Interestingly, the term ‘dropshipper’ can refer to two different types of an entrepreneurial activity. Sometimes, a supplier involved in product stocking and shipment is called a dropshipper, and sometimes, the same word is used to describe a person who simply runs a drop shipping store and never deals with product issues. In this article, we stick to the second meaning of this term, and talk about the newcomers who would love to sell someone else’s products through a self-owned online store.
If you have analyzed different eCommerce options and found out that drop shipping is the perfect choice for you, you are probably wondering how to become a dropshipper. We have prepared this detailed manual for those who have no idea where to start.
Going into drop shipping business is not as difficult as it may seem, but eCommerce newcomers often make mistakes of choosing a risky niche, conducting no market research, focusing on the wrong things and whatnot. Want to have a smooth start? Here’s what you should do step by step.
How to become a dropshipper: find your niche
The first step you should take before launching your store is to find a suitable niche.
Your perfect niche should be:
Promising
Interesting to you
Neither too broad nor too narrow
Popular enough, but not too competitive
Where can you find the ideas for an online store? Brainstorming, web and social media surfing, visiting popular online retail platforms will help you a lot. Your hobbies and interests can inspire you as well. Use such online tools as Google Trends and various tools for keyword selection – you can get lots of valuable ideas there. Keep in mind that your offer should be unique, otherwise you’ll be selling ice to the Eskimos.
To evaluate the chosen niche, follow these simple steps:
Check the relevant products quantity and the number of orders placed on AliExpress to understand if it is available and popular.
Check if the niche demonstrates an ascending (rising) trend in Google Trends on your potential target markets.
Check the search volume in Keyword Planner: the optimal results range from 5000 to 50000.
Check the popularity of the niche in social media: a sufficient amount of groups and communities with more than 30000 followers on Facebook and Instagram means the niche has a nice potential in terms of promotion.
You can use our specialized tool that checks the potential of any drop shipping niche in 11 steps.
Besides, you can take advantage of DropshipMe plugin which allows importing nice products from an awesome dropshipping database. DropshipMe product database includes thousands of best selling products in dozens of trending categories. Experienced dropshipping team has made thorough niche research and picked out best selling items in promising niches. So, you can greatly save your time and start importing products to your store without preliminary niche and product research.
How to become a dropshipper: define your target audience
Now when you know what you are going to sell, your task is to understand who will buy it.
Why do you need to picture your average customer?
Now it’s time to find out who are all these people that are most likely to buy your products – to define your target audience. When you focus your marketing efforts on those who are interested in your offer, you have much better chances to convert them into actual buyers. So, answer the following questions:
Who are your customers?
Use Google Trends to make a customer avatar – an average client profile. Here you can find lots of helpful information about your potential customers: region, language, age, gender, marital status and other social and cultural indicators. Try to understand what matters much for them, where can you meet them (what social networks and online platforms do they prefer, etc.). You can use this information to address to this “average customer” in your future promotional campaigns.
What do they need?
Any product should solve some customer’s problem. So, your task is to determine customer’s demand – and meet it. What do your customers need, what are they looking for? And how can your offer help them?
How much money can they spend?
Your profit is the money that your customers spend in your store. Think about the financial reliability of your customers. Will they be able to make impulse purchases in your store? And try not to target too young audience – they are not always able to pay much.
When you know the answers to these questions, you can to attract the attention of your audience more efficiently, and choose the right tone of communication. Talking to your clients in their language is the cornerstone of effective promotion that lets you increase customers’ loyalty in the future.
How to become a dropshipper: build your store
You can try selling products on various online platforms such as a social network account, or a blog, or an online auction, etc. But if you want to dropship like a pro, you need your own drop shipping online store. Why?
To begin with it gives you a great independence. You will not have to obey someone’s rules and policies. You will not lose your store if your account is banned. No one can suspend you (if your store sells nothing illegal, of course).
In the next place, a specialized site looks more trustworthy and inspires a greater confidence.
For another thing, it is easier to promote a standalone website and optimize it for search engines.
And the last, but not the least – your own website is a good asset which can be sold any time you want and bring you a pretty penny.
To launch a store, you need to choose and buy domain and hosting. There are some points to consider when picking a domain name – study this guide to learn the answers to the most vital questions about it.
