Dropshipping is an excellent way to start an e-commerce business without having to worry about inventory or shipping your products. It’s as simple as including a product in your online store and emailing your supplier to send the item on your behalf every time you receive an order.
Even though starting a business with dropshipping is an excellent strategy, you should not forget that you need to search the internet for a reliable supplier and this is often a difficult task.
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Within the multi-brand platforms is AliExpress that makes it easy to find products to sell in your online store, without having to worry about inventories and shipments. You can pay for products at wholesale prices, and have them ship on your behalf.
Home AliExpress
AliExpress is a gigantic environment with a wide selection of products that you can sell in your online store. Because most AliExpress sellers are foreign manufacturers, their prices are competitive.
While AliExpress can position you as an online retailer, most sellers on AliExpress understand that most of their customers are resellers and are interested in dropshipping.
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Many sellers on AliExpress have good images of the products you can use on your website, as well as detailed product descriptions.
With the mass upload system of images, products etc, it will take a matter of seconds to include hundreds of products.
Finally, using dropshipping with AliExpress is as simple as ordering the product after receiving an order and entering the customer’s address.
Below we will explain in more detail how all this works, what you should look for in a product and seller, and how to position your success working with this platform. It’s not really any more complicated than described above.
Why should someone buy from your store if they can buy directly from AliExpress?
Your competitive advantage will not be your price or the nature of the product itself. Your competitive advantage will be that you can reach customers before competitors. Add value with references, proposals, direct sales, etc. Also use alternative sales systems with a virtual catalogue using your own or external salespeople.
And everything in retail. Look for the final customer or look for other intermediaries.
With bycomercial, you can become a seller to the final customer, or supplier of others, as our stores can generate orders without telematic payment, more suitable for B2B.
A good sales strategy and knowing how to reach the right customers is your competitive advantage. You can also add more value to your customers by creating a brand, content and excellent customer service. Branding is probably your best strategy, and in the long run it will prevent you from being “bridged” in sales. It is also the best process for externally managing dropshipping and shipping from your own supplier.
Register your store
Now that you understand how AliExpress works with dropshipper, and how you are going to position your store, before placing your first order, you must first register your store.
Select your sector and its products
The first part is deciding what your niche market is going to be. If you don’t know where to start, start with the product categories AliExpress has and decide what category you are interested in or what type of products you want to market.
AliExpress Categories
When you have a niche in mind, it’s time to start choosing some products you want to resell in your store. In the following example, I decided to sell shoes.
Select product: AliExpress
That’s how you’re going to find your products with Aliexpress. There is a selection of products to choose from. In fact, it can be a bit overwhelming. It can also be a headache if you don’t select a quality product and with a reputable supplier.
Although not perfect, I have developed a list of criteria for choosing a product. There is no science, but personally it has helped me a lot in selecting good business partners. Here are some things you should investigate when you are about to select a product in AliExpress:
Free Shipping: When you can, try to resell the products that have the ePacket option available. This is because most of the products sold on AliExpress come from China or Hong Kong, and this option not only makes shipping cheaper, it is also the fastest.
Avoid brands, counterfeits or imitations: you must avoid any brand to avoid selling counterfeits or clones. Look for unbranded products. If you have a logo on the product, avoid it, even if it turns out to be legitimate. We do not recommend you to take the risk, as you are not a certified seller and therefore you really do not know if it is real or is a fraud. This can also mean that your choices are limited, so choose a niche where the brand isn’t relevant or doesn’t matter as much, such as electronic accessories or clothing.
Retailing is very easy with the bycommercial app, where you can easily use commercials, assign commissions to them, assign certain products to them.
Orders in AliExpress
More than 4.5 in rating: you must look for the products you sell to have a high product rating (more than 4.5 stars) and that the seller has positive comments. You can test the seller’s reputation through Chrome’s AliExpress Seller Check extension. This is really useful in the product incorporation process.
Rating of sellers in AliExpress
Low price with high margin potential: depending on the product you want to resell, it’s time to look for the price range you can keep. This makes it less risky to lose money. For example, you can buy shoes that cost $20 on AliExpress, and sell them for $50. This provides a 60% profit margin.
Great products: make sure the photos you publish are really from the supplier and not stolen from other sellers. Do a quick Google search to help you see if the images are original.
As always we recommend going little by little, with products that are simple to send, configure, with little or no possibility of return, where the description is clear, and where you can even generate added value with experience, warranties, after sales, and so on.
Example of products
Effective communication with the seller: don’t be afraid to ask the seller questions before placing an order. A good, reliable salesperson will answer all your questions quickly. If a seller doesn’t respond to your messages, it’s a bad choice.
