YouTube · Shopify and ecommerce
Shopify Creators Who Teach Running a Real Store
21 creators who teach Shopify from the operator’s side: store setup, ads with real numbers, discounts, wholesale and theme code. No get-rich-quick pitches.
Short answer
The Shopify creators worth following in 2026 teach from inside a store: the admin, the theme code, the ad account and the discount settings, not a whiteboard. This list has 21 of them, grouped by stage: starting a store (6), running your own store (2), marketing and ads (3), operations, discounts and wholesale (3), and developers, themes and apps (7). Every entry links one video to start with.
This list is for store owners who want advice from people who run stores, build them for a living, or write the code they run on. The creators below teach Shopify from the operator’s side: setting up the store, launching and pricing products, running ads with the account open, handling discounts and wholesale, and changing the theme without an app for everything. Most are small or mid-sized channels, alongside two large tutorial channels whose Shopify walkthroughs earn their place.
Each entry says why the creator is here and links one video to start with. They’re listed alphabetically, because this isn’t a ranking: a candle maker filming her own pricing and a developer explaining Shopify Functions serve different store owners, and putting them in order would say nothing useful.
Which Shopify creator should you follow?
Start with the stage your store is at. Everyone in the table is on the list below, and within each row they’re alphabetical.
| If you’re… | Creators to start with | What they show |
|---|---|---|
| Starting a store, or rebuilding one | clary, Learn with Robbin, McKenna Beverly, Metics Media, Rihab Seb, Santrel Media | Full store builds from an empty dashboard to a live domain, theme design on Horizon, collections, metafields, payments, shipping and taxes |
| Running your own small store | Krafted by Koko, Memory Box Candle Co | A real launch workflow from product photos to listings, and pricing a handmade product so the business makes money |
| Spending on marketing and ads | Daan Jonkman, Digital Darts, KeyCommerce | Google Ads account setup, conversion tracking, feed optimisation, Merchant Center suspensions, and Meta ad creative built from one product photo |
| Running operations, discounts and wholesale | ethercycle, Shopioso, Winning With Shopify Podcast | Discounts as a cost centre, gift-with-purchase data, real CRO test results, and a wholesale channel without Shopify Plus |
| Changing the theme or building apps | Bosidev, Coding with Jan, Ed Codes, Made4uo, Saad Saif, Shopify++, TheShopNinjas | Shopify Functions, Liquid and app development, no-app theme edits, auditing old code changes, and when a custom build beats an app |
The operator row is the smallest on purpose: plenty of store owners film their business, but few teach the specifics on screen, and the ones who sell the dream instead didn’t make it.
The 21 creators, A to Z
- Covers
- Shopify theme and Functions development tutorials
- Why they’re here
- A freelance Shopify developer in Germany who teaches the code side of a store. The video to start with is a 40-minute guide to Shopify Functions: cart-transform bundles, custom discount and quantity-break functions, checkout validation and payment-method customisation, with chapters on using Functions on any plan and deploying the app. He sells a developer course and his own Functions app, both linked at the top of the description.
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- Covers
- Shopify store design and product page customisation
- Why they’re here
- A web designer who teaches store owners to make a Shopify theme look professional without an app for everything. The video to start with sets up Claude Code with Shopify CLI, duplicates the live theme before touching it, and builds the same section from a screenshot and from a Figma design to show why only the second comes out pixel-accurate. An earlier tutorial covers product metafields, from creating them to bulk editing.
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- Covers
- Shopify development, themes and AI search
- Why they’re here
- Runs a Shopify developer bootcamp and explains platform changes from a developer’s seat. The video to start with asks whether a $400 premium theme still earns its price now that AI builds sections: what the money buys (speed, polish and support years later), how Sidekick drifts a design system, and a budget-first way to choose a theme. It is sponsored by Cookiebot, disclosed with YouTube’s paid-promotion label and the first line of the description; the bootcamp is linked under it.
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- Covers
- AI automations and ad creative for Shopify stores
- Why they’re here
- Builds AI systems for Shopify stores and films what he actually builds each week. In the video to start with, one product photo becomes 50 on-brand Meta ad variations: a reference pack of brand images and past winners, a free Meta-ads skill in Claude Code, an image generator, and the batch run with the cost on screen ($2.50 for 50). The skill is free on GitHub; his paid community and agency are linked above it.