Then, you need to select a content management system: it forms the core of your website and lets it operate smoothly. The best solution for an online store is WordPress – an open-source multipurpose content management system. It is safe, easy to install and user-friendly. And what is more – it is free!
How to become a dropshipper: set up the management processes
You cannot imagine how much time you can save if you automate your routine work. Product import, reviews, email marketing, SEO, customer support – all these and many other aspects can be managed in few clicks instead of long hours.
This is another reason to choose WordPress for your eCommerce business: it easily integrates with different services and applications. There are numerous useful plugins and add-ons that can extend functionality of your drop shipping site and boost its performance.
Marketing add-ons are your best helpers to provide stable organic traffic from social networks, stimulate impulse buying, simplify email marketing and solve a pile of other tasks.
And if your use WooCommerce, you can upgrade your store with this selection of smart extensions for any purposes.
Of course, there are more things you will have to deal with – search engine optimization, promotion, customer support… But these are the next steps of your drop shipping journey. And well begun – half done!
And if you want to save your time and efforts, there is another brilliant idea how to become a dropshipper – start your own online business with a ready-made custom store and focus your energy on what you do best!
No matter whether you’ve got sick of working full time in the office or just decided to earn some extra money, the easiest and fastest way to solve these problems is selling goods online. Many online ecommerce platforms such as eBay and Amazon open up such an opportunity for you. But if you really want to make a decent profit, you need to start your own ecommerce business. And drop shipping is definitely the most affordable and least energy-consuming way to pull it off.
So, you’ve decided to get your own drop shipping store, and even purchased our plugin for this purpose – now what? Let’s explore the step-by-step process of launching your awesome moneymaking business!
We have already written tons of tips on how to start a drop shipping business, attract buyers and promote your store in the way that would make your competitors turn green just like Hulk.
However, we regularly receive one simple question from the beginners: “What’s my next step after getting theplugin?”
In this article, we want to answer this and many other newcomers’ questions in detail. Meet our “drop shipping for dummies” guide and learn what to do if you are just starting out.
Drop shipping for dummies: technical issues
First things first: to make the most of AliDropship plugin, you need to install it on the website where your store will be located. Here’s what you need to do if you don’t have the necessary site yet.
1. Buy a domain
When creating a website for the first time in their life, most of the people have no idea what a domain is, and why they need to get it.
In simple terms, a domain name is the address of your website. If you imagine that your website is a house, a domain name will be its address. All domain names are unique just like fingertips. It means you will not find 2 identical domain names on the Internet. For example, the domain name (address) of our website is alidropship.com and it is only one of its kind.
In order to get a domain name, visit such website as GoDaddy, for example. Type a desired domain name in the search box and click the search button.
If your domain name is already taken, you will get a list of available ones. For example, I want to register the domain name “acooldomainname.com”, but it is already used. As you see, the service offers me some alternatives. I can choose a domain name from this list or look for another one.
If you want to learn more about how to choose the perfect domain name for your drop shipping store, feel free to read our article. And we come to the next step.
2. Find a hosting provider
Let’s say you have chosen and bought a domain name. Now it’s high time to find a hosting provider and place your website on the Internet.
I guess you have ever heard the word “server”. In simple terms, a server is a very powerful computer that keeps working 24 hours a day and stores a lot of information. Any information on the Internet is placed on one server or another and can be easily accessible from other devices such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, etc.
In order to make your drop shipping website accessible to other people on the Internet, you need to buy some place on a server. This place is called hosting. A company that offers you a hosting is a hosting provider.
You can find a hosting provider on the Internet or use our services. AliDropship hosting solution guarantees high technical performance and provides you with 24/7 customer service and support.
Please note, before buying a hosting, make sure it meets the system requirements!
3. Install WordPress
When you have found a hosting provider and got a domain name, it’s time to build your website. For this purpose, you need to install WordPress on your hosting.
WordPress is software that allows you to build and manage your website without any knowledge about programming. WordPress is free and can be easily downloaded from the official website (WordPress.org).
You may ask: “Why should I set up WordPress, not another content management system?” The answer is simple, and you can find it right here. So, if you want to use the best solution for AliExpress drop shipping, setting up WordPress is a must.
As a rule, there are 2 ways to install WordPress – automatic and manual. And each of them doesn’t pose any serious problem. In our knowledge base, we have a detailed plan on how to install WordPress, so feel free to read it.
