This is how I built my (former) Shopify store from a tiny, illegal apartment in Brooklyn to over $700K in sales with just good Shopify SEO work and then sold it for over six figures in cash.
Table of Contents
Humble Beginnings
I did all of this while sleeping on a futon, in a tiny, 212 square foot illegal apartment in Brooklyn, New York. I didn’t know it was illegal until years after I moved in. I guess the single window and no sink in the bathroom should have made it obvious to me. It was so inhospitable, it didn’t even have a sink in the bathroom. Let’s face it, it was basically a jail cell above ground. This is the tiny, studio apartment, where I conducted my madness for building my dropship store.
The problem was, the apartment was so small, it was almost impossible to work from. So a lot of times I’d work from local cafes or actually run to the library like a psycho, three miles away and work on building my store while sitting next to smelly homeless people. The store I was building was in a very high volume niche (weddings) with the potential to drive a lot of traffic to me. I knew I could have something big if I just pushed hard at it day-by-day.
After working from the library for many hours each day, I’d run right back and keep working all night until passing out on the futon.
Now that may sound intense for a lot of people and, yeah, it is. But this is who I am and when I commit myself to doing something, I want to see it all the way through until it’s successful regardless of whatever sacrifices I have to make or whatever strange living situation I may find myself in.
Building My Shopify Store: Setting the Foundation
I’m a big fan of building things correctly the first time. With a strong foundation, you can build a skyscraper instead of a mud hut.
My background is in SEO, so naturally, I started with what I already knew. If you know anything about SEO, you know it takes a LOT of time. If you have money for ads, I recommend starting with that. If you don’t, SEO is your next best friend.
Keyword Research
Since SEO was the game plan, I did what I always do—started with keyword research!
I already had an idea of the keywords I wanted to target, but I made sure to verify that the search volume was actually there and worth pursuing before putting in the work.
I used tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs to check keyword volume and confirm my assumptions were on the right track. I’m not one to shy away from competition and settle for long-tail keywords. As the saying goes, GO BIG OR GO HOME.
The papichulo keyword for my store was a high-intent keyword with about 50K searches/month. This was the search volume I wanted to soak up and pull into my store, so I could jump off of a diving board into a pool of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.
With my keyword research in hand, I did what any good SEO would do—implemented them into the title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs where they fit best.
Shopify Store Structure
I built the store’s structure to make logical sense, added all of my products, optimized the homepage, collections, and product pages. Since I don’t like waiting around, I forced Google to recrawl all of my changes immediately through Google Search Console to speed up indexing.
Unique Branding
I designed some solid branding and gave the store a 1860s Victorian English ‘voice’. This was perfect for the niche, which focused on men’s gifts. The branding and copywriting were all infused with this identity and voice across the store.
Organic Traffic Slowly Building
After a month or two, small amounts of traffic started trickling in. Even with just 20-30 visitors/month, I made my first sale!
After about 6 months, traffic started picking up more, sales were coming in more frequently and I was starting to improve significantly in the rankings for my main keyword.
About 1 year after I first launched the store, I was hovering around Page 1 to Page 2 for my papichulo keyword. It was just a matter of time and effort to get to the top. Sales increase substantially, enough to keep me motivated to keep pushing.
Interesting UX side-note: Some of my suppliers experimented with different versions of products I carried, which made things challenging for me to keep things consistent from an SEO perspective. Changing the URLs for every single version they were experimenting with would have been overkill. Instead of dealing with lost link equity or annoying redirects, I simply swapped the product inside a more generic product URL, so that I didn’t have to deal with redirects or lost link equity. If you find yourself with products that are ‘in flux’, try this out.
Scaling to $50K/Month in Sales
Be the Peacock
Here’s a little secret: Even with a tiny amount of traffic, you can make sales IF you understand good user experience.
If you have a brand-new store and are just starting out, do you think visitors know you’re a one-man operation working in your boxers with Dorito dust on your shirt? HELLLLL NO. They have no idea who you are, where you are, or anything about you whatsoever.
Why is this important to understand? Because it is a MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY to make yourself look MUCH BIGGER than you actually are.
Think about a peacock spreading its massive feathered wings or a cat puffing itself up to look more intimidating. You can do the same with great messaging, branding, and user experience.
User Experience (UX)
People don’t buy your product—they buy the SOLUTION to the PROBLEM your product solves. They buy the MARKETING and the IDEA of the product more than the product itself. That’s why, even with just 50-100 visitors/month, you can still convert people into sales. While this won’t change your life, these early-stage quick wins keep you motivated to push through.
A great store isn’t just about having a good product; it’s about creating a seamless user experience. Now, ‘UX’ or user experience are buzzwords marketers throw around all the time. But you don’t need to overcomplicate it with terms like ‘UX’ or ‘CRO’ if that’s not helplful to you. Just ask yourself simply: Does this shit make SENSE to the user?
Are they getting everything they need along the way? Are their questions answered before they even think to ask them?
