I would like to announce my resignation from the Doba + Shopify experiment for one of the following reasons: a. I want to spend more time with my family. b. I want to spend more time hiking the Appalachian trail. c. I want to spend more time with my Argentinian mistress. d. I really, really [...]
Doba + Shopify Experiment
Doba matches online sellers with drop shippers, companies willing to ship products so all you have to do is take orders. Shopify is a simple ecommerce system for selling online. If Shopify takes care of making selling easy, and Doba takes care of giving you products to sell as well as shipping them, then putting the two together ought to make starting a small online business a piece of cake, right? We’ll see.
08
Jun
I Quit.
Since there is no direct integration between Shopify and Doba you have to copy over everything manually. This isn’t too tough…unless you need to do it for a few hundred products. Adding a single product is fairly straightforward. You download the image from the Doba site (BTW, the “download image” link doesn’t work in FireFox, [...]
It’s been a while since I posted on this experiment. I’ve been sick, had a baby, have been busy with my day job, am training for a marathon, and was just elected a state delegate, amongst other things. I’ve just been busy, and I keep thinking I need to get on this, but then things [...]
It has been essentially two weeks since my last post on this Doba + Shopify experiment. Why no posts? Was it because I was busy setting up my website? Was I taking time to make sure I understood the services Doba and Shopify offer? Was I developing a marketing strategy? Nope, I was spending two [...]
While I’m waiting to be approved by Authorize.net so I can take credit cards directly, rather than just through PayPal and Google Checkout (both of which are already set up) let’s set up a Doba account, shall we? There are two packages to choose from, one for $50/month and the other for $60/month. I’m the [...]
This post isn’t specific to this Shopify + Doba experiment I’m doing, but it’s going to be so relevant to anyone out there trying to follow in my steps that I feel it justifies itself. Ok, you know what you want to sell. You know how important SEO is, and that choosing the right domain [...]
I’ve got my domain name, I know what I’ll be selling from Doba, and so now it’s time to start setting up Doba and Shopify accounts. I’m going to start with Shopify, and as I start this post, I have not yet signed up. I’m going to post notes here if I run into issues [...]
When you’re talking about selling a product online, SEO is everything. What’s SEO, you ask? That stands for search engine optimization. What’s all that gobbledygook mean? We’re talking about making sure your website comes up first in Google when someone searches for words related to your product. For example, I decided to sell white gold [...]
I just posted on how to get started choosing what product you want to sell, but what did I choose? I went with white gold wedding bands for women. Why? Because I know jewelry sells online (I actually have a client who sells tungsten rings for men online, so same general product but a different [...]
This can be a tough one, but it gets easier if you ask yourself a few questions: What’s available? You can find this out by browsing through Doba’s products, but since they have 1.5 million or so of them, that might take a while. Still, it’s a good idea to at least look at the [...]
Disclaimer: I met Jeremy Hanks, CEO of Doba, several years ago, and we keep tabs on each other via Facebook, blogs, etc. But in performing this experiment I have not asked Jeremy for any special favors, nor do I expect him to give me any. I know nothing about Shopify or its management team beyond [...]
