Welcome to Skillful Store!
Here you will find anything to do with running a profitable online store, from articles on setting up your store, to generating traffic, to conversion optimization, to email marketing, to design, to outsourcing, and more!
How did this all get started?
Let’s find out! We’ll begin with the reason Skillful Store exists in the first place.
My Mission
My mission at Skillful Store is to help you make your ecommerce store more efficient, i.e. make more money, while doing less work.
To achieve that, I aim to write guides to help you setup your store, optimize your store, generate more traffic to your store, and articles answering any other questions you may have.
My Story
My name is Richard Sutton and I have been involved in ecommerce since 2015, when I launched my first store. It was a dropshipping store in the gardening niche.
I only worked with US suppliers and most products cost over $500. Some were over $20,000. With 10% to 30% profit margins, it was quite the profitable endeavor.
In the best year, the store made just over $340,000. I ended up selling it in 2021 for $720,000.
I had a number of reasons for selling such a profitable store. I plan to write an article about it eventually. But for now, let’s just say I got tired of running the store and dealing with customers.
While I was running that store, I also launched 3 others. Two of them were profitable, but I ended up selling them at the same time as the other store, before they ever got a chance to really grow.
I learned a ton from running those stores, especially about conversion optimization and driving traffic to an ecommerce store. All of my stores ran on Shopify, so I learned that platform inside and out.
I’ve always thought I should do something with all of that knowledge, but the desire to run another store never came back. Instead, I figured it might make more sense to use my knowledge to help others. And hopefully make some money in the process.
That’s how Skillful Store was born. It allows me to write about ecommerce, something I really love to talk about and learn about (but not something I loved actually doing, though that was probably unique to my niches and to the time period: the beginnings of the pandemic).
More importantly, it gives me a way to share my knowledge with anyone who can benefit and hopefully help a lot of people make their own online stores more successful.
But I honestly had no idea what I was doing running this type of site, so I partnered with someone who does.
The Team
Ok, so it’s mainly still just me. I run the day-to-day operations of the site. I also write almost all of the articles myself.
But I have partnered with McBrain Global, who are in the business of running websites. Their expertise has helped a lot. My site looks a lot better now than it did at first. And it runs more efficiently, too.
They have also helped me hire a team of sorts.
Really, the “team” was just a few writers who handle some of the newer articles on the site. They are also current or former ecommerce store owners with a wealth of knowledge to share and far better writing skills than I have.
That said, I still try to write as many articles as I can myself. And I do write all of the emails, which many customers find are the most value-packed part of this site.
My Responsibility
I believe in maintaining the highest standards of editorial integrity. My guiding principle is to put the quality of information first.
- I focus on evidence-based content. All my claims are backed by scientific literature that is duly quoted in each article.
- I use subject matter experts to write or edit/review all my content.
- I only use the highest quality sources to research my content.
- I regularly revisit and update pages on this site with the latest information.
I use ads and affiliate marketing to fund my operations, but commissions never influence my recommendations. I also maintain a strict policy against accepting sponsorships to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Where Do You Go Now?
If you are here, it means you are involved in running an ecommerce store in some way, or you are interested in starting a store. What you need exactly determines where you go from here.
Your best bet is to take a look at the menu above and find the section that interests you.
I hope you enjoy the content I worked so hard to put together. Of course, I know my site could use a lot of improvements. That’s where you come in.
If you have any questions not answered here or suggestions to make this site better, let me know. And if you have any questions about ecommerce you’d like me to address, I’d be happy to write an article on the topic (I’m always looking for new article ideas).
And if you have any suggestions for improving my site, I’d love to hear those, too.
The best way to contact me is at richard@skillfulstore.com or using the contact info on this page.
As mentioned, Skillful Store is owned and operated by McBrain Global LLC. You can find them at the following address and phone number:
McBrain Global
30 N Gould Street, Suite R
Sheridan, WY 82801
USA
Phone: (307) 269-0897
I look forward to hearing from you!
Richard