A Decent Product Research Tool For Dropshipping

Hi and welcome to my review of AliShark.

AliShark is a product research tool for people looking to start a dropshipping business or those who already have one but are having trouble finding profitable products to sell.

Product research is one of the most important tasks of starting an eCommerce business, a lot of people try to rush this process and hence end up with a failing store. It can be a long and time-consuming process, however, if done correctly you will have a better chance at success.

AliShark aims to help you identify a potentially winning product more quickly by giving access to relevant data at the tip of your fingertips.

I have reviewed several popular product research tools for eCommerce and my personal favourites are Niche Scraper and eComhunt.

In this review, we will find out what AliShark offers and if it lives up to the claims it makes and if it is a good alternative to other product research tools.

AliShark Review

So, I like to try out any service or tool before I write a review of it and so for AliShark, I took up their 2-day trial for $1 offer to write this review.

One thing I like to see in any kind of software, especially a web-based application, is a user-friendly interface. Fortunately, this is the case with AliShark, the member’s area is very user-friendly and it’s not difficult to work out how to use it.

So, the basically how AliShark works is it pulls product sales data from 2sources AliExpress and Banggood and displays it in the main dashboard. I read a couple of reviews of AliShark and from what I understand, they also used to pull product data from eBay, but this has been discontinued.

The data is extensive and will allow you to make an informed decision on whether to start drop shipping a product or not.

In the main dashboard area, you will see rows of products that have been recently added to the AliShark database. On the top right you will see the number of products that have added today, the week and the total overall products, as of writing this review there are over 4 million products in their database.

There are a lot of filters you can apply to narrow down the results and help you identify a potential product more quickly.

Most of the filters are on the left-hand side and include the following:

  • Categories – Not all categories are listed but the main ones are.
  • Niches – If you have a product idea, you can select the niche it is in and analyse what kind of products are available.
  • Country – Select the country you would like to dropship in, most people choose the USA or the country they are residing in. One of the cool features of AliShark is that in the product analysis box, you can see in which countries the product is selling well, you can then use this information for your ads.
  • Shipping – This was a little disappointing as you only get two options, ePacket and standard shipping.
  • Shipping country – Many AliExpress and Banggood suppliers have warehouses in many different countries, you can check to see if they have any in the country you would like to dropship to for faster shipping times.
  • Video – Some AliExpress and Banggood products have videos as part of the product description, you can adjust the search results to only give you products that have a video. Customers are more likely to purchase a product after watching a video ad, however, I would not use these videos for any marketing purposes. Instead, take some ideas from these videos and then make one yourself. AliShark actually has a video maker, which I will get to later.
  • Dropshipped – This is interesting, applying this filter will only show you products that are being dropshipped from AliEpress and Banggood. Knowing that a product is being dropshipped and on a large scale will give you a good idea on whether or not to dropship a similar item yourself.
  • You can also sort by the number of orders placed, price, Wishlist, votes (reviews), date and growth.

AliShark Product Analysis

So, initially, when you search for a specific product, you will be presented with something like the image below.

You get the following data;

  • Difference between the current and last weeks sales, this presented on the top right. (this can also be adjusted for any length of time you want.)
  • Total review rating
  • Price
  • If the product is dropshipped
  • Overall orders and the orders for the time period you are currently looking at.

When you click on the image, you will be presented with even more data points.

You will see when the product was added to AliExpress and when it was added to AliShark, this will give you a good idea of when the product started to sell well. There are a couple of graphs that will show you how many products have been sold on a daily basis for two weeks and another one that displays the overall sales data trend.

You also get sales data for the top markets the product is selling in and also where the top dropshippers are located. Knowing which country, a product is selling well in will give you geographical targeting data for ad campaign you may want to run in the future.

If you already have a Shopify store, you can easily import any product you want at the click of a button. You can do this in bulk by saving multiple products or one by one as you do your research.

Another cool feature I mentioned briefly is the AliShark video ad creator. Videos convert really well and nowadays with so many good video ad creators, you don’t really need any kind of technical expertise to make a half-decent video ad.

The AliShark video ad creator is will allow you to easily create simple Facebook video ads from the AliExpress product images. It’s a very simple video ad creator but it does come with some decent feature that may help the video stand out.

You can add banner text on the top and bottom along with emojis and get a choice of royalty-free music. If you are on a budget, this video creator will be very useful, however, if you want to create something that will look a lot more professional but without having to pay a huge sum of money, I highly recommend you check out invideo.

AliShark Price

AliShark has a simple pricing plan, you get access to all the features of AliShark for a monthly fee of $20. There is a two-day $1 trial which is what I signed for when I wrote this review.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of product research tools for dropshipping, AliShark is one of the most impressive ones I have reviewed. It may not have as many features as some of my favourite tools like eComhunt and Nichescraper but for simple product research, it may be worth investing in for a couple of months.