. Basically, if you offer a service that can be done online, you can sell it via Shopify. 

11. Printed Products

As mentioned before, you can work with suppliers that can print pictures and illustrations on clothes and accessories, but there are other things you can print, right?

There is a big demand for anything printed, especially for business owners. Small and big companies need souvenir products that they can hand out to their partners and workers as gifts to raise awareness about their company. 

With Shopify, you can start your print-on-demand business without struggling. You can print on mugs or stickers, books, calendars, cards, and anything else.

12. Sell Art

If you are an artist, you can sell your art online, skipping the intermediaries that require a fee. And as marketing is an art itself, you can promote your creations in different ways and make money on Shopify. Moreover, if you know lots of art creators, you can become the middleman and marketer for these artists.

13. Sell Online Services

You can provide consulting services on different topics, including law, psychology, or schooling. If you are a professional in your field, you can offer classes and teach people the things you know.

14. Represent Your Physical Store

Brick-and-mortar shops are still a big part of our everyday lives. But with the Internet becoming so ingrained in our daily operations, it’s no surprise that physical shops are slowly transitioning to a hybrid format.

There are plenty of advantages to this store format. You can sell to anyone in the world, stay open 24/7, have a much higher traffic, segment your customers for better-targeted advertising, and much more. And the best part is that it costs less money than running your physical store. 

15. Sell Your Shopify Expertise

Last but not least, you can use your Shopify knowledge and skills to make money. In October 2023, Shopify rebranded its previous program, “Experts Marketplace,” to “Shopify Partners.” And you can become one with the right know-how.

The services you can find or offer on the program include marketing and sales services, store setup, copywriting, design, branding, and more.

But you shouldn’t consider this topic if you are just starting. After all, consulting people about something you have not yet mastered would be a terrible business plan.

Conclusion

Starting a store on Shopify is easy if you have the right idea. Hopefully, we’ve made your business journey a bit easier by offering these ideas. Naturally, this list doesn’t cover everything because Shopify lets you monetize anything you can come up with.

To make your path to success easier, check out Shopify apps that can improve your business process and make it run smoother. Consider adding Claspo to create attractive pop-ups with our intuitive builder. With our help, clients have already managed to increase the number of digital product downloads by 48% and boost sales by 19%. Install the Claspo app on Shopify and see what results we will bring to your business!

FAQ

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an online e-commerce platform. In simpler terms, it is a third-party site builder with a user-friendly interface that helps retailers start, develop, and scale their businesses. 

Is Shopify suitable for beginners without technical skills?

Anyone can create a website with Shopify to sell goods or services online. The platform offers easy setup for beginners and robust tools for advanced users, making it everyone’s favorite e-commerce platform.

What are the key features of Shopify that help in selling online?

Shopify simplifies online selling with a user-friendly store setup, integrated payment processing, and comprehensive management tools for products and orders. It boosts business visibility through built-in SEO and marketing features, supported by an extensive app ecosystem and 24/7 customer assistance.

What third-party apps do you recommend?

Claspo! We are proud to be a part of the Shopify platform, empowering merchants to drive business results with our widgets. Claspo offers many killer features for creating pop-ups that convert without annoying users. Our vast library includes over 700 premade templates, and our intuitive drag-and-drop builder makes creating widgets from scratch fast and easy. 

What about the “not annoying” part? Claspo allows you to set a silent interval between displaying pop-ups and automatically prevents them from overlapping, ensuring an exceptional user experience on your website.