If you do everything right, your WordPress admin panel will look something like this.
4. Install AliDropship Plugin
Well, the hardest part is over. It’s high time to install AliDropship Plugin and start making money.
Go to your WP account, choose the Plugins tab, click the “add new” button, upload the plugin from your computer and install it.
My congratulations! Your plugin is installed successfully.
5. Activate your AliDropship license key
After installing the plugin, you have to activate it so that it could start working. For that purpose, you need your key license.
You can find the key in two places – on the Thank You page that you see right after purchasing AliDropship plugin or in the confirmation email that you can find in your e-mail account.
Copy the license key, paste it in the plugin settings and click the “Activate” button.
Well done! Your AliDropship Plugin is good to go.
Please note that the key license is unique and valid for one domain name only! So if you want to share it with your friends, it won’t do the trick.
Drop shipping for dummies: creative part
I hope you have successfully completed all these annoying technical things and are ready to demonstrate your creative potential.
A theme determines your website appearance. In other words, when you choose a theme, you choose the design of your website.
We offer you 4 beautiful themes that have great opportunities for customization. All themes are free and you can easily download them from our website.
We have put all the themes to the test and can safely say that each of them is perfect for customizing a drop shipping store. So choose the one that you like the most and download it.
After that, go to your WordPress panel, find the Appearance button and click Themes. In the opened window, find the Add new button, choose the downloaded theme and install it. Don’t forget to activate the chosen theme!
Let’s say, you’ve installed the Da Vinci theme. In this case, your store will look something like this. Now you need to make your website unique and memorable.
7. Customize your website
Before you get started your ecommerce business, you need to create the store design elements such as your own store logo, favicon, main page images and banners. You can do it on your own or with the help of professional designers. Of course, it is not necessary to appeal to the big design studios and pay them a lot of money! You can turn to freelancers to get it, for example.
In addition, don’t forget to create product categories and menus. Think of your website structure carefully and evaluate whether it is easy to use or not. If you have some doubts, ask your family and friends to test your website, think over their opinions and make all the necessary changes.
Drop shipping for dummies: the financial side
A nice profit margin was your ultimate reason to start this business, right? Let’s figure out how to deal with the money-related issues!
8. Choose the currency
Now, it’s time to start configuring the AliDropship plugin settings. Let’s begin with choosing the currency.
Click the orange button at the top of the menu, select the settings tab and open the general section. Here you can choose your website currency.
The default currency is US dollars, but the plugin supports many other currencies as well. Choose the currency you need and activate it. In case you want to let your customers view your prices in different currencies, don’t forget to select the additional ones.
9. Set up your markup formula
The currency is selected, so it’s time to take care of setting prices so that ensure the best profit margin.
When you import products from AliExpress into your store, they are transferred with their original prices. In order to get profit, you need to determine pricing rules and set margins. AliDropship plugin has an effective system for that. You can create as many formulas as you need and set any kind of price you’d like.
However, we highly recommend you to get familiar with our pricing tips and follow them in the early stages of your business development.
Besides that, make a point of activating the rounding option. With this feature, such prices like $9.71 and $5.48 will be automatically changed to $10 and $5, respectively. In terms of buyers’ psychology and level of trust, it is a good decision.
10. Set up your payment gateways
After setting up the prices, you need to choose a payment gateway. In simple terms, a payment gateway is an online equivalent of a credit card terminal that one uses when buying goods at a brick and mortar store. AliDropship plugin supports many payment gateways, beginning with such giants as PayPal and ending with not very popular ones. Click the link and choose what you like the most.
Drop shipping for dummies: product pages
We’re getting close to the final! There are only 5 steps left! Let’s go!
11. Import products to your store
Now when almost everything is ready to start your ecommerce business, you have to fill your online store with goods.
To start importing products from AliExpress, you need to install AliDropship Google Chrome Extension. This tool allows you to import products in bulk, edit product descriptions and manage all the things related to delivery.
Once the extension is installed, click the AliExpress button and choose the Import products tab. Select the Use Direct Import button.
You will be redirected to AliExpress.com. Enter your search request in the search box and start selecting products with the lowest prices, free shipping option and the highest ratings – you can read more about the hunt for the perfect products here.
