How To Start Dropshipping With AliExpress

Ready to start dropshipping with AliExpress? I hope this guide helps you.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you will know that I am a big fan of the dropshipping business model. It is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to start an online business. One of the big problems people have when they think about starting a dropshipping business is finding profitable products to sell and reliable suppliers.

This is where AliExpress comes in, AliExpress is a massive online marketplace that lists millions of products at wholesale prices from many different suppliers. In this guide, you will learn how to start dropshipping with AliExpress with the aid of AliDropship, the no.1 WordPress dropshipping plugin.

Why Dropshipping?

Since you are reading this article, I assume you know a little about what dropshipping is, how it works and how profitable it can be as an online business.

For those who are still unsure about what dropshipping is and how it works, I will give you a brief explanation.

Dropshipping is simply re-selling other company’s products without you having to stock any inventory or make delivery arrangements.

The process is as follows;

1. List the items in your store

2.Customer orders a product

3. You order the same product from your supplier

4. The supplier delivers the item to your customer.

5. You keep the difference between what you paid your supplier and what your customer paid you.

It is becoming an increasingly popular way for people to start an eCommerce business mainly because it requires little investment to get going.

Starting a traditional eCommerce business may set you back a few grand, with dropshipping you can get started with less than $100.

Another aspect of dropshipping that is very attractive is the fact that you literally just need a laptop and good internet connection to run a dropshipping business from anywhere in the world.

Dropshipping With AliExpress

One of the biggest issues dropshippers have is finding reliable suppliers, it is a well-known fact that the majority of good suppliers and wholesalers do not have websites that you can discover through a simple search on Google.

However, on AliExpress, you have direct access to thousands of suppliers and millions of products at wholesale prices.

Dropshipping with AliExpress is proving very popular among eCommerce entrepreneurs and one reason is that you can assess the quality of a supplier by analysing the feedback and rating their customers have left them.

This feedback will be crucial when you start looking for suppliers to dropship with and this guide will show you how to analyse the rating system so that you pick a reliable supplier.

Of course, the other reason AliExpress is very popular with dropshippers is that of their wide range of quality products at extremely low prices.

The low prices mean you can substantially increase the prices for a pretty big profit margin.

It is no secret that many AliExpress dropshippers have built very successful eCommerce business’s and are making life changing income with their dropshipping business.

Read some of these success stories here.

Although there are many good products, you must be careful to avoid the bad quality ones, this is why it’s important that you check the feedback for both your potential supplier and the product you want to dropship.

Dropship Automation Software

As easy as it is to start dropshipping with AliExpress, a lot of the tasks are time-consuming and can get tedious.

Imagine having to import 50 products into your store (which is a low amount) and having to manually import the images and descriptions manually. It would take forever!!

Not only that but you would also have to keep an eye on the inventory levels and look out for any price changes.

Keeping on top of all these tasks is doable but not very practical and it would make it harder for you to succeed in dropshipping.

Luckily, there are many dropshipping automation software that will streamline this process.

As AliExpress dropshipping is hugely popular it has led to the developments of many automation apps.

Many of them I have reviewed on this site.

There are two that stand out from the rest, they are;

Oberlo – Oberlo is a Shopify app which means it only works on the Shopify platform.

AliDropship – AliDropship is a WordPress plugin that is only compatible with eCommerce stores built on WordPress.

Both Oberlo and AliDropship have very similar features, the only thing for you to decide is which platform you want to build your eCommerce business on.

Although I do like them both, I actually prefer AliDropship because it is a WordPress plugin and I am familiar with the platform.

AliDropship has some fantastic automation features that will help you run your dropshipping store more efficiently.

Some of the features include;

1-click import – Search and import products into your store with the AliDropship Chrome extension

Automatic pricing rules – Set up your own pricing rules with AliDropships own pricing formula

Automatic tracking – The plugin will send order tracking updates to your customers

Automatic inventory and price updates – As the plugin is connected via API, you will get up to date inventory stats and pricing changes.

Shipping filter – Search products by the fastest shipping times

Quick order fulfilment – Quickly fulfil orders with the AliDropship Chrome extension

Guide To Dropshipping With AliExpress

Dropshipping is an easy business to set up, you will not be required to invest huge amounts of money and will only require the following;

1.A product to sell

2.A website

3.A supplier who will dropship

4.An automation software that will make your life much easier

1. Find a product to sell

This is one of the most important parts of starting any eCommerce business. It will require a lot of research but it will be worth it in the end. Many people fail in eCommerce because they rush this part and think just filling their site with generic products will do.