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- Covers
- Google Ads and SEO for Shopify stores
- Why they’re here
- Google Ads for Shopify stores, from an agency owner whose channel is built around profit rather than traffic. The video to start with is a 78-minute setup in ten chapters: account settings, Shopping campaign settings, feed optimisation (the longest chapter by far), the Shopping campaign build, international campaigns, conversion tracking, dynamic remarketing and a Search campaign. A free checklist and his agency’s services are linked in the description.
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Ed Codes - Shopify DIY Tutorials
- Covers
- DIY theme code, SEO and Shopify tools
- Why they’re here
- A freelance web developer running a DIY channel for store owners on “the tech side of running a Shopify store”. The video to start with tackles a theme full of forgotten customisations: Claude, run locally on the theme files, compares the modified theme with a clean copy and lists every custom section, Custom Liquid and CSS block and file edit with a complexity rating, so you can tell a developer what to carry across. The skill is free on GitHub.
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ethercycle
- Covers
- The Unofficial Shopify Podcast: discounts, operations, growth
- Why they’re here
- Kurt Elster is a Shopify Plus consultant and agency owner, and the podcast works through the questions merchants actually post. The episode to start with treats discounts as a cost centre: a “Combines With” checkbox that erased $2,000 of margin in a morning, influencer codes leaking onto coupon sites, welcome codes reused by fresh email accounts, free shipping versus 20% off, and three Black Fridays of gift-with-purchase data. Sponsors are named in the description and the episode carries YouTube’s paid-promotion label.
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- Covers
- Google Ads and Merchant Center for ecommerce stores
- Why they’re here
- Google Ads tutorials for store owners, with a long recent run on Merchant Center suspensions: live audits of suspended apparel and toy stores and what “misrepresentation” actually means. The video to start with creates a Google Ads account the current way, says which setup steps to skip, and connects Shopify so purchases are tracked before any Shopping or Performance Max campaign runs. The agency’s strategy call and paid academy are linked in the description.
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- Covers
- Running a handmade stationery shop on Shopify
- Why they’re here
- Three years into a small handmade stationery business, she films how it actually runs. The video to start with is her whole launch workflow, over an hour of it: photoshoot setup and product photos, writing the Shopify listings, organising collections, the homepage banner and social posts, then launch time. Later vlogs cover packing sold-out mystery boxes and cutting 4,000 pieces of stationery. Her Amazon storefront is linked as such.
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- Covers
- Shopify store setup and Horizon theme tutorials
- Why they’re here
- Has run his own Shopify brand full-time since 2017 and worked as an ecommerce consultant before that. The video to start with is part two of a store build on the Horizon theme: a custom video hero section, grouped buttons, custom CSS for button sizes, a spec bar, a featured-collection carousel with sale-badge colours, and removing the currency code from prices. Earlier tutorials cover metafields, shipping and test orders; Omnisend and Shopify sign-up links top each description.
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- Covers
- No-app Shopify theme edits and hands-on tests
- Why they’re here
- DIY Shopify edits with “cleaner, lighter code” instead of apps. The video to start with is a hands-on test of Shopify’s new Canvas editor on the free Horizon theme: how to try it safely with Duplicate in Canvas, what’s better (all pages in one view), what’s missing (no add-section or add-block button, no custom CSS or Liquid), why a theme can’t go back to the old editor, and a verdict to keep the classic editor for now.
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- Covers
- Shopify store design tutorials for product brands
- Why they’re here
- A website designer whose tutorials build a specific kind of store on screen: jewelry, lip gloss, clothing. The video to start with sets up a jewelry store from a blank theme to a launched first product and homepage, and links her separate tutorial on product variants. She sells Shopify theme templates and an 11-part beginners’ course, and the description says it includes affiliate links.
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Memory Box Candle Co
- Covers
- Running a small candle business, pricing and apps
- Why they’re here
- Erica’s channel is about the start-up of her own candle business rather than ecommerce in the abstract. The video to start with is on pricing candles so the business actually makes money; an earlier one walks through every app she uses on Shopify to run it, and recent uploads cover a mistake that cost them money and the best and worst parts of running the business. She sells a shipping course and templates, linked plainly in the description.
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- Covers
- Full Shopify store setup walkthroughs
- Why they’re here
- A large tutorial channel for website builders whose Shopify walkthrough is the one to send a beginner. The video to start with goes from an empty dashboard to a live store on a custom domain in 37 minutes: theme editor, hero section, products with photos, pricing, inventory and variants, collections by tag, header, footer and policies, the launch checklist and the domain. A disclosure at the bottom says some links are affiliate links.