When the items are selected, you have 2 options of products import – single product import and bulk import.
If you need to import only one item, click the orange AliDropship logo near it. If the item is imported successfully, you will see a tick near the logo.
In case you need to import products in bulk, write the keywords in the search bar, select a category and click the import items button on the main panel. All the products will be imported into your Import list.
12. Edit your product pages
Every ecommerce entrepreneurs understand the importance of their product pages looking appealing to the customers.
There are 2 ways to edit product pages – you can do it before importing products or after that. Actually, it doesn’t make much difference.
First, edit your product titles and descriptions and make them more readable and compact. It’s recommended to delete all the images from your product descriptions in order not to look like a copy of AliExpress. In addition, don’t forget to edit your permalinks and remove everything you do not need!
Secondly, you need to make changes in the pictures of your products. For that purpose, use the built-in Image Editor. Delete all AliExpress logos in the picture, change the size, add your own labels, etc.
13. Import reviews to your store
The next step is importing reviews to your store directly from AliExpress.
Feedback is a powerful tool to build trust with your visitors and turn them into paying customers. Most of the conducted researches point out that feedback is very motivating and help people make decisions faster. Customers tend to trust each other more than any advertisement.
When importing reviews from AliExpress, you have many options – choose the number of reviews per product, add reviews only in your language, import reviews with images only, etc.
14. Set up shipping options
Decide on shipping methods your store will offer your clients. The plugin has a special section where you can enable or disable different shipping options and select the countries that you want to deliver to.
You can add up to four different shipping options such as free shipping, super savings shipping, standard shipping and expedited shipping. However, we highly recommend you to use free shipping options because it encourages customers to buy more or do it at all. A study found that 62% of all online consumers would not have bought products online if they had not received free shipping.
15. Set up SEO
Your drop shipping store is almost ready. The last point is your website promotion. We recommend you to use SEO tools available with AliDropship plugin.
That was the last point in our “Drop shipping for dummies” guide that allows you to create your drop shipping store from scratch. Of course, there is still much work to be done, but these steps are the basis.
As a bonus, we have prepared for you a set of questions from our support team that all beginners usually ask.
Top 5 frequently asked drop shipping questions of all time
1. Do you ship to…? How long is the delivery time to…?
AliDropship is not a drop shipping store. We develop and sell software for drop shipping and create ready-to-go drop shipping stores for our clients. That’s all. We do not ship any products.
If you’re asking about our plugins or add-ons, you will get them immediately after making a purchase.
2. Could you send me a list of the best AliExpress suppliers?
Congratulations! The ‘drop shipping for dummies’ guide is over, and you’ve learned the inside out of the store development process. Now you know how to set up your business, so you can easily follow our tips to start making really good money! Good luck!
For drop shipping entrepreneurs, the questions of shipping and delivery are the matters of a really high importance – and sometimes, of a deep concern. Both the newcomers and the established store owners are on the lookout for the easiest and cheapest ways to ship internationally, which is why they carefully research and evaluate the available options.
Of course, the cost of the delivery is not the only aspect that matters: the entrepreneurs also care about the shipping time, the reliability of the shipping service, and some other details.
Let’s talk about them today!
How to find the cheapest international shipping options on AliExpress?
To begin with, all the AliExpress suppliers offer a different range of the available shipping methods.
To find out what shipping services are supported by a particular seller, you can do the following:
Write a direct message to the seller and ask him or her to show you the list of the available shipping companies;
Or, go to any product page within this seller’s store, and check the alternative shipping methods shown in the dropdown menu in the ‘Shipping’ section – look at the screenshot below.
I would like to draw your attention to some of the elements of this picture.
In the top right corner of the screenshot, you can see the settings for the shipping destination and the national currency (in this case, it is the US and the US dollar.) It is really important to choose the necessary country of delivery and its currency before you start your research: every shipping service has varying fees that depend on the region of delivery. Plus, not every courier can arrange a shipping to any of the 195 countries on the globe!
In the lower part of the picture, you can see the name, the price, and the estimated delivery time for the default shipping method offered by this specific seller for this exact product (in this case, it is ePacket, free of charge, 12-20 days delivery). But, normally, AliExpress sellers work with more than one courier, so, if you don’t like the default shipping method, you can check out the alternatives. Next to this Shipping line, there is a small arrow – click on it to view the list of the alternative shipping services available.
