AliExpress dropshipping is one of the most straightforward ways to get started if you want to become an ecommerce entrepreneur.
You can access a wide range of products in the AliExpress marketplace by using AliExpress. Whether it’s fashion, electronics, toys, beauty, or the latest trend, AliExpress makes it simple to find products from suppliers all over the world and easily add them to your own online store via the dropshipping model.
Once you’ve made a sale, your supplier will ship the products directly to your customer’s door from their warehouse — you’ll never have to bother about storing, packaging, or delivering your products again.
Instead, you can concentrate on what actually matters: expanding your brand and increasing revenue.
Dropshipping AliExpress products has various advantages:
- It doesn’t take much money to get started. In fact, we created a post about the inexpensive startup expenses of dropshipping and the bare minimum you’d need to get started.
- A physical store is not required. Given that we’re discussing ecommerce, you can run a profitable dropshipping business from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, you are not required to stock any of the product yourself.
- Everything you might possibly need to know is available for free online. You may learn on the go by accessing a wealth of articles, videos, and other instructional resources.
What is AliExpress?
AliExpress, founded in 2010, is one of the most popular online marketplaces, with over 100 million products for sale. It’s a terrific site to buy dropshipping products, since you can get everything from jewelry and women’s clothing to baby wear and children’s toys at reasonable prices.
Because AliExpress is controlled by Alibaba, a Chinese ecommerce corporation, the majority of AliExpress suppliers are overseas manufacturers and wholesalers selling their items at a reduced price.
You may also dropship things from AliExpress to any location in the world. You may easily import product content from AliExpress.com into your store, allowing you to choose from millions of different things. You’ll also be able to establish your own prices and markups.
The best thing is that after you sell a product, you may buy it from a supplier on AliExpress and have it shipped directly to your buyer from their warehouse. One of the many dropshipping secrets is to use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to determine which items are popular among dropshippers.
How Is AliExpress for Dropshippers?
Although many AliExpress suppliers are merchants, the vast majority of AliExpress users are resellers, which is a well-known reality. As a result, Ali Express dropshipping is quite straightforward because suppliers have previously dealt with dropshippers and are happy to work to your specifications.
There is no upfront cost or fee to dropship from Ali Express, so you can test out products without any financial commitment.
With a few clicks, you can search, import, and sell Ali Express products on your Shopify store using the Automizely app.
How to Dropship With AliExpress
While we’ve already discussed many of the advantages of dropshipping from AliExpress, the procedure can still be a little confusing. So, before we continue, let’s take a step-by-step look at how it works.
To utilize AliExpress for dropshipping, follow these steps:
- First, you’ll create your online store utilizing a platform like Shopify.
- Then, using an app such as Automizely, you may begin importing products from the Ali Express Marketplace.
- Automizely streamlines and syncs your Ali Express imports with your Shopify storefront by notifying you of any inventory or pricing changes from your supplier, and it can assist you send tracking codes to your customers after their purchases have been sent.
- Finally, when a consumer puts an order with your store, you will contact your supplier and request that the same item be supplied directly to them.
How to Find Suppliers for Your AliExpress Dropshipping Store
Because the goods is transported straight from your supplier’s warehouse to your consumer, you can quickly lose control over the customer experience while using AliExpress dropshipping.
Dropshipping might be a problem if you try to give excellent customer care, which is essential. Although AliExpress as a marketplace controls untrustworthy vendors as best it can, we nevertheless recommend exercising extreme caution when picking dropshipping suppliers.
Here are the Top Dropshipping Supplier Selection Tips
Do not always seek the lowest price.
This is how the AliExpress dropshipping marketplace works:
Original Hoodies, a supplier, begins selling a high-quality product dubbed “blue hoodie” for $40. Then, another supplier, Competitive Hoodies, produces the same hoodie but decreases the price to $15 by using more polyester instead of cotton.
When a merchant like yourself searches for a blue sweatshirt, he comes across two that appear to be identical, but one is selling for less. In most circumstances, the merchant will choose the cheapest option. Original Hoodies, the original supplier, grows dissatisfied with her sales and substitutes her “blue hoodie” cotton materials with polyester while simultaneously lowering the price to remain competitive.
While choosing the lowest priced goods may appear to be the obvious decision, it is important to understand that this type of competition can lead the quality of marketplace products to suffer. Suppliers strive for price competitiveness, and each product typically has a number of very similar versions, frequently at artificially low costs.