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- Covers
- Shopify store optimisation and ecommerce marketing
- Why they’re here
- Weekly Shopify optimisation tutorials that go past the default settings. The video to start with is a 38-minute collections tutorial: manual versus automated collections, subcollections in the navigation, custom collection templates on a 2.0 theme, storefront filters and metafield-driven content. She sells one-to-one coaching, promoted in every description, and a recent automations video is sponsored by Omnisend with YouTube’s paid-promotion label.
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- Covers
- Shopify theme development and CRO audits
- Why they’re here
- A theme developer who publishes the code. The video to start with is a CRO audit of a real store aimed at average order value: a sticky free-shipping bar, product-card fixes for mobile, sale and best-seller badges driven by revenue data, reordering products and shorter titles through metafields. His JavaScript course for Shopify themes builds a free-shipping bar, cart-drawer upsells and variant swatches, with every snippet linked as a GitHub gist.
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Santrel Media
- Covers
- Beginner Shopify, marketing and website tutorials
- Why they’re here
- A general marketing-tutorial channel whose Shopify build doesn’t stop at design. The video to start with goes through theme, fonts, buttons, header and footer, products and collections, then the settings a first store trips on: payments, shipping and delivery, taxes and duties, the customers and analytics screens, and connecting a domain. A disclaimer at the bottom says the video and description contain affiliate links.
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- Covers
- Shopify app, theme and Liquid development
- Why they’re here
- An independent educational channel for Shopify developers that publishes a numbered web-development series most weeks. The video to start with opens an app-development series: what a Shopify app is, the Remix app overview, and the app, extensions and config folders explained, for beginners who want to build apps professionally. Recent episodes add product tabs, metafield details and a recommended-products section to a product page.
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- Covers
- Shopify setup, wholesale and store teardowns
- Why they’re here
- Cristian runs a Shopify development and consulting agency, and his tutorials show a setup end to end. The video to start with builds a wholesale channel without Shopify Plus: a blended or dedicated setup, a signup form, approving applicants, tiered pricing and volume discounts, and a test that retail customers still see retail prices. A later video weighs separate pages per colour against one page with variant images. The description says some links may be affiliate links.
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- Covers
- Shopify engineering: B2B, checkout and custom builds
- Why they’re here
- A development agency that frames each video around a decision, not a feature. The video to start with is a bulk order form for a B2B store: why standard product pages break for wholesale buyers, a variation matrix with colours down and sizes across, live row totals, and when an app beats a custom build. An earlier one calls a headless Hydrogen store “a tool for specific problems”. Several uploads walk through the agency’s own apps.
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- Covers
- Weekly Shopify podcast on CRO, SEO and growth
- Why they’re here
- Nick Trueman’s podcast for Shopify store owners, with Friday interviews and Tuesday “Tea Break Talks”. The episode to start with brings in Adam, founder of Blend Commerce, to go through five real CRO tests and their results, from a simplified subscription selector to a change in payment options, plus why a lower conversion rate can still mean more revenue per visitor, and how to read Shopify analytics, GA4 and Clarity heatmaps first.
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How we checked each creator
We looked at about 60 channels, found through YouTube search (filtered to this year and this month), two published roundups of Shopify channels, and creators mentioned by other creators. For each one that made the list we:
- Checked they’re active. Every creator here uploaded at least monthly over the last 90 days, counted from their channel’s public upload feed. Shorts counted.
- Picked one real lesson. We chose a video where they build, edit, configure or audit something on screen, then confirmed its exact title and channel with YouTube itself. Where the best teaching video was older than 90 days, we picked it anyway and named a recent one alongside it.
- Read what the video sets out to do. The “why” in each entry comes from that video’s own description and chapters and the channel’s About text. We did not watch every video end to end or read comments, so nothing here claims to.
- Looked for the warning signs. We left out channels built on dropshipping and “winning product” research, revenue figures as the hook, mentorship funnels, and mass-produced tutorial channels that post a dozen generic how-tos a day.
Some channels you might expect are missing for duller reasons: Shopify’s own channels are brand channels, several well-known developers hadn’t uploaded in 90 days, and a few email, SEO and ads specialists write descriptions that are pure agency pitches, which left us nothing to quote. Our methodology covers the rules every list follows; the AI tool reviewers list was built the same way. There are no subscriber counts on this page: we only publish YouTube numbers from the official YouTube Data API, dated, and refreshed or removed within 30 days.
