Day One, Day Two, Day Seven: A Setup Checklist Broken Down by When You Actually Need It
Stop trying to configure everything at once — here's exactly what belongs in today's session, tomorrow's, and week one's.
Most setup checklists hand you thirty tasks in one long list and wish you luck. You open a new tab, get to item eleven — something about custom checkout fields you don't even use yet — and close the laptop feeling behind before you've sold a single thing. That's not a discipline problem, it's a sequencing problem. Setting up a storefront isn't one job, it's three: the things that must exist before anyone can pay you, the things that make the store feel like yours, and the things that only matter once real customers show up. Confusing those stages is the biggest reason first sessions stall out. So here's the checklist re-sorted by time — what belongs in today's session, what can wait until tomorrow, and what you shouldn't touch until you've made your first sale.
Day one: the store has to work, not look finished
The only question day one needs to answer is: can a stranger with a credit card give you money right now? Everything else is negotiable. That means creating your store and connecting payments come before anything involving color palettes or cover photos. Connect Stripe in one click, or drop in a PayPal email if you're not ready for Stripe — Apple Pay and Google Pay switch on automatically once one of those is live. Then upload exactly one product. Not your full catalog, not the three ebooks and the course you're planning — one thing, priced, described, with the actual file attached and ready to deliver.
This is where people get stuck longest, usually on a product that isn't even done yet. Don't wait for the perfect PDF — a rough-but-real template you'll improve next week, listed today, earns more than a polished one sitting in a drafts folder. The moment someone buys, store.fan hands them a secure download link on-screen and by email automatically, with no manual step for you to forget.
Day one — do this before you close the laptop
0/5Day two: now make it look like you
Once the store can take a payment, day two is about turning a functional page into a recognizable one. This is when the cover photo, avatar, and theme earn their spot — not before, since polishing a store nobody can buy from yet is procrastination with better lighting. Open the store designer, pick a theme matching your brand colors, and add a short bio line that tells a stranger what you sell and who it's for.
This is also the day to add your second and third products, now that you've seen the upload flow once. If you have a free lead magnet — a checklist, a mini-guide — add it too, giving visitors a low-friction way to join your list before they're ready to pay. For a sense of how this looks finished, a live example store shows the cover photo, theme, and product mix working together without looking cluttered.
Day two — layer on the identity
0/5Day seven: the tools that need traffic to matter
Here's the mistake worth naming: setting up discount codes, broadcast emails, and analytics before you've made a single sale. These aren't bad tools — they just have no job yet on day one, since they all depend on customers or traffic to act on. A discount code is meaningless with zero visitors. A campaign email has nobody on the list. Google Analytics on the Pro plan tells you where traffic comes from, which only matters once traffic exists. Save these for week one, once you've got real numbers to react to.
By day seven you'll likely have your first handful of buyers, which means you now have a customer list worth looking at and a reason to send your first broadcast email — a thank-you, a bundle offer, or a heads-up about a new product. This is also when a discount code starts doing real work: a limited-time offer for subscribers, or a bounce-back deal for first-time buyers, converts far better once there's an actual list to send it to.
| Tool | Why it waits for day seven | First good use |
|---|---|---|
| Discount codes | Useless without visitors to see them | First-purchase or subscriber-only offer |
| Broadcast/campaign emails | No customer list exists yet on day one | Thank-you note to your first buyers |
| Google Analytics (Pro) | Nothing to measure without traffic | Spotting which bio link or post drove a sale |
| Custom checkout fields | Adds friction before you need the data | Collecting shipping info or a coaching intake form |
A discount code with no traffic is a coupon nobody's holding. Build the audience first, then build the incentive.— store.fan team
Why the order matters more than the checklist
Every task on this list has to happen eventually — the point isn't to skip anything, it's to stop doing week-one tasks in your first twenty minutes. When creators try to configure everything simultaneously, the store designer, the campaign tool, and the checkout fields all compete for attention with the one task that actually generates revenue: getting a product live and payable. Sequencing by when a task starts paying off is what turns setup from an afternoon of overwhelm into three short sessions that each end with visible progress.
There's a compounding effect too. A store live on day one starts collecting whatever traffic your existing bio link already gets, even before it looks polished. By day seven, you're not setting up discount codes in a vacuum — you're reacting to actual buyer behavior, which beats planning from zero data.
Ready to stop planning and get your first product live today?
Start freeWhat to do if you're already behind schedule
If you set up your store weeks ago and never got past the theme, that's fine — this checklist still applies, just compressed. Check whether Stripe or PayPal is actually connected and whether one product is genuinely live and purchasable. If yes, the day-seven tools are fair game today. If no, treat this as day one again: connect payments, publish one product, skip the branding polish until that's done. The calendar doesn't care what day it is — it cares whether the store can take money yet.
Spend all twenty minutes on the day-one list: connect payments and publish one product. That's the only combination that lets someone actually pay you, before you touch anything else, even a cover photo.
You can, but it delays the point where the store can earn money, which is usually the more motivating milestone. A plain-looking store that can sell something beats a beautifully themed store that can't yet.
No. The free plan covers everything through day two and most of day seven — a live product, payments connected, a designed store, and a growing customer list. Google Analytics is the one item here tied to the Pro plan, and it's fine to add later once traffic makes it useful.
That's common, and not a sign to add more tools — check the FAQ and the blog's launch guides for where your traffic should be coming from. Discount codes and campaign emails still won't do much without visitors first.
The order holds regardless of whether you're selling an ebook, a coaching call, or a membership — payments and one live product always come first. The specific day-two and day-seven tasks shift slightly by product type, but the sequencing logic doesn't change.
Setup isn't a checkbox exercise, it's a schedule — and the fastest path to real income is respecting it instead of fighting it. Get payments and one product live today, dress up the storefront tomorrow, and save the audience-dependent tools for the week they'll actually matter. Stuck on a step? Contact support rather than letting it block the list, and check the blog for more guides once your first sale is in. store.fan was built so the hard part — payments, delivery, hosting — is already done; the only thing left is showing up in the right order.
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