In short, the price on Ali Express.com decreases as the quality increases. If you want to start a successful ecommerce business, you’ll need to research and evaluate the costs supplied by various suppliers. If several merchants have similar prices on the same goods, but one source has a much cheaper price, this usually implies that the quality of the product has been compromised.
Purchase from suppliers who have received 90% or more positive feedback.
Positive feedback ratings are one approach to evaluate an AliExpress dropshipping seller in general. Rating systems for products and sellers are critical in every marketplace. Consider yourself wandering through a flea market when someone cries that the guy in the next stall is a con artist.
Would you purchase from him? Most likely not.
The virtual Ali Express marketplace is no different. Listen to what other merchants have to say about each supplier and take notes. Essentially, look for the highest-rated vendors to locate the most trustworthy ones.
Navigate to a specific supplier’s page on Ali Express.com and click on the feedback tab to find the feedback ratings. The following is a breakdown of the scores listed here. The Feedback Score represents the seller’s sales volume, whereas Positive Feedback represents the supplier’s feedback rate. When sourcing AliExpress dropshipping products for your business, you should always aim for a favorable feedback rating of 90% or above.
Also, consider how long the supplier has been an AliExpress seller and the customer feedback they’ve received.
Be Careful With Branded Products
On AliExpress.com, well-known premium brands are quite rare. Because these search keywords are restricted, you can’t even look for Versace or Chanel products.
If you see a copyright violation or a counterfeit goods being offered on AliExpress, please report it here. This could include things that look suspiciously similar to well-known brands or have logos that look close to those of more established companies.
It is crucial to note, however, that not all branded products are counterfeit. AliExpress frequently arranges collaboration promotions with companies such as Lenovo and others.
Just remember to be cautious and use your best judgment to avoid making any dropshipping blunders. Products with brand names like Nike and Chanel should be avoided while dropshipping.
Pay Attention to the Supplier’s Responsiveness
To put this to the test, create a fake emergency and message a supplier about it to watch how he or she replies. Consider the supplier’s response time and English command, as well as the supplier’s ability to understand your problem and offer you with clear information. If he or she simply responds with a generic, useless message, remove that source from your list.
After all, chances are you’ll encounter a real-life circumstance similar to the one you imagined, and you’ll want to know your supplier would manage it correctly. When it comes to building a successful online business with AliExpress dropshipping, your suppliers are critical, so choose wisely.
Search for ePacket Delivery (The AliExpress Premium Shipping Option)
When utilizing AliExpress for dropshipping, consider your shipping alternatives. True, this is a common stumbling block that most dropshipping ecommerce businesses must overcome. To begin, keep an eye out for AliExpress dropshipping suppliers who can provide the greatest delivery alternatives for your ecommerce site.
AliExpress Premium Shipping strikes the ideal combination between cost and speed. Shipping using ePacket, commonly known as AliExpress Premium Shipping, is great. Most ePacket deliveries arrive within 30 days door-to-door and contain a tracking code that your clients may use to find out where their product is.
How to Choose AliExpress Dropshipping Products: Order Samples
If you want to achieve ecommerce success, you should order samples of all of your products to ensure that they are exactly as stated online. While this may appear to be a perfectly logical goal, I do not recommend it. If you’re importing 100+ products into your store, it’s not cost-effective to order each one to ensure quality.
Instead, just order product samples that you intend to use in your advertising campaigns. Assume you have two or three products on which you are currently offering the greatest prices. You know they’re fantastic, so you want to use them in Facebook or Instagram ads to drive traffic to your store. Definitely get some samples of them. Ecommerce merchants with savvy would order samples of these products to ensure the greatest quality. If your top-selling products are of high quality, it will say volumes about your store and increase your chances of gaining vital social proof.
Because you’re simply ordering a few products, choose Express Delivery and you’ll get them in a few days.
AliExpress Refunds and Returns?
Because most Ali Express suppliers do not support order returns, you will need a plan of action and your own dropshipping returns policy. The following are two of the most obvious applications for returns:
- Your customer’s order was never delivered: In this case, you must engage immediately with your AliExpress supplier to rectify the issue because it cannot continue. Changing the delivery method could be a solution to this problem. If this occurs, you can negotiate with your customer whether a refund or return is the best option for them.
- The product was damaged in transit: If a product is damaged while being delivered to a client, it is recommended to request photographs of the damaged products and give a refund to the customer. If you believe the packing is inadequate for the product, you should consult with your AliExpress supplier.