I worked at McDonald’s when I was 16. McDonald’s is the KING of user experience. They make everything so damn easy and efficient that people CAN’T WAIT TO BUY that supersize #1 with a coke. That’s exactly what your store needs to do. And the best part? This is 100% in your control.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
I used tools like Inspectlet to monitor user behavior from the moment they entered my store to the checkout. I made adjustments the second I saw them getting stuck.
If someone isn’t taking the action you want, there’s a reason for that.
Nobody can tell you exactly what to fix—you have to monitor your users, spot where they’re getting stuck, and SOLVE THOSE PROBLEMS. That’s how you diagnose and fix what’s holding your conversions back.
This is what you have to do—more than just running paid ads and calling it a day like all the fake Youtube ‘gurus’ tell you. You have to make your store a conversion machine. Get as much lifetime value out of each customer as humanly possible with upsells, cross-sells, discounts for their next purchase, while giving them a great experience every step of the way.
Leveraged Link Building: How I “Printed” High Quality Links
On-site SEO is fine and good and critically important, but the real firepower came from my leveraged link-building strategy.
While solid on-site SEO can get you some initial traction, what really moves the needle is high-quality, relevant LINKS. In a competitive niche like mine, getting strong backlinks pointing to my store was the only way to slice through the thick competition.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about link building, it’s that it changes drastically depending on your niche. The key is to find innovative strategies that work in your space. Here’s the exact strategy I used to generate a flood of high-quality backlinks to my store.
But let’s not think of it as “link building.” Instead, think of it as links coming to you as a natural byproduct of doing something really well—something that makes people WANT to link to you, without spammy blackhat tricks.
With eCommerce and dropshipping stores, you have physical products to leverage—and most store owners completely overlook this. Your products are, by default, link bait. You just need creative methods to attract links to your store by using your products as bait.
This strategy was something I stumbled upon by accident, but it turned out to be a game-changer that helped propel my store to the top of page one for high-volume keywords pulling in 50K searches per month, beating out all the competition.
Here’s how I did it:
While browsing Facebook groups, I noticed many of them hosted events showcasing vendor products. That’s when inspiration struck—I could use these events to get my store featured, and it worked like a charm. This simple but effective approach led to a steady stream of valuable backlinks.
I sent my products to events where multiple photographers would be attending for photo shoots. These photographers, in turn, took pictures of the event, including any featured products—mine included. Then, when promoting their work, they pitched their photo shoots to big publications in my niche. Many of those publications picked up the photos and featured them, crediting my store as a vendor.
Of course, this strategy wasn’t magic—it took real effort. I personally packed and shipped samples all over the country to events where my products would be featured. I personally shipped five to ten packages to the post office at a time to these events. Needless to say, the postal workers didn’t like me too much.
The payoff was huge: not only did I get free photos of my products, but also high quality, niche-relevant, links
Step-by-Step Breakdown:
Step 1: Identify Relevant Groups That Host Events
Join Facebook groups in your niche and look at their “events” sections.
Step 2: Look for Events That Need Products
Look for upcoming events that could benefit from your products. Some even actively look for vendors or sponsors.
Step 3: Reach Out to Event Organizers
Contact the organizers and offer your products for the event. Ask how the event will be featured or promoted so you can see if it’s a good opportunity for links. If they can’t guarantee any exposure, send your products anyway. You never know what might come back to you.
Step 4: Ship Your Products
Ship your products to the organizers. While you can request your products back, it’s just easier to let them keep what you send.
Step 5: Stay Engaged with the Organizer
Stay in touch with the organizer to track where and when the event will be featured. Once it’s live, check for credits and backlinks, and make sure your brand is properly attributed. If it isn’t, politely ask if they can make the necessary edits.
Many of the events I joined got showcased on high-authority websites. One of my partnerships even led to a feature on a DA77 site—DOPE!
Step 6: Be Buddies with the Organizer
Don’t just move on. This is a potentially valuable relationship. After the event, thank them and ask if they have any more events coming up. If not, keep them in your back pocket for future collaborations. If they do events regularly, you may have a link-printing machine at your disposal.
Results: Massive Boost in Traffic
This strategy helped me get valuable backlinks, boosting my site’s authority and rankings for my papichulo keyword. My traffic skyrocketed by 2,272% compared to the previous year.
I ended up landing high-quality links from major sites in the wedding space. I had stumbled upon a way to build links in a leveraged way with a single unit of effort. For every one product I sent out, I could get two, three, four, or even more links in return. This changed everything for my store.
Once I saw the power in this strategy, I doubled down.
This led to a tidal wave of traffic and sales. While this strategy was specific to my niche, the core idea can be applied elsewhere. You just have to think creatively.
After doing this for an entire wedding season, I had built up an arsenal of high-quality, niche-relevant links that you can only get through true, organic efforts like this. Combined with rock-solid on-site SEO, these links helped push my store to page one, position one for my main keyword.