There are many ways that you can identify a profitable product to sell online.

These include;

1.Keyword research 

2.Amazon Best Seller Rank

3.eBay most watched items

4.Trending products

5.Seasonal products

6.Unique items

If you have trouble finding a good product to sell, I highly recommend signing up for one of the following services;

Niche Scraper

eComhunt

They research and provide a list of products that have a high chance of being top sellers give you targeting data for Facebook ads.  

2.Build a Website

Gone are the days when you needed to know some web programming languages to build a website.

With platforms like WordPress and Shopify, it is quite easy to set up a site within a few hours.

First, you will need to purchase a domain name for your website, this should be a name that is relevant to the products you will be selling.

There are plenty of domain name registrars, I personally purchase Namecheap as they provide 1 year free of WHOIS protection plus they are cheaper than most other domain name registrars.

For web hosting, you have plenty of options as most of the good web hosting companies have 1 click WordPress installation.

I personally recommend the following hosting services;

Blue Host

20i

AliDropship hosting

SiteGround

WPX

After you have signed up and installed WordPress, you will need to install WooCommerce, this is a very simple process and most hosting services will have some sort of guide on how to do this.

Before you start adding products from AliExpress, you will need to create the following pages for your site;

About Us

Privacy Policy

Contact

Home Page

Product Page

3. Find A Reliable Supplier

The excellent rating system that AliExpress has in place means that it is pretty easy to spot good and bad suppliers.

First, go to the supplier store on AliExpress and then click on the feedback tab.

For example, below is the feedback page of the store SHENHONG Kitchenware store.

You will see three rating box’s for the seller and at the bottom, there is also a live feed of reviews from the most recent customers near the bottom of the page.

Overall Seller Rating

The top box gives an overall rating for the seller and it mentions how long they have been in operation.

After extensive research, I have to the conclusion that you should make sure the seller has an overall rating above 90% and has been selling on AliExpress for at least a couple of years.

Detailed Seller Rating

The second box breaks down the rating into three parts;

Item as described – The sellers are rated for how well the item description is to the product that is delivered.

Communication – Rating on how well the seller communicates with their customers

Shipping Speed – How long the seller took to ship the item

The ratings are given a score out of 5 and you should make sure that they are all above 4, preferably 4.5.

Feedback History

The third box provides a total number of positive, neutral and negative feedback a seller has received within the last 1, 3 and 6 months.

They are also given an overall positive rating, this should be over 90%

Live Feedback

This is a live feed of the ratings a customer has given a product that they have purchased from the supplier. It will reflect the overall rating of the supplier, so for instance, if the supplier has a positive rating, most of the feedback will be 4-5 stars.

After you have validated the reliability of the supplier, you should also check out the feedback for the product you want to dropship.

Make sure the product has been ordered at least 200 times and has a positive rating over 4.

For example, staying with the same supplier, I noticed this Pineapple Slicer, that met all the conditions for being a potential product that I could dropship.

4.Import Products Into Your Store

Now, we come to the exciting part, importing products from AliExpress into your store.

Without an automation software like AliDropship plugin, this part would have taken ages to complete.

Luckily, AliDropship makes it so easy that anyone can start a dropshipping business by sourcing products from AliExpress and selling them in your store.

After you have purchased AliDropship and installed it (dont worry, AliDropship provide fantastic resources that guide you how to do this) and installed the AliDropship Chrome extension, you will be ready to import products with the click of a button.

So, after you have identified a product to sell you will need to find a good supplier on AliExpress, preferably one who provide ePacket shipping.

Finding products that have ePacket shipping option would have been another long process but by utilising the AliDropship plugin you will save a considerable amount of time.

Head on over to AliExpress, if you have installed the Chrome extension, you should see the AliDropship chrome extension on the top of the browser.

If you click on the gear wheels, it will give you a few options like shipping destination, shipping method (ePacket) and a few other options.

You can import multiple products at the time same time or you can import them one by one., I usually do it one by one.

You can import all the images and product description as well as any information about product variances like size and colour. The Chrome extension also allows you to edit the product description, assign any pricing rules and the product images.

One other helpful feature that the Chrome extension has it that it gives an overall score for the supplier.

