Read all 9 tips shared by Shopify’s greatest customers on Fast Company.

We polled some of Shopify’s recent success stories for their step-by-step tips on getting a consumer e-commerce business off the ground. Here’s what they had to say.

Step 1: Dream up the right product or service.

Sounds easy, right? And yet for every super-successful Snuggie, there’s a Crystal Pepsi and many other failures you haven’t ever heard of. The key to making sure your idea will find a (rabid, adoring) audience is solving problems shared by a large swath of people.

“The routines and activities you do are the same as everyone else. You need to find something you do during the day that is annoying or could be improved upon,” says Patrick Lehoux, creator of the Kinkajou, a bottle cutter that creates vases, tumblers, and pitchers from all those old (but sweet-looking) glass bottles you have sitting around. “If you can recognize this and improve this action or product there’s a good chance you will have yourself a business; Kinkajou uses something everyone seems to have an abundance of, but no real use for-empty bottles.”

Read all 9 tips shared by Shopify’s greatest customers on Fast Company.