At about the 18 month mark, is when my store fully exploded. I was ranked Page 1, position #1 for my papichulo keyword. This brought me a TON of traffic and to my store. Things were crazy, with orders flying in nonstop.
At this point my store was pulling in anywhere from $30-50K/mo in sales from just my solid Shopify SEO work and my leveraged link building efforts.
Keep in mind this is the wedding niche, so the season goes from about March to October. November, December, January and February are pretty dead months for sales.
Once I hit the top spot, it became mostly hands-off. The heavy lifting was done, and traffic was flowing in consistently—aside from the seasonality of the wedding industry. There wasn’t much left to do on the SEO front.
This was the breakthrough I had been working toward. I could finally pull back a little and shift my focus. Instead of grinding for more traffic, I could now prioritize fulfillment, hiring, and just making sure every customer had the best possible experience.
My Six-Figure Shopify Store Exit
I eventually moved from that tiny shithole apartment in Brooklyn to New Hampshire for a relationship right at the very beginning of the COVID hysteria. Since I wasn’t able to secure a place in advance (everyone in NH apparently wanted local references), I stayed in Airbnbs and hotels until I found an apartment that had yellow stairs…yes you heard that correctly, yellow fucking stairs.
Despite the success I was having, it was at this point that I wanted to sell my store and move on. I knew I had built something valuable, something someone, somewhere would want. I wanted to move on from the machine I built to new things that interested me more.
As you can imagine, COVID destroyed the demand for wedding services. It also cut my sales in half. But even with that drop pushed forward with the sale, determined to find a buyer.
What did I do?
First, I looked at the brokerages out there and spoke with a few, only to quickly realize I didn’t want to spend 15% of the sale price on a broker. Being a DIY person, I decided to handle it myself.
I made a list of potential buyers—everyone from direct competitors to suppliers to similar brands. I prioritized them based on who seemed most likely to buy and approached them one by one.
I started with my direct competitors—those I was competing against neck and neck in the rankings for my papichulo keyword. By targeting my competitors and suppliers, I created a competitive bidding environment, positioning my store as a sought-after business asset that they NEEDED TO HAVE as it was exactly what they already did.
I reached out to several, who already knew about me since I was one of their main competitors. After some initial email exchanges, I received an offer of $150K.
I agreed to it, but only to have the buyer back out after they cited cash flow problems and being unable to pay the amount of their own offer. After explaining their financial constraints, they followed up with an offer of $180K but paid over 18 months at $10k/mo, with no money upfront.
Given the extreme risk in accepting such an offer, I declined, wished them good luck, and moved on to the second potential buyer.
After some more back-and-forth emails, with the second buyer, we settled on a sales price of $122K paid all in cash. We agreed on a close date to transfer the money and the store.
On the close date, I got up nice and early, got my coffee and signed the contract with the buyer.
The buyer then wired the cash to my lawyer to put in escrow. I then transferred the store to the buyer and made sure he had everything he needed.
Once I got the green light from the buyer that everything was good (7 days later), he signaled to my lawyer to release the funds to me. I walked over to my lawyer’s office where he handed me the check for $122K.
How I Did All of This with Just SEO
The reason I was able to sell my store is because I built intrinsic value into it—real value that stood on its own. I created something so valuable that multiple buyers were competing for it. That’s the position you want to be in. You want people fighting over what you have.
And that’s how I took my Shopify store from zero to over $700K+ in sales with just good Shopify SEO and without any paid ads. I hope this Shopify SEO success story inspires you to build your own winning store.
I was able to do this because I simply did the hard work that everyone is afraid of doing. I built my store, grew it, sold it to a buyer and moved on with my life…all from an old New England apartment with yellow fucking stairs. If I can do it, so can you.
How You Can Do This Too
Step one: Do your on-site SEO properly. This isn’t something to treat as an afterthought. It’s the foundation for everything else. If this isn’t done well, your store will suffer. Make sure your Shopify SEO foundation is solid.
Step two: Get clear on the link-building strategy that works best for your niche. Link building varies greatly from niche to niche. What worked for me might not work for you, but the principles are the same. You want high-quality, relevant links wherever possible. If you can find a way to build them in a leveraged way, you’ll crush the competition.
Step three: Once traffic starts coming in consistently, use a user behavior tracking tool to identify bottlenecks and improve the overall user experience of your store. Find the friction and kill it. Friction not only harms user experience—it also harms your bank account. Create the same smooth experience that you get when going through a McDonald’s drive-thru.
Step four: Sell your store to a buyer, preferably a direct-competitor for all cash. You can do this yourself or pay 12-15% for a broker to do it.
Building a winning store takes strategy, persistence, and the ability to see what nobody else is seeing. Whether you’re in a tiny apartment or navigating a global pandemic, persistence and relentlessness will get you there.
If you want to learn the exact strategies I used to grow and sell my store, book a free call with me to talk about your store and to see if I can help you with 1:1 coaching calls.
What’s your biggest challenge in building a winning store?
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