Why You Shouldn’t Blog on Shopify
Don’t get me wrong I’m not hating on Shopify at all. In fact I love their platform and how easy it has been for me to open up shop and design it a customer friendly layout.
I’m merely suggesting that you shouldn’t use it for blogging.
While Shopify is a hosted platform that allows you to do both, run an ecommerce business and a post blogs its primary focus is to help you create your own online store front.
That is their primary business model and yes they do have hundreds of plugin and apps to help you grow your business you should consider using WordPress for your blogs and link them to each other.
In this article I am going to show you how I linked mine and the reasoning I have behind it.
Get Specialized
I’m going to run a quick scenario by you first so you can understand where I am coming from.
If I handyman came to your home to fix a leaky faucet, chances are this person may have some of the tools they need with them but having the right parts to fix the issue could be a toss up.
They may need to make a trip to the local hardware shop to find what they need.
Now why does this matter. Well it’s because this person isn’t specialized.
So how does knowing this matter and how does it affect me, you might be asking? I’ll get to that in just a moment but let’s finish the issue above so this can make more sense.
Let’s say your neighbor is also having problems with their faucet too but instead of calling a handyman they called a plumber.
The plumber comes out to their house and does their troubleshooting and finds the problem. The plumber has a work van and goes out to get the pieces they need and comes back in and is able to fix your neighbors leaky faucet quickly and in one visit.
Your handyman also has a work van but probably has so many other tools and parts that there is not enough room to specifically stock the plumbing parts needed thus having to make an extra pit stop or two just to get the right items to fix your issue.
Knowing this, who do you think will be able to charge more to fix the faucets? I hope you said the plumber because not only are they more specialized in the work that needs to be done but they are also more streamlined with the tasks and can charge a premium.
Ok, now what? How does this help me decide why to not blog on Shopify?
In the handyman and plumber scenario you already know who is more specialized and the same goes with Shopify and a third party blogging platform (WordPress).
Having your own hosted domain with WordPress as your blog will allow you to have more control and options for growing your business.
When you have a Shopify blog it is tied to your store and there are limitation on how much customization you can do.
However, I believe less is more and try to stay away from tons of tweaking and changing things up but being able to separate my blog from my store does a few things and I am going to get into that now.
If you’re just wanting to blog to talk about your product or service don’t have a strategy behind it then sure, you can skip adding any extra work to your plate and just blog from Shopify.
If you want to grow your business and create other streams of revenue then separate the two and learn how you can use blogging on WordPress to grow your business and revenue.
Here’s How I Would Setup A Shopify Store With A Blog
My Shopify Store would have it’s own domain, for this example let’s name it www.TortoiseStation.com and I’d sell things for tortoises and reptiles. In the menu bar there will be a few links. Home, Cart, Blog, and About Us.
The blog link doesn’t have to go to your Shopify’s blog platform. You can link it to wherever you’d like. In this case I would have created a separate domain called www.GammyTheTortiose.com and that would be a blog built on the WordPress platform.
The same thing goes on the blog with the menu bar. I would have my Home, Shop, Blog and About Us links and that “Shop” link would send them to the Shopify store ( www.TortoiseStation.com )
What’s the Advantage of Doing This?
For starters you control what you put on your blog and how it will be laid out.
If you’re running a business and want to drive traffic to your store then use your WordPress blog to create highly sought out articles.
Doing this you can now double dip and sign up with an Ad network to allow ads to show on your blog which is another great source of income. This is where your passive income will continue to grow.
The more articles you generate the more viewers to your page the more you can make from advertisers and your Shopify store is only a click away.
You wouldn’t be able to put ads on your Shopify store and you’d be missing out on extra earnings.
Being able to create multiple landing pages and grow your email list is much more customizable on WordPress and should be a high priority for your business as well.
Final Thoughts
I speak about passive income on this page and blogging is the backbone to that process. This is why I am in favor of you not using Shopify to blog from but instead come up with a game plan and build a blog on WordPress.
Create read worthy content and you’ll be able to not only entertain and educate your viewers but also point them to your products and offers to your Shopify store.