In the central part of the screenshot, you can see the list of the additional shipping services – this pop-up window appears when you click the tiny arrow. In this list, you can specify the necessary destination again: it’s really convenient if your target audience members live across several countries on the globe, and you want to check whether all these countries can be reached by a particular shipping company. So, in this list of the shipping methods available, you can see the couriers working with the seller, the estimated delivery time and the cost of delivery for the specified destination, and the availability of the tracking information.
That’s more than enough data for your research, right?
So, what are the priciest and the cheapest ways to ship a package internationally from AliExpress?
Generally speaking, the shipping methods supported by AliExpress sellers fall into 3 broad categories:
Costly services of well-reputed international couriers that deliver the packages in a shorter period of time.
Here, we talk about such renowned companies as DHL, UPS, EMS, FedEx, etc. They are able to arrange a relatively prompt delivery (the exact time depends on the country of destination), but their shipping costs are really high – sometimes, the delivery fee is several times higher than the price of the product itself.
Obviously, it makes them unsuitable for the drop shipping stores selling regular low-cost consumer goods – it’s more reasonable to use them if you’re selling complex tech equipment, electronics, premium clothing and other types of more or less expensive items.
Services of local shipping companies that are provided for a low cost or even free of charge, but may require up to 1 month to deliver.
Here, we talk about the usual national postal services and the local companies working as middlemen between the senders and the postal agencies. China Post Air Mail, China Post Small Packet Plus, Yanwen Economic Air Mail, SunYou Economic Air Mail, Hong Kong Post – this is an incomplete list of all the shipping options offered in this category.
You can even come across some ‘exotic’ options like Posti Finland (the main Finnish postal service) – quite interestingly, it is widely believed to arrange an even more prompt delivery than China-based services to some specific territories (such as northwestern regions of Russia, for example).
Delivery arranged by AliExpress itself through its own logistical partners.
There are 2 types of this delivery: AliExpress Standard Shipping and AliExpress Premium Shipping. Both of them mean that the original supplier has handed the products over to AliExpress Shipping Center, and delegated the shipping responsibilities to AliExpress itself. So, in a way, it is a more reliable shipping method than the service of local postal offices.
Normally, AliExpress Standard Shipping is one of the cheapest options available on the platform, but again, it depends on the country of destination. AliExpress Premium Shipping is a more expensive alternative, but its average delivery time is relatively low: it is comparable to DHL and FedEx shipping time.
What makes ePacket the best type of all the cheapest ways to ship overseas supported by AliExpress?
Obviously, drop shipping store owners want to focus on the AliExpress products with the free shipping option – or, at least, with a very low delivery cost.
Still, most of these shipping options have one significant disadvantage.
By the disadvantage, I don’t mean a long shipping time (it’s not a problem at all, remember?) – here, I mean the impossibility to track the package.
As a rule, the tracking codes provided by all these low-cost local shipping services become unresponsive as soon as the package arrives to the country of destination. In other words, you will be able to track the package’s route while it’s being dispatched and transferred abroad, but as soon as the order crosses the border and comes to your country, you won’t find out where it is, exactly. The local country postal service will assign its own tracking to this package, and you won’t know anything about its whereabouts and the expected delivery time until you suddenly find the usual local post notification in your mailbox.
Surely, it is hugely inconvenient for an end user; but imagine how bad it is for a drop shipping store owner who can’t provide a high quality customer service to the buyers!
We are fans of the ePacket shipping method which is:
As reliable as AliExpress Premium
As affordable as AliExpress Standard
As prompt as DHL and UPS
Eligible for tracking throughout the whole delivery period
So, basically, ePacket is a specific shipping method designed to facilitate eCommerce – it can only be applied to particular types of packages (maximum 60 cm x 90 cm in size and 2 kg in weight), which makes it the perfect solution to ship regular customer goods.
With ePacket, the sellers in China and Hong Kong can ship their products to the residents of 38 countries across the globe (see the full list here). On the average, it takes the package from 7 to 15 days to arrive (the shipping period is slightly longer for Brazil and Mexico).
It doesn’t cost much, and, what’s the most important, it goes with a proper tracking! At any moment of the package’s journey, you can use the provided tracking code to learn more about your order’s fate.
