Shopify Partner Programme: When Heroes Play as Part of a Team

It’s 7 o’clock in the morning. “Good job developing our Shopify store”, reads the latest email in Henry’s email inbox. With a cup of coffee in hand, the fresh graduate is quietly celebrating over one of his first wins. But the joy doesn’t seem to last long - now his morning will surely be put on hold for another freelance job. There goes the lie-in. He’s an outsider of Shopify Partner Programme.

Shopify is no longer a foreign concept in the eCommerce world. Online merchants now know their way around the main dashboard like the back of their hand - something off the beaten path is what they’re looking for to go even further. This is where they need some heroes to jump in and give their business a real boost.

Meet the heroes who have had a head-start with Shopify Partner Programme.

Shopify Partner Programme is now redefining the e-Commerce landscape with highly active participation from intermediaries. Not only do they help clients push further, but now they are beginning to plan further for themselves.

The key here, dear free-spirited heroes, is to play as part of a team.

Outline

• Shopify Partners - more friends, fewer enemies
• Shopify Partner Dashboard - your favourite power console
• More visibility, more money: Shopify ecosystem superpower
• Shopify Experts: level up and strike

Shopify Partners - more friends, fewer enemies

Shopify Partners are the active members of the Shopify Partner Programme, which allows entrepreneurs to earn money by recommending Shopify to others, creating themes and apps, or simply by posting affiliate links on their websites.

There are over 1,700,000 merchants on Shopify, many of which are ambitious about renovating their stores with the help of Shopify Partners. Together, Shopify Partners have referred 200,000+ merchants, helping them to sell more than 73 million products and make $1.2 billion in 2018 alone. That outperforms Shopify's annual revenue stream!

Register to be a Shopify Partner

Shopify Partner Dashboard - your favourite power console

Here comes the auto-magical dashboard...

Keeping track of your customers

With a Shopify Partner Dashboard, your customer tracking process will be made easier. The other day I needed to access a customer’s store to make a few changes at the backend. I asked my customer to give me some time and not to do any editing. What followed was a permission request and a few clicks.

First, I requested access at a minimum level. This was to respect my customers' privacy and give a sense of guarantee that we would not mess up their store.

After access was granted, I logged in and made some changes, just like I do with my regular Shopify stores.

I was helping my client renovate their pages using the PageFly app, so I entered PageFly and did the work from there.

Multiple customers can be served at the same time. Just think about the time you’ve spent in the past switching from customer to customer without a centralized hub - none of that here! But it gets way better than that.

Structuring your team

Shopify Partners can practice team management within their dashboard. No matter who you are collaborating with, you now have the ability to create multiple ‘owner’ and ‘staff accounts’ to provide every member of your team with an individualised dashboard experience.

Taking advantage of on-hand support

Now that you have a good kind heart to influence independent businesses out there, it wouldn’t hurt to sharpen your superhero skill set with more tools and knowledge.

The Education section is where I find the most useful tools to help me understand the dashboard. The ‘Get Started’ and ‘Documentation’ sub-sections act as a starter pack for any Shopify partner wannabe. It guesses the intentions of new users, from building apps for clients to improving their existing stores, and gives you the information that you need. 

The most interesting thing to me was the follow-up reads linked to the Shopify Partner Blog, where partners can navigate through several resources posted by other merchants and people working within the Shopify platform.

Shopify has also curated the Shopify Partner Academy as its own learning platform for those seeking in-depth knowledge as a partner. Before onboarding to the team, I was asked and actually very excited to enroll in my first course on Product Fundamentals. Not only did I get a glossy certificate on basic product understanding, but I also fast-tracked my catch-up with the team. I am absolutely ready to be a superhero.

Get your certificate

In case you get lost, you can quickly find any partner tools and resources available to you using the Quick Search at the top of the dashboard. This search presents tools, actions (e.g. “Create A Development Store”), blog content, and help documentation in response to your keywords.

Recommended: Tips to make money with Shopify Partner Program through PageFly

More visibility, more money: Shopify ecosystem superpower

Just when you thought you were frustrated doing things on your own - let me stress this - the Shopify Partner Programme has over 12,000 agencies and individuals to watch each other’s back.

There’s always a community in Shopify Partners that cherishes you, making your ordinary extraordinary. The registration is free.

There are four types of Shopify Partners, and the names are self-explanatory for what they do.

• Service Partners
• Affiliates
• App developers
• Theme partners

Partner-friendly apps come as incredible assets of the whole package. These apps are free to test in development stores, meaning that partners can interchange their products and see how the combos work out in their clients’ stores all at once.

(*) Important side note: The Shopify Partner Program enables testing partner-friendly apps with no trial time limit.

The page builder app PageFly is a partner-friendly app. Let’s see what we’ve got here.

A regular merchant's store vs a Shopify Partner store

With a development store referral, you can enjoy a recurring commission equal to 20% of the merchant's monthly subscription fee as long as you remain an active Shopify Partner status. In simple language, this means that if a client is on an advanced Shopify plan ($299/month), you will comfortably make $60 every month for that one client. Nice!

For an affiliate referral, you might even double your commission. In the first two months, you can receive your money in an amount equal to your merchant’s monthly subscription fee. For example, if your merchant signs up for a $79 main Shopify plan in the first month and a $299 advanced Shopify plan in the following month, that would make $378 commission in total.

Sounds like a good deal doesn’t it? Once you’re set and ready, now it’s time to go out there and mingle with your like-minded partners.

• Join the Shopify Partners community Facebook group

• Enjoy interactive content on the Shopify Partner YouTube Channel
• Contribute to the knowledge hub of web and development by submitting guest posts
• Chat with your fellows on Shopify Group Slack for more insights.

Shopify Experts: level up and strike

After a while serving merchants, Shopify Partners can strive to be Shopify Experts. This programme is dedicated to empowering the business growth of top-tier partners through exclusive resources, opportunities for learning, and more exposure within the Shopify ecosystem.

Increased visibility with other ‘superheroes’ can put Shopify Partners head-and-shoulder above the rest. Shopify Experts marketplace offers multiple categories for merchants to browse, most of which are seeking ways to scale up their enterprises with promising deals. A meticulous profile also adds more credibility to brands, along with an opportunity to highlight provided services.

Additional reading: 8 Types of Shopify Development Services and Top 10 Company Examples.

Here’s an example of a Shopify Expert: SellerSmith

Front-end

Back-end

Head to Service and enter Reviews to view your customers’ reviews in full

The application for the program is yet to re-open.

However, it’s important to become more valuable to the marketplace so you can increase your ranking and matching possibility when you’re in the program and a merchant creates a job on the Experts marketplace. 

Here’s how SellerSmith manages projects in the Shopify Partner dashboard

Conclusion

Overall, becoming a Shopify Partner can put your workflow and client management in a strategic mindset with a vast selection of tools and resources.

From a broader point of view, any agency or individual involved in building Shopify businesses is driving sales and cross-promotion for one another within the Shopify ecosystem. Registration with the Shopify Partner Program unites all initiatives into one collective effort of making business better for everyone.

Sign up here

Adopting a partnership mindset will boost Shopify Partners’ finance and reputation across different channels. By thinking long-term, Partners can both target their ideal customers and together leverage their own brands as ‘eCommerce superheroes’.