So as well as checking for the reliability of a supplier yourself, you get a free second opinion from the plugin and usually, it concurs with the overall AliExpress rating.

5. Change Product Description, Images

Although everything is imported with the click of a button, it is best practice to change the description as you want your store to be unique and also for SEO purposes as Google does not like duplicate content.

Also, a lot of the sellers on AliExpress do not put much thought into writing product description that sells, their prices are already cheap and AliExpress gets hundreds of million visitors a month, they have no need to write excellent copy, the items sell themselves.

However, as a new dropshipper, you do not have a platform like AliExpress with huge amounts of traffic nor do you have brand recognition, that is why it is good to rewrite the description so it compels your customers to buy.

The plugin also has a built-in image editor that will allow you to edit images and remove any watermarks.

5.Pricing

You can easily set pricing rules for all your products through the AliDropship pricing automation feature.

How much you mark up your prices by will depend on the type of products you are selling.

First, you will want to see what prices similar products are selling for on places like Amazon and eBay.

To set your prices you have a few options, you can create a pricing formula for yourself and use it for all the products or only certain categories.

You also have the choice of implementing AliDropships own pricing mark up formula.

6. Promote Your Store

So, now you have your store set up, you are ready to start making some sales, there are some free ways to get the ball rolling and make some easy sales

Family and Friends

Don’t by shy to ask them and even if they do not buy, it’s a good marketing opportunity as you can ask them to tell others about your store.

Social Media

Social media is one of the best mediums to start marketing your store without having to pay for ads.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest have billions of monthly users and it does not cost anything to sign up and market your store on these platforms.

However, there are some drawback, for example, posting on these platforms multiple times a day to get visitors and grow your audience takes a lot of time.

Fortunately, there are several apps that will semi-automate this process and help you build your social media following.

One of these is a WordPress plugin developed by AliDropship called Social Rabbit.

Just like the AliDropship plugin, it comes with lots of automation features that will grow your social media following and save you a lot of time.

It will auto post content from your website onto the main social media platforms, you will be able to schedule weeks of social media content and let it run on autopilot.

Other features include liking and commenting on other peoples posts, automatic hashtag generator to increase your audience reach and a direct link to Pixabay and Giphy so that you can easily import royalty free images and gifs to share on your posts.

It is a paid plugin but there is a 7-day free trial and it has tons of positive reviews.

If you want to grow your social media presence on autopilot, this is a must-have plugin.

SEO

SEO is a long-term plan that you will need to work on consistently to see results. To rank your site on the search engines (specifically Google) you will need to produce unique high-quality content that people will find valuable.

There are a lot of moving parts in SEO and it takes months before you start seeing any results (if your website is completely new).

That is why it should be an ongoing strategy and not your main source of traffic (not initially anyway)

For some guidance on good eCommerce SEO practice, read these articles.

SEO eCommerce checklist

On-page SEO optimisation for eCommerce websites.

Brian Deans Complete guide to eCommerce SEO

Paid Advertising

If you have a large budget and have some experience running advertising campaigns, you should definitely run paid adverts to your store.

The most popular advertising platform for dropshippers is Facebook, with over 2 billion monthly users, it has a huge audience that you cannot ignore.

Facebook ads work really well because you can target your niche audience down to the tiniest bit of details so that your ads have a far greater chance at success.

Other platforms you should think about advertising on are;

Google

Instagram

Pinterest

Returns & Refunds

Obviously, not everything will go according to plan and one area you must be prepared for is resolving customer returns and refund requests.

In the case of items not arriving or are defective and not as described, AliExpress has a good buyer protection policy in place that should see you get a full refund.

For more information on returns and refunds please read the AliExpress Buyer Protection Document.

Alternative To Aliexpress

Aliexpress has the largest database of dropshipping suppliers and the widest range of products, but there are good alternatives if you cannot find what you are looking for with Aliexpress.

These are some of the alternatives to Aliexpress that also cater to dropshippers.

China Brands

DHGate

Banggood

Tomtop

Chinavasion

Gear Best

Light in the box

Final Thoughts

Dropshipping is a fantastic business opportunity and with AliExpress you have a huge range of products that you can re-sell at huge profit margins.

Drop shipping with AliExpress will not require you to invest a lot of money nor will you have to keep inventory or make delivery arrangements.

With AliDropship plugin and its automation features, you will be able to run your dropshipping business with little hassle.

Find out more about this plugin and how it can help you start a drops shipping business by clicking on the button below.