Understanding that ePacket is so convenient for drop shipping store owners, we have designed our own solutions in the way that helps you benefit from this service.
So, if your drop shipping store works on our AliDropship plugin, you can use our Google Chrome extension to instantly check which of the AliExpress products have the ePacket shipping option available.
And, our orders tracking system supports ePacket, too! It means that in a couple of clicks, you can retrieve the correct tracking ID from your AliExpress supplier, and email it to the relevant customer.
It’s simple. It’s affordable. And it’s super convenient.
Now, you know much more about the cheapest ways to ship internationally, and you understand how to pick the best ones for your drop shipping store. Use the knowledge for the benefit of your business, and enjoy your entrepreneurial journey!
Can you use Alibaba to dropship? What are the opportunities and limitations of this website? How is it different from AliExpress, and which of these platforms is more convenient for drop shipping business? Let’s figure it out!
Sometimes, AliExpress and Alibaba get mixed up. Entrepreneurs-to-be don’t see the difference between these platforms, and think that they can find drop shipping suppliers on both of these websites.
In fact, this is not entirely true, so let’s discuss it in more detail.
Why would anyone want to use Alibaba to dropship from?
The answer to this question seems to be pretty obvious: Alibaba is a eCommerce giant of a global importance. In 2017, it earned the status of one of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies, on a level with Facebook and Amazon. In 2018, it was calculated that Alibaba has the 9th highest global brand value.
So, it might seem that Alibaba is a perfect destination for a drop shipping store owner who needs suppliers for his business – after all, it has:
A large product offering
Alibaba, indeed, is one of the largest eCommerce websites in the world. Here, thousands of suppliers and manufacturers (mostly originating from China) showcase their offers and communicate with potential buyers.
Low product prices
The suppliers featured on Alibaba charge moderate prices for their products; plus, the bigger is your order amount, the lower is the price per one item.
A favorable business environment
Alibaba facilitates the communication between entrepreneurs around the world and allows easy, transparent transactions.
Still, when you consider the potential of Alibaba as the platform for drop shipping suppliers search, you need to remember: Alibaba operates as a B2B website.
What makes AliBaba inconvenient for dropship store owners?
The B2B (business-to-business) model means that end users (regular people who just want to buy something for their personal use) never participate in the transactions.
The deals are made on a corporate level: one company agrees to cooperate with another, and their partnership has a more or less official tone.
This is why you won’t see Alibaba ads in your Facebook feed or elsewhere: you are not the target audience of this platform’s sellers. Instead, the companies listed on Alibaba target other businesses, and obviously, it impacts their promotional and selling techniques.
To be more precise, one of the most important aspect of operations on Alibaba is its focus on wholesale activity.
Since Alibaba sellers are not attracting end users, they don’t see the need to sell one item at a time. Instead, they have a minimum order requirement. Simply speaking, the majority of the sellers will only allow you to buy items in bulk. So, you will have to purchase several hundreds units of the same item, keep them in stock in your own warehouse (if you have one), and then ship them to your customers by your own effort.
Theoretically, you can try finding the products that don’t require a large minimum order. To do this, you need to put “2” in the “Min Order” field. On the search results page, you will see the products that can be ordered in a single unit.
But, sadly, in this case you won’t get an appealing price: since Alibaba is aimed on wholesale, the sellers set higher prices for smaller amounts of the ordered goods.
Plus, it’s simply not likely that large-scale manufacturers will be interested in your one-time orders of a single product; after all, they have joined this platform for a completely different reason.
Does it mean that it is entirely impossible to use Alibaba to dropship?
So, you can’t refer to Alibaba sellers as to your drop shipping suppliers, and you definitely can’t open your own drop shipping store within this platform because it won’t make any commercial sense.
Still, there are some indirect ways to boost your drop shipping business with the help of Alibaba:
Look for product ideas
If you have already tried all the ways to generate product ideas that we have shared earlier, Alibaba might become an interesting destination for your creative pursuits. Maybe, some of the products demonstrated on the platform will give you a brilliant idea of a moneymaking drop shipping niche!
Research the price levels
What is the average level of retail prices for the items demonstrated on Alibaba? Researching the offers with the minimal required order amount, you will get a general idea about the traditional price levels that are customary for this particular product type, and it will help you create your own pricing strategy.