How to Pick the Right Product to Sell
Choosing the correct dropshipping products is an important part of learning how to dropship with Ali Express.
I aim to produce a large number of product concepts and then eliminate those that aren’t worth testing. Once that’s done, I’m left with a few winners to utilize in my commercials, and then I add some other related things to my store to make it look natural.
Here are the top three sources to consult for finding product ideas:
Your Mind
Whether you realize it or not, your head is already full of fantastic product ideas. Consider your own hobbies, favorite goods, and the trends you see around you. Spend some time brainstorming and writing down everything that comes to mind.
At this point in the process, don’t be concerned about whether or not you believe a product will be a success. For the time being, just add it to your list.
Other Online Stores
Consider visiting other stores for ideas. Examine their goods, best-seller lists, and advertised products.
The largest online retail sites have a ton of data to pull from, and they usually have entire departments dedicated to selecting products and managing sales. Make use of this information as well.
The following websites are worth visiting on a regular basis: Most Popular Products on AliExpress (Weekly), Amazon Best Sellers, eBay Daily Deals, Lazada Top Sellers, and LightInTheBox Top Sellers List.
Social Shopping Sites
Never underestimate the influence of social shopping websites like Pinterest, Polyvore, Fancy, and Wanelo. These platforms offer hundreds of millions of products.
This may not be the first place you expect to go for product ideas, but they are extremely valuable as social media becomes a more dynamic aspect of our life in general.
Create an account on each site, subscribe to categories and lists of interest, and keep a watch on trending product feeds to get the most out of them. Try to figure out what people like the most and then add those products to your list.
Guide to Filtering AliExpress Dropshipping Product Ideas
When you’re happy with the length of your product list, it’s time to narrow it down to only the greatest ideas.
- Look for specialized products that aren’t as common on mainstream ecommerce sites or in stores. This can help you build a profitable ecommerce business with products that are in high demand.
Even if there is no specific market for selling a standard belt, you can easily conclude that cycling gear will be of interest among cycling fans. Pick your dropshipping niche carefully!
- Several product categories have expanded to significant proportions in the recent few years.
Odds are a mix of large scale marketplaces and local stores have already taken advantage of the possibility to sell these things.
To avoid oversaturated markets, remove the following categories from your concept list: literature, jewelry, apparel, and electronics To find a profitable niche at this stage in the ecommerce game, you’ll need to be more precise.
- Let us now discuss product pricing. In my experience, the ideal pricing range is between $40 and $60. (with a 200 percent markup). This price range was determined by the notion that the lower the price, the higher the conversion rate. At the same time, the higher the price, the more customer care you will be expected to provide.
- Go through your product ideas and enter each one, as well as name alternatives, into the Google Keywords Analysis tool.
Check the number of searches for each Low Competition Keyword by selecting ‘Keyword Ideas.’ Avoid product categories with little or no search traffic when implementing ecommerce SEO for your store.
The objective is to find a happy medium between keyword competition and search volume.
- Next, go to trends.google.com and look at the trends for each of your product ideas. Is the trend rising or falling? Is there anything else worth noting? Where do the spikes occur? Remove products that are out of style as well as seasonal items.
After you’ve eliminated any ideas that aren’t worth testing, you’ll be left with a few possible winners. It’s now time to start a store and test them out! We’re confident you’ll be successful, especially after reading our Ali Express dropshipping tutorial.
The Key to Using AliExpress Successfully
My brother and I ran a regular dropshipping business and handled all of our orders via email. Needless to say, it was exhausting! We were tired of negotiating with dozens of different suppliers and asked why we didn’t just add products directly from the Ali Express marketplace to our web store.
All of the suppliers we were in contact with sold their items there anyhow, and we could avoid the trouble of email correspondence, orders getting lost between Excel files, and not knowing if our suppliers would complete the orders.
So we started adding things to our tale directly from AliExpress and were blown away by the results. We quickly had 2–3 full-time employees manually putting orders on AliExpress, but even with this change, things didn’t feel as efficient as they could be. It was highly time consuming, and we had issues selling things that were out of stock.
My colleague was a developer, and we talked about creating a solution to automate the AliExpress dropshipping approach in order to avoid some of the typical problems and tedium involved with it. Within a few weeks of that talk, we had a functional prototype, and once we started utilizing it, everything started falling into place.
