Shopify Secrets That Made Us Millions (Episode 151)

👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here: https://dropshipunlocked.com/online-event?el=podcast-151-shopify-secrets-that-made-us-millions


🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley pull back the curtain on the Shopify secrets they’ve used to generate multiple millions in revenue through high-ticket e-commerce. Instead of chasing trends or overcomplicating things, they reveal the timeless strategies that consistently deliver results for them and their students.


👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️https://youtu.be/RnQCdgHwBOg


Topics Discussed:
★ Simple Scales, Complex Fails: Why keeping your business model simple leads to long-term success.
★ Evergreen Niches: The power of choosing products with consistent demand over trending “fads.”
★ Authority Builds Trust: How positioning yourself as a specialist in your niche makes customers buy from you—even at higher prices.
★ Traffic That Converts: Why sending buyers directly to your product pages is the fastest way to generate high-ticket sales.
★ Avoiding Distractions: How to resist shiny apps and tactics that only add complexity and hurt profitability.


Links and Resources Mentioned:
Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle


Key Takeaways:
★ Keep It Simple: The most profitable stores are built on simple systems that scale, not complex setups.
★ Choose Evergreen Products: Avoid chasing trends—long-term niches provide stable, consistent income.
★ Position Yourself as an Authority: Customers trust specialists over generalists, especially for high-ticket items.
★ Focus on Buyer Intent: Drive the right traffic straight to product pages where people are ready to buy.
★ Data Beats Guesswork: Use niche validation and demand analysis to build on solid foundations.


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★★★ Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith ★★★
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Transcript