Connect with the same sellers on AliExpress
Quite often, manufacturers are ready to sell their items to both the businesses and end customers. But, obviously, they choose different channels to target and reach these opposite types of buyers. As a rule, they use Alibaba to interact with companies, and they prefer AliExpress to contact private individuals.
So, if you like the product range of some particular Alibaba seller, contact this supplier and ask whether he or she has a store on AliExpress. There, it will be much easier for both of you to communicate on drop shipping terms. You can even ask the manufacturer whether it would be possible to produce custom-made items on your request and distribute them through AliExpress – what if it will give you an access to absolutely unique items?
Why would you choose AliExpress over Alibaba to dropship from?
Frankly speaking, you can easily get lost on Alibaba. Try writing the same product query in the search field on Alibaba and AliExpress, and you will instantly understand which of the platforms has a more convenient product filtering system.
Low prices even for retail
AliExpress is famous for its low prices. That’s exactly what makes is so appealing for private buyers all over the globe. Plus, it’s the perfect reason for you to consider adding these affordable product to your own webstore. You won’t even have to order hundreds of items to get these appealing prices!
No minimum order requirements
That’s probably the best thing for a drop shipping store owner. On AliExpress, you can order as many items as you need, and they will be shipped directly to your own buyers, so you won’t have to keep physical stock.
Customer-oriented communication
AliExpress was designed as the platform which connects manufacturers with end users. So, it allows regular customers to talk to the sellers freely and conveniently. You can count on a timely reply from an AliExpress seller, and, as a drop shipping store owner, you can even expect an easy refund procedure in case your customer gets a faulty package.
Less official terms of interaction
In the description boxes of many product pages on AliExpress, you will see something like “welcome, dropshippers”. It’s really illustrative: most of the local sellers are happy to cooperate with drop shipping store owners. This partnership gives them a constant flow of orders and is more beneficial that one-time purchases from usual end buyers.
Plus, you don’t necessarily need to have an official registration as a business entity. AliExpress is designed as a B2C (business to consumer) platform, and the local sellers easily accept orders from private individuals. This is why they will never ask you for a license or anything like that.
Now, you know more about the possible ways to use AliExpress and Alibaba to dropship. We hope the knowledge will be highly beneficial for your drop shipping business!
Newcomers, self-taught entrepreneurs, even experienced drop shipping business owners – everyone might fail at some point of their lives. And that’s absolutely natural!
Never be afraid of a failure.
As Janet Fitch once said it, the phoenix must burn to emerge.
In other words, any drop shipping mistake is a chance for you to start over, and to make better, greater business decisions that will bring prosperity into your life.
So, it’s a good thing to know what do entrepreneurs do when they fail with their drop shipping business. You know, just in case
What do entrepreneurs do when they fail: check the stats
What are the chances an archer will hit the target when blindfolded? Same goes for your web store. You can’t expect to succeed if you don’t know what’s going on there.
Before making any decision, you must know where the problem lies. To do that, you can use Google Analytics as the most popular tool for gathering statistics and analyzing traffic and visitors’ behavior.
Sounds complicated? In fact, it’s easier than it looks.
Here are the most important metrics you want to check with Google Analytics:
Sales funnel – tracks the visitor path to purchase and may help you understand how many obstacles your potential customers face on the way and where they drop off.
Conversions – tells you about how many visitors turned into buyers in percentage terms.
Traffic sources – shows you what channels actually attract the biggest share of visitors or customers.
Bounce rate – reflects the number of people who only visited one page and then left for whatever reason.
Exit pages – the pages of your web site from where visitors leave.
Popular products – shows you the performance of products which is important for understanding the reasons behind their success.
Google Analytics Goals – shows you specific details about the performance of your website. Learn morehere.
These data will show you the weak spots of your drop shipping store and give you a clue as to what to do next.
What do entrepreneurs do when they lose customers?
Conversion rate is one of the most important metrics in your statistics as it demonstrates the percentage of actual buyers out of the total number of your store visitors. When everything is fine, you can relax. But when conversion rate drops, it’s time to find out why.
Proper analysis of exit pages can show you where exactly visitors lose interest in the web store.