Since then, we’ve helped thousands of entrepreneurs sell over 2,000,000 products through Ali Express dropshipping.
FAQs
You may still have unanswered questions now that this dropshipping guide has helped you understand the fundamentals of dropshipping with AliExpress. After all, dropshipping isn’t a standard ecommerce method, and there are additional steps needed.
Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions concerning AliExpress dropshipping.
Will my customers be able to tell if my products are dropshipped from AliExpress?
Unlike other marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy), AliExpress has a one-of-a-kind infrastructure that is ideal for dropshipping. I’ve communicated with dozens of providers through AliExpress. They all dropship, therefore you’ll discover a lot of suppliers who are trustworthy and understand the business strategy and their position in it.
Every month, thousands of new merchants start dropshipping, proving the online business model’s growing popularity and viability.
While entrusting your order fulfillment to suppliers can be a risk, rest assured that there are rarely any promotions or invoices in the packages your clients get.
To be safe, you can even instruct your supplier not to include any of these products. You can also arrange for bespoke packing and AliExpress premium shipping, known as ePacket. Remember that the packages your customer will receive will have Chinese shipping labels.
From where does AliExpress ship?
Because the vast majority of AliExpress merchants are headquartered in China, your things will be shipped from there. However, Ali Express does not always reveal the nation of origin on your shipment information.
Some tracking numbers merely indicate “Departed from country of origin,” despite the fact that checking at the shipping carrier can reveal where the item was delivered from. However, Non-Chinese Seller Registration is available on AliExpress, therefore not all vendors will ship things from China.
Why should someone buy from me if they can get the same product cheaper from AliExpress?
This one is simple: because you can do it better! You may be an excellent marketer who reaches out to potential clients first. You may also build a more trustworthy brand that consumers feel more comfortable purchasing from.
Furthermore, you may give customer service in a way that aids in the development of a relationship with your consumer.
Remember that the idea of merchants purchasing things from suppliers at lower costs and putting them in their stores predates dropshipping. Most establishments in your neighborhood are likely to do the same.
Choose your fights properly when it comes to dropshipping. There are some techniques that are more likely than others to set you apart from the competition. For starters, don’t compete on price; you’ll never be the lowest. Especially with lower-priced products (around $100), price is not the deciding factor.
Examine the same product on a variety of popular websites, including Milanoo.com, LightInTheBox.com, DHgate, and AliExpress. These are all multi-million dollar corporations. Are these businesses’ prices competitive? No. Are they out of a job? No!
Instead, concentrate on your marketing methods and creating an amazing brand.
AliExpress Shipping Takes Too Long, My Customers Won’t Wait. What Can I Do About It?
That is simply an assumption on your behalf, and I strongly advise you to test it. Many buyers will be alright with waiting as long as you make the shipping periods clear on your website so they know what to expect.
While you should avoid competing on pricing, it is probable that you will be able to offer customers a decent bargain on products purchased from Ali Express dropshipping even with a markup. People are willing to wait if it means getting a better deal.
Alibaba sold more than $75 billion in a single day.
Customers of the other firms featured in the pricing comparison example do not appear to be bothered by long delivery terms.
Your job as an ecommerce entrepreneur is to set clear expectations, define your shipping policy, and show it in the appropriate sections of your online store. Some people may quit your site after seeing your price, but you’d be shocked how many individuals don’t care.
Another strategy to alleviate customer resentment of extended shipment waits is to offer free shipping on all of your products. This alone will often convey to them that their product will take a bit longer to arrive. Shipping charges might be factored into your product markups.
Premium Shipping on AliExpress
Most shipments to the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and numerous other countries with thriving economies take only 15-30 days with the Ali Express premium shipping ePacket delivery option.
We strongly advise using ePacket wherever possible. When you’re dropshipping from Ali Express, it’s the ideal shipping choice to help you achieve ecommerce success and improved customer happiness!
Conclusion
That’s pretty much how Ali Express dropshipping got started. Dropshipping is a vital resource in your ecommerce journey because it was developed by people just like you to power ecommerce enterprises just like yours.
If you intend to use Ali Express dropshipping as part of your company model, we strongly advise you to experiment with Shopify dropshipping apps. The apps allow you to quickly add hundreds of products to your store and ship orders with a few clicks. You can also easily follow your order delivery information. In addition to these fantastic features, you will receive full support from our professional customer success managers.