0:00

After generating multiple millions in Shopify sales. Now I can safely say that I succeeded because I there's one thing that. Makes people instantly trust your store and. That is because that is what actually converts clicks into high ticket sales. But I soon realised that what I had been taught was completely false. The reason we've scaled to millions isn't because we did more, is because we welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Dropship Unlocked and with me is our client success coach, James Eardley. Now, when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com forward/start. Now sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. Today, Lewis and I are going to pull back the curtain on some of the Shopify strategies that we've used over the years and our members have used to generate millions in revenue. So we don't want to just highlight tactics that maybe they work back in the day but don't work now. We're talking about timeless foundational secrets to Shopify success that have worked for us and will work for you if you're building a E commerce business today. So Louis, let's dive straight into it. What is the first secret behind how we built our high performing Shopify stores? Yeah, I think simple scales is really what it comes down to. We don't overcomplicate things and it really is that simple. And it's easier said than done to keep things simple because the tendency is actually that complexity just kind of breeds more complexity. But to give you some examples of what are the ways in which we can keep things simple to make our lives more enjoyable Once we have our e commerce businesses up and running, the first would be to choose an evergreen niche. What I mean by that is something that people will always need. So we're not trying to ride the wave of a trend or do something that is hot now but might just not be around tomorrow and dies out in six months time. We want something that's here to stay if we want a sustainable business that will pay us for many, many years to come. The next part is not trying to create our own demand for products. Just because we like a product doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to create for a great business. Focus instead on buyer intent. So if we can Sell products that people are already searching for, not stuff that you have to convince them that they may want is going to make things a lot easier down the line and a lot cheaper for you to be able to generate those sales. And then all of this is underpinned by data. It's something we talk time and time again about. But let data guide your validation. You don't need to guess throughout this process. You can use Google search and tools like Key Keywords Everywhere and ubersuggest to test demand properly before you go into a niche. So I think those are some of the key things I'd start with in terms of keeping it simple. Yeah, super important, simple scales. And then the opposite of that is that complex will fail. And not to mention how much more enjoyable it is when you set something up that once you've chosen a niche, once you've built a store, you know, you haven't got to repeat that process again in another few months time. If you built it around a product, that's just a trending hype. They think about fidget spinners that were massive maybe five years ago, and then there was hype about jumping on the bandwagon to sell those. But the problem with that is, yes, you might make a little bit of quick cash in the first two months, then you've got to refine the next hot trending product. And it will be exhausting to keep doing that and find winners every time. Whereas the way we've done it, Lewis, we've built businesses, we found a niche upfront that we know is going to have demand for the long term. And so we don't have to keep reinventing the wheel or keep building a new store. My store has been built now for four and a half years. It still spits out consistent income every year. And I haven't got to keep rebuilding it in order for it to do that. So why do you think simple so important? Just to dive into that a little bit deeper. Why do you think businesses that keep things simple rather than having to reinvent things are ultimately doomed to fail? Well, yeah, because they're future proof. They've thought about the foundations or they've thought about their future at a foundational level and they've, you know, you can learn from our mistakes. We've both overcomplicated things, things within our business and later on had to almost like contract back to a point where it was simple again. And it continually reminds you that it's actually quite hard to make sure that you keep things simple because you have to Tune out all of the distractions along the way and all the shiny apps and all the shiny trends and all these new fancy ad platforms that everyone talks about and actually just say, well, what's the ultimate goal? Do I want to be a jack of all trades that has all the apps, that tries all the ad platforms but earns little money or. Or do I want to be someone with a sustainable, fairly boring business? You know, I like boring businesses because they just continually churn out profit and they work and they're consistent and they are simple and so really, yeah, that's what it comes down to. It's. It's having that almost self discipline as an entrepreneur to not have to tack on all of the shiny bells and whistles to every time one gets released. So that's probably what it comes down to, I think. 100%. Yeah. And it takes a discipline. It's so easy to tack on things that you think a great idea in the moment, but really you just realise that you're adding debt to the business in that you've then got more things to go wrong effectively. So that's why we have one niche that we choose up front. We have one ad platform that we predominantly focus on, which is Google Ads and we have retargeting campaigns that feedback to that main acquisition channel and even right down to the fact that we focus primarily through one campaign. It's all because we want to keep things simple and we know which levers to pull to scale. Rather than thinking about 10, 20 different plates we've got to spin at the same time. And it's really what worked for me, especially with no e commerce background. I really didn't want to have to keep finding new trillion products and become an expert at that every few months. Now we have dived into and we've gone through the whole process of how we choose products to sell upfront in previous episodes because it really does underpin our model of high ticket E commerce. So if you want to queue up episode143 after this one, I'd highly recommend it because that's all about how to choose high ticket products that will actually sell and it's got their process covered step by step. Okay, Louis. So simple clearly scales. That's what we build our business on top of. What would you say is a second secret that's helped you stand out and perhaps build trust quickly in the market even if you're competing against much bigger retailers? Well, when you keep things simple and you select a niche that's well defined and in Constant demand. It allows you to then become a specialist within that area. And that's a game changer when it comes to like customer support and service and making sure that your customers get a great experience. So by niching down at the beginning, I'm not saying you have to stay within that kind of micro niche for the whole time, but we would advise at the beginning not to be a generalist, not to try and be jack of all trades, master of none. Because you, if you can become an expert in one specific product category to start with, people will come to you and buy from you not just because of price, you might not even be the cheapest in the market, but because of that support, that trust, that service that you can provide. Maybe those questions that you can answer for them that another retailer who sells thousands of different products in different niches just simply can't do because they don't have that specialist knowledge. Now I'm not saying you need to have the specialist knowledge, but perhaps your website has blog posts, buyer's guides, lead magnets, even your va, your customer support person can have some frequently asked questions that they're commonly getting through phone calls and emails that they