Example: John has a drop shipping store and it demonstrates good traffic, meaning it attracts a lot of visitors. But only few of them buy anything. Google Analytics shows that a lot of people leave the site after typing a request into the search bar. John concludes that he either doesn’t have goods visitors are interested in or his search box needs better tuning.
As you can see, knowing when your visitors exit the site may or may not explain why they didn’t complete the purchase. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s unclear and requires verification. For that purpose you can use A/B testing.
To put it simply, A/B testing lets you compare two versions of the same page – one version is the original unchanged page, while the other has some specific little amendments. The goal here is to test whether these edits will attract more traffic or raise your conversions. The pages are randomly shown to visitors in equal proportions, and after a while you can see the results. Different platforms, such as Google Content Experiments, VWO and many others, let you run such tests and improve your conversion rate.
Revise the target audience
Sometimes the reason behind your store’s bad performance may be the approach to targeting. In this case, if possible, you might want to switch to another category of customers.
Example: Jane is selling stationery materials of all kinds, but it’s getting worse. Initially she defined her target audience as school students. After revising it, Jane realizes that in most cases it is the parents (adults) who buy stationery for their children, but not the kids. She decides to switch to another target audience and starts promoting her goods to office workers and creative adults who like to draw and write. Soon the new strategy pays off.
What do entrepreneurs do when they fail: reconsider promotional channels and marketing strategy
Example: Jane is promoting her drop shipping store in social media such as Facebook and Instagram. She also created a YouTube channel, but it didn’t make much of a difference. After a while, Jane notices that her organic traffic is very low and realizes that her store needs better search engine optimization.
Just like in this example, entrepreneurs may want to try alternative promotion methods and channels whenever they face a problem. But you can also readjust your strategy simply to attract more traffic.
The use of channels largely depends on your target audience and niche. Some products are easier to promote by using video and photo, while others are totally impossible to advertize this way, but are good for promoting with Google Shopping.
Using a different approach may fix the situation. Check out this poll about the most popular promotion methods used by other dropshippers, and see what’s the experience of your colleagues.
What do entrepreneurs do when their goods don’t sell?
Example: John was very busy the last two months and had very little time to manage his drop shipping store. After a while he realized that the web site has lost several positions in search engines and its traffic has dropped significantly. Having coped with the initial shock, John starts to revise his stock – he adds new goods, deletes some old products, transfers certain products from one category to another and so on. After a while the traffic and conversions come back to normal.
The reason John’s store was having problems is because it was abandoned for some time. For any online shop, it is crucial to update its stock, always add new products and revise its categories and subcategories. Why? Because it makes the store alive!
First of all, when visitors see new goods every once in a while, they can be sure that the shop is working and developing. Besides, the more products you offer, the more likely you are to achieve a bigger amount of sales. Even if someone can’t find a certain product, he or she may come back later knowing the store regularly updates its stock.
Second, the more pages your store has (thanks to more products), the better it is ranked by search engines. Besides, any activity on a website is a good sign for such engines as they see it as a demanded resource.
Lastly, fashion keeps changing so you should always keep an eye for new trends.
Rethink your store niche
Another way to improve your drop shipping store’s performance is to revise your niche.
Example: Jane created a store selling merchandise of a specific anime. But the shop doesn’t bring a lot of income, and Jane decides to broaden her niche by adding products devoted to other anime series. As a result, she attracts a larger audience and her sales rise.
But broadening your niche excessively may have the opposite effect since it may turn your website into a general store which isn’t always a good idea. Read more about pros and cons of general and niche stores in this article.
Narrowing your niche may improve your drop shipping business as well.
Example: John sells sport and outdoor activity goods in his drop shipping store, but he notices that most of his income comes from selling bicycles and related accessories. He does not remove other products and keeps updating his stock, but he decides to focus more on the bicycle theme by adding more products in this particular category and its subcategories. This move results in more sales.
What do entrepreneurs do when nothing works?
Sometimes whatever you do, nothing works. Why? The problem may be much more serious than you thought, or it may be more complicated, or you may be having a number of problems at the same time. What do you do? Call for help!
To get help, you can join Dropship Club and order a store review.
The most important thing you must know is that failure doesn’t mean that you can’t fix it. Stay calm, analyze your current situation, strategy and other aspects of your business. Find possible weak spots and try using a different approach. Analyze the results. Keep it up. And never ever give up!
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