You may have started this course thinking that it would be easy to find products to sell and hard to build an online business. And if that's what you were thinking, I have good news for you. You were wrong. Building an online store is I'm actually going to say it. I think building an online store is really fun. If it's not fun, it's at least straightforward. That's because we're going to use a platform called Shopify to build your online store. And Shopify doesn't require you to know anything about coding or web design or anything like that. To build a store that looks fantastic.
Shopify is an eCommerce platform that over 1 million entrepreneurs around the world use to run their online stores. These entrepreneurs include Kylie Jenner, the founder of all birds, GymShark, and other brands that you might already be familiar with. You're going to join their ranks because today you're going to sign up for Shopify and it really couldn't be easier. Luckily, this is one of the easiest lessons you'll do in the entire course.
Why do all of these entrepreneurs use Shopify? Well, there are a couple of reasons why Shopify is great for building your first online store. First Shopify is simple. Like I said, you don't need any technical knowledge to build a great and trustworthy store with Shopify. Second Shopify is free to get started with and pretty affordable after that for your first 14 days on Shopify, you won't pay a cent. And then after that, you'll pay around $29 USD per month.
Third Shopify is really reliable. Shopify stores are self hosted. What that means is you don't have to worry about your store going down, even on high traffic shopping holidays like black Friday and cyber Monday. Finally, Shopify is customizable. There's almost no limit to what you can do. Thanks to all the apps that are available to plug into your Shopify store and add extra functionality. For all of these reasons, it makes a lot of sense to sign up for Shopify.
So let's dive in and I'll show you how to do that right now. Head over to shopify.com and click start free trial in the top right hand corner. Now you'll be prompted to enter your email address, password and a store name. Use your personal email address. That's totally fine. And you can change that later. Also your store name now doesn't have to be something you've already decided upon. In fact, we're going to talk about business names in a future lesson.
So for right now, what you're really doing is just naming the admin of your store. Your customers won't see this. So don't stress out over it. When you've done all that click create your store. Now you're going to get a couple of questions about your brand and your entrepreneurship experience. Answer these questions, honestly, because what Shopify will do is curate a selection of videos and blog posts tailored to your experience level.
And these resources will help you get started and get your first sales even quicker. When you click next, Shopify will ask you for your address. Now, a lot of new store owners get stressed out. Like they need to have a business address right away. Don't worry about that. Just put your personal address in for now. That's perfectly fine. Once you're done click enter my store and just like that, you're all signed up for Shopify. The screen that you see after you click enter, my store is something I'll refer to as your Shopify admin or your dashboard.
It's basically the home base for everything we'll do in Shopify. That's it? How painless for that. In the next couple of lessons, we're going to do the really fun stuff. We're going to choose a business name. We're going to develop a logo and we're going to really make this Shopify store stand out. So grab a cup of coffee and I'll see you in the next lesson.