can help people with. It positions you as an authority and it makes customers feel like they're at home, they've landed in the right shop where they, when they walk in the door of your digital e commerce store and so you become kind of the go to retailer for that product type. Customers trust you more especially for higher ticket items. If you're selling items of 1,000, 2,000, £3,000 plus, trust becomes quite a big factor. And so if a customer walks in and thinks I'm at home here, this is what these are the specialists for the type of product I'm looking for. I trust these guys, they're, you know, they're the right store for me, then it's going to really help and actually will mean that a lot of the time customers will make those purchases without even contacting you as a brand simply because you've got good reviews from other customers who've bought products like the one this customer is considering. And so it allows you to really kind of speak your customers language and just focus on things on your products pages or your images and your sales copy to prove that you understand their needs. It's almost like you can enter the conversation that's happening in their mind when they land on that page and then just guide them seamlessly through to the sale. So that's one of the huge benefits of selecting a niche. Yeah, Absolutely. Because then once you know which niche you're going to go into, you can then look at the market, look at the different companies, competitors, and you'll start to see trends as to even like the colour scheme that they use or the language that they use in that niche and the way that they demonstrate their product or talk about their products. And we can learn all of that from the best retailers in the niche and implement what's working best into ads. So within a week or less than that, we can make sure we built a website that not only has the products that are in demand in that niche, but also their shown in the way that customers are already showing that they like to interact with the website. You know, so if you go into a certain niche, maybe gardens, you'd have a green background because you can see that's what the market is doing. You talk about plants in a certain way because you can see that that's how customers speak about those products. And suddenly you are showing yourself and that website becomes an authority in that niche. So when people that are in the market look at that website, they look at it and think, yeah, fantastic. I found the perfect place there's a specialist to buy these products, especially if it's high ticket. Any tips or tricks, Louis, about how you would show yourself to be a specialist or an authority in a niche, even if you personally aren't an expert at the products that you're selling? Well, yeah, just by the fact that the only types of products that you sell are the ones within that kind of demographic. That niche in itself shows that you've focused, you've removed distractions. There's a million products you could sell, but you've chosen not to. And although it might seem like you'd make less money by doing that, the opposite is actually true to start with, because people then trust you more and you don't look like they've arrived at some kind of jumble sale of like thousands of different types of products. It's very focused, it's very specific. The other things we talked about were like buyers guides. For example, you could give away a free PDF that guides them through the different types of products within your niche and kind of helps them make a decision on what one is right for them, what one is compatible for them. Something that's very, very specific. And you can have as a general kind of opt into our email list for our free XYZ Buyer's Guide. Now, you can't really do that that easily if you have 15 different product categories on your store. Because how do you know what to show in that pop up as something that the customers will want? So it's actually much, much easier, simpler and higher converting and therefore more profitable at the beginning. If you can talk directly to customers through things like blog posts, buyer's guides, even in your ads, you can create video ads if you want to talking to customers problems and then kind of guiding them through the process of making a purchase. So yeah, it's definitely the way to start in our experience. Yeah, it's made a big difference for me and customers when they get in touch, they, they speak to you like an authority straight away and they ask you questions about products, which is a great sign because it means that we can get them over the line because we have that knowledge not necessarily in your mind, but you have that knowledge all across your website. And so to answer that question that might be on people's mind, which is if I'm not an expert, how can I show myself to be a specialist in the niche? Well, once you spend a week of building a store and uploading your products and seeing the descriptions and specifications when you're uploading those products, it's amazing how much that sticks in your mind. And even if it doesn't stick in your mind, when you get a customer question, go straight to the product page. And I found that about 95% of questions that customer will ask you can already been answered by the information on your product pages. You just need to find it again and show it to the customer. And things that we're doing nowadays with the new style of e commerce that's happening is you can put chatbots in place, you can put voice agents in place that learn the product on your store. So you don't even need to be the one that answers the questions. An AI chatbot will look at all the products and be able to pull information and answer your customers questions. So more reason why you don't need to be a specialist. However, you can show an authority in a niche if you niche down and choose a specialist niche to go into. So now let's talk about traffic. So we've talked about choosing a niche, keeping things simple and showing yourself as an authority. What about some traffic secrets about getting the right people onto your store to buy in the first place. Any secrets to turning that traffic into sales? Yeah, absolutely. It's not a case of build it and they shall come. As much as many people hope it would be where you think I've built the website, so now I just need customers. That's kind of secondary, it's actually the other way around. The website is the foundation, but the customers are what fuel the business. So that's really the important obviously get the foundations right with the high converting website. But yes, sending customers to your website directly to your product pages, which are the pages where they can then click buy buy now or add to cart or add to basket and then just go to the checkout. Those are really important because that's the way that we've kind of engineered this. If you think about, we talked about start with a niche that's in demand. So what that means is people are searching for it. Well, when they're searching for a product, why send them to your homepage or why send them to a collection page when you can just send them straight to the money page, the product page, the very page on which they can transact with you and and put in their card details or use Apple Pay or Google Pay to just buy that item there and then and have it delivered to them the very next day. So to do that we use Google Shopping, Google Ads, specifically the performance Max shopping ads, to drive people directly to the products that they're searching for. And that's when they search for them as well. If they search for them and don't buy later on, our ads can serve to them as remarketing ads across YouTube, across Facebook, across Instagram, like that's where we'll use that part of the advertising funnel. But yeah, we want to optimise for sales conversions and we want to tell Google find customers that are like the customers that have given us money and bought items from us in the past and then it will just go away. Find those people and serve our product page as the landing page, as the ad that we're going to then drive people to to from there. So if we have good images on our product pages, trust badges, delivery info, contact info for our brand and returns info, clear pricing, all those things will increase your trust. It