How to tell a real operator from a course-seller
Shopify content has a specific failure mode: the creator’s real product is a course, a mentorship or an agency, and the videos are the top of the funnel. That isn’t disqualifying by itself (several creators here sell coaching or a developer course, and say so), but you should be able to tell. Five checks:
- Find the store. An operator’s About text names the business and the description links to the shop; a developer or agency names the clients. If the only thing linked is a workshop, a community or an “apply here” form, that’s the business, whatever the video is about.
- Read the money lines. Shopify’s affiliate programme pays “up to $150 USD per qualified referral” for new paid-plan signups, according to Shopify’s affiliate page, so every “start your store for $1” link is an income source, and the good creators say so. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides FAQ says a disclosure in a YouTube description is “not enough on its own”, and YouTube’s paid-promotion label only appears when the creator declares it. See our guide to disclosing affiliate links and sponsorships.
- Treat revenue claims as advertising. “$70K a month store”, “my student did $20,000 in a day”: the FTC guidance says endorsements from people with exceptional results need a clear statement of what people generally achieve, and since August 2024 the FTC also bans fake reviews and testimonials and the sale of fake followers. We can’t verify any creator’s revenue, so we left out the channels whose titles depend on it.
- Look for the settings screen. Operators show the admin: shipping rates, the “Combines With” box on a discount, a metafield definition, a conversion action. Course-sellers show whiteboards. The chapter list tells you which you’re getting before you press play.
- Apply the review tests to app “reviews”. Most “best Shopify apps” videos are affiliate-driven, and the same tests apply as to any software review: real inputs, visible outputs, a downside named, a price on screen. Our guide to honest AI tool reviews on YouTube spells them out, and they transfer unchanged.
What to do next
- Starting a store? Watch one full build from the first row, then one video from the developers row before you pay for a theme or an app.
- Already running one? Start with ethercycle’s discount episode and the Winning With Shopify CRO tests; both put numbers on changes you can make this week.
- A brand looking for Shopify creators? Read how to vet a YouTube creator before a sponsorship first; the checks above are a start, not a substitute.
- Know someone who belongs here? Suggest a creator. Suggestions go through the same checks as everyone else, and we review this list every quarter. Our other lists are here.
Frequently asked questions
- Who are the best Shopify creators to follow in 2026?
- It depends on where your store is. Starting out: clary, Learn with Robbin, McKenna Beverly, Metics Media, Rihab Seb and Santrel Media. Running your own small store: Krafted by Koko and Memory Box Candle Co. Marketing and ads: Daan Jonkman, Digital Darts and KeyCommerce. Operations, discounts and wholesale: ethercycle, Shopioso and Winning With Shopify Podcast. Theme code, apps and custom builds: Bosidev, Coding with Jan, Ed Codes, Made4uo, Saad Saif, Shopify++ and TheShopNinjas.
- Did any of these creators pay to be on this list?
- No. Nobody pays to be included, inclusion never depends on using or promoting any product, and nobody on this list was asked to mention one. Each creator is here because of a recent video in which they teach part of running a Shopify store on screen, and the entry says which one.
- How did you choose these Shopify creators?
- We started from about 60 channels found through YouTube search, roundups and creators’ own mentions. Each one on the list shows the work on screen in a specific video, teaches from a real store or from stores they build for clients, and posted at least monthly over the last 90 days. We left out dropshipping and “winning product” channels, income figures used as the hook, and channels that exist to sell a course. Our methodology page has the full rules.
- Why are the creators listed alphabetically?
- Because this isn’t a ranking. A candle maker filming her own pricing and a developer explaining Shopify Functions serve different store owners, and ranking them against each other would say nothing useful. Alphabetical order also makes it obvious that no position was bought or traded for anything.
- Why are there no dropshipping channels on this list?
- Not because dropshipping is illegitimate, but because most dropshipping channels sell a method rather than teach a store: “winning product” videos, revenue screenshots as the thumbnail, and a course or mentorship as the real product. Several large channels we checked fit that pattern and were left out however big they were. Creators here show the admin, the theme, the ad account or the discount settings, and the entry names the video.
- Why are there no subscriber counts on this page?
- We only publish YouTube numbers that come from the official YouTube Data API, dated, and refreshed or deleted within 30 days, as YouTube’s developer policies require. Until those are in place for this list we’d rather show no number than a stale or estimated one. Subscriber counts also say little about how useful a channel is to a store owner now.
About this list
We review every list each quarter. This one was last reviewed on . Every number is dated and says where it came from. How we pick creators.
Spot a mistake? Email corrections@topfluencers.co and we’ll fix it within 48 hours.
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