Add products to your store
Once you have configured your bycommercial store, it’s time to add your products. It’s important to cover it in detail because it’s not as easy as copying and pasting AliExpress images and descriptions to place on your website.
Important: if you want to make your store successful, there are some things you need to do, even if it means more work:
Write your own product descriptions: many of the product descriptions in AliExpress were not written by editors or with the intention of explaining in detail the benefits of the products. Having unique content will help you improve your business in the long run (Google doesn’t like duplicate content) and will help you have better conversions on your product pages.
Let customers know about delivery times: it’s a good idea to include this on product pages (or elsewhere in the store), as your customers must wait at least 20 days for the product (depending on the supplier). Shipping times may be longer than normal, because most AliExpress suppliers are located in China. This is one of the drawbacks of AliExpress, keep it in mind and if you are imaginative use it to your advantage, to highlight. In other post we give ideas.
In a more advanced process you can place orders in advance and then ship yourself. That’s risky, but it means controlling critical processes, improving the customer experience.
Use an order tracking application: with shipping times longer than most people are used to, you will often receive emails where your customers request the status of their purchase. Use some bycommercial order tracking application to keep your customers up to date, where they’ll link up with the shipping manager you’ve set up.
Offer free shipping: this can become a competitive advantage, so I recommend you offer free shipping to your customers by taking advantage of the free or low-cost shipping options of many AliExpress sellers.
Appropriate product prices: consider that the price of your products is around twice their cost. The 50% margin will make running the business worthwhile, as well as covering marketing expenses.
Add products to your store through applications: There are some applications you can use to import products from AliExpress into your store easily.
How to use AliExpress for dropshipping
Now that you have your store full of products ready for sale, what do you do once the first order arrives?
Dropshipping with AliExpress works similarly to any other dropshipping provider. When you receive an order, the purchase is made in AliExpress and the consumer enters the name and address. The seller of AlliExpress does the rest.
A good idea is to have a spreadsheet with a list of products from your site, the selling price, the cost in AliExpress and a link to the AliExpress list. This way, when you receive an order, it will be easy to find which supplier it belongs to, as well as keep track of price changes.
Sales and Price Tracking
As an alternative, you can use the bycomercial intranet to do everything for you, including the simplest for you such as purchases, orders and price changes.
At the end, you can leave a message for the supplier. I recommend you to leave something like: “External product management. Do not send accounting documents” or “We work with dropshipping. No promotions or invoices, please”. All in several languages and preferably in English.
Order
As mentioned above, try to select the ePacket shipment if the supplier is in China and if this shipping option is available. Many suppliers offer this free shipping option.
Depending on the processing time of the seller, you will receive an email informing you that your order has been shipped.
Order Message
Click on the link in the email to view the order, it will allow you to see the tracking number for the order.
Order Tracking
Go to the bycommercial administrator and add the order. Be sure to add the tracking number as well.
Order data in your online store
Complete! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for customers to receive your order. When it arrives, AliExpress will send you an email requesting confirmation. Give the customer some time to contact you if there is a problem. In this way, you can ask the supplier for a solution.
Are there refunds and returns?
As commented in some other post, this is the main problem of online sales. It involves losses, so you have to fine-tune with suppliers and also with customers.
Many AliExpress suppliers do not offer refunds. Which means you’ll have to handle returns and refunds in other ways. When there is a problem with a customer order, it’s usually because the order didn’t arrive or your customer isn’t happy with the purchase.
For the first case, for an order that did not arrive you should contact the supplier of AliExpress. In this situation, contact the supplier to resolve the problem or use the protection of the purchased AliExpress.
If the customer is not satisfied with the product, I suggest you provide a refund. If the product is damaged, ask your customer to take pictures and send them to the supplier.
Once you’ve made your first sales, it’s time to start thinking about how you can make your business earn more money.
Over time you’ll begin to realize which suppliers are reliable and quality, and which are not. You should consider building relationships with those who are reliable, this will allow you to get better prices and priority in processing your orders.
We have found that most AliExpress providers use Skype. If you often go to the same vendor, it’s a good idea to ask for their username to start developing a business relationship. If you prove that you can attract recurring sales, some vendors will allow you to place the logo on products, include custom invoices or branding on package shipping.
Start selling with dropshipping
The best part about using AliExpress is that it allows you to test and validate your store’s product ideas quickly. Not sure how to sell a particular product? Add it to your store and try it! If it doesn’t work, just delete the item and try something different.
Because you’re not managing an inventory and there are no up-front costs, there’s little risk to get started.
Try it and share your experience.
All we have commented here is information gathered from our expirience and from other dropshippers. You have to keep in mind that the online world is changing and some things may vary.
Do you have questions about how bycomercial works?
Write an email to our Technical Support team, and they will respond as soon as possible.
soporte@bycomercial.com