just removes any of that friction and it keeps the journey from ad click to checkout, which is what we want to optimise for as short and smooth as possible so that customers can land on the site, they can make an informed decision. None of the questions or friction that might be there. Like you said, use AI chatbots if we want. If they're in the middle of the night and we don't have a customer support person ready to answer a question for them, they can get their question answered there and then to keep them moving forwards and make a decision. And I think sometimes we forget that we're like our customers are not us. So you might not make a purchase for four and a half thousand pounds in the middle of the night on an impulse buy from your phone while lying in bed just before you go to sleep. But don't fall into the trap of thinking that that means no one will, because there are many, many customers out there, specifically in the kind of fairly wealthy demographics that we often serve with the type of high ticket products that we sell that will absolutely do that. And you get four, five, six of those coming through to your store per day and making that purchase. You've built yourself a pretty incredible business and you don't need that many customers to make it happen. Exactly. For me, it's all about not just getting traffic from any source, it's about getting the right type of traffic on the site, people that are interested in the products that we're selling and giving them the shortest path to purchase. So getting into land straight on the product page and they present you with the Buy now button immediately. And that makes such a big difference. So it's the right person at the right time, when they're already searching and putting them in the right place, showing them the right messaging at the right time and they'll click Buy now or certainly a good proportion of them will to make our ad spend profitable. And we can keep scaling to the moon. It's exactly what we've done. It's exactly what Chris or Kit has done who was on the podcast last week. And he's rapidly approaching a million pound in sales. That he's done 879k and that is because he's specialist, done exactly the three things we talked about today. He's a specialist. You've chosen a niche that's in demand and he's got the right type of traffic on his sites and he's converting them profitably. So it's a fantastic machine once you've got it all set up and running. So any final thoughts, Louis, for somebody just getting started that wants that shortcut to dropshipping success as quickly as possible. Yeah, I think we've covered it in today's episode, haven't we? It's. It starts simple, obviously, work smart, but. But keep it simple, avoid the distractions and work from core foundational principles. Rules that you want to kind of keep in place as you build this business. Start with the end result in mind. Like what kind of business do you want if you want it to be simple there and you don't want to be chasing customers and constantly trying to create amazing new ads that convince customers that they might want your products. Then just pick a niche that already has proven demand and then just position yourself as another retailer, another expert in that industry and then send people to what they already want to buy. You know, it's a fairly simple process. That's the recipe. If you want more help building this into your own business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com forward/start everything's laid out there for you and if you like the sound of it, you can book in a call to speak with us. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Leave a comment or a review and we might feature it in an upcoming upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources visit dropshipunlock.com forward/podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favourite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new new episodes to you every week. Now we're going to answer a question that's come in from a listener of the podcast, so thank you very much to sork2, which is the YouTube handle. But just a quick reminder before we answer that question, if you have a question that you'd like to ask us, simply comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode and I will put that question to Lewis, just as I'm going to do now for SORC2. So they've asked hi, I'm in the niche selection phase and I was wondering what you think about selling equipment to aerospace component manufacturing companies. I saw two sounds like you've got some some interesting niche ideas there and it looks like you've probably been doing some good research already. So yes, selling to aerospace component manufacturers is definitely a very interesting niche concept. I think the key for you at this stage will be to validate using our proven niche validation system system. So using this system will make sure that there's clear demand for these types of products before we go and spend ages and lots of money building a store and then start pouring our money into ads. As we talked about in this episode, if there's not demand there already and there are ways of us checking for this and looking for how many times do people search for these components online every month and are there people buying them already before we move ahead and start building those things? Also we guarantee that there is supply as well in that niche by finding drop shipping suppliers upfront. So before we go and build a store, we don't want to build a store and then think, okay, now I've got to find suppliers. Oh, no one's happy to drop ship in this industry. It becomes problematic. So this whole thing is built in a very sequential order. It's very intentional and it's reverse engineered from the outset. So if you get those bits right and you find that it is in demand and that there are dropshipping suppliers and you've got existing retailers that are using the same model as you, it could be a very profitable space to explore. So I can't say for sure because I can't go through the entire niche validation process with you now. That takes a little bit more time. But we have actually covered that in a previous episode, so we'll link that below in the show notes for this one because it's all laid out there. Fantastic. Yeah, great question. And lots of exciting different niches that you could enter, including that one. But the best way to know for sure is the niche validation process, because any of these little ideas that come to your mind, you have a set system that will tell you yes or no. At the end of any idea that you possibly got, you just put it through the machine and it will come out and say yes or no, whether it's going to be work, it will work or not. So it's a very powerful tool. So great question. Now we're going to highlight a review that we've had for the podcast as well, because it's super important to shout you guys out. And this review came in from Russell plus Mr. And he left us a YouTube comment, so we wanted to read that out. Russell's a great friend of the show as well. Russell's a member of the Dropship Unlock masterclass and I remember sitting next to Russell for breakfast the morning after one of our Dropship Unlocked live events. So Russell said, love it, gents, very simply. Great, great comments. So thank you, Russell, for that one. Thank you, Russell. Man, a few words, but those words are gold. So thank you, Russell. Yeah, we had a good chat at the last live meetup with Brussels, so thank you again for your review. Now, before we wrap up today, I'd love to ask a quick favour of you. If you've enjoyed today's episode or any episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast, could you take a few minutes to just leave us a quick review? Probably not even that. 10 seconds to leave us a review below this episode. Your feedback really helps us reach more listeners and get more viewers to this show so that we can continue to improve our content for you. Plus, we might be able to read out your review like we did for Russell on our next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. To kickstart your e commerce business. Head over to dropshipunlocked.com forward/start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success stories. Plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.