How to Dropship from Aliexpress with 50 Dollars or less

Learn how to dropship from Aliexpress with as little as 50 dollars investment — How to Dropship from Aliexpress

Drop shipping is business model where a seller obtains a product from a manufacturer and sells it to the buyer without necessarily keeping inventory. The manufacturer is the one who delivers the product to the final buyer.

It is one of the easiest ways to start an online shop. You pay nothing to your product supplier until you make a sale.In this post, I will be teaching you how to dropship from Aliexpress with 50 dollars or less, so hang on with me as I take you through.

*there are affiliate links in this post, please see my disclaimer policy*

To learn how dropshipping works, please read my post on 5 easy steps to running a drop shipping business. In this fresh post, I will be writing about how to dropship from Aliexpress.

Aliexpress is an online marketplace much like Amazon, except that it is for Chinese sellers. In Aliexpress you get a congregation of manufacturers or big-time whole sellers who sell products to you at the manufacturer’s price, which means they sell at a lower price than you will get at your normal everyday store.

If you want to start selling online without holding inventory, to drop ship from Aliexpress will be the best method to follow.I have been part of forums where people do not understand how to dropship using Aliexpress, hence the need for this post.

The first thing about selling online is that you have to determine what you want to sell i.e defining your niche, if you don’t know what to sell then it will be difficult for you to know how to market or sell your products.

Defining your niche will help you narrow down to what you want to sell and hence decide where you want to source for those products from.

To read more about discovering your Niche please get my free ebook: From stay at home mom to Mompreneur, I dedicated a section to write about finding your Niche.

The next thing to do when you discover what you want to sell is to find suppliers.

For the purpose of this post, I will only be treating using Aliexpress as a supplier to your Business. There are other ways of finding suppliers, you can read that up in my earlier post.

How to Choose a Supplier when you want to Dropship from Aliexpress

The first thing to do before you start searching for your suppliers in the Aliexpress platform is to register on the site.

Register on Aliexpress

Your registration on the platform will give you the opportunity to send emails or messages to your supposed suppliers, you will also be able to Follow a store, this helps you save your suppliers so that you don’t keep searching afresh each time you want to make a purchase.

I suggest that once you have adjudged your supplier to be the one you will use, you follow the store immediately so it is saved in your account. Anytime you want to use that supplier you just check your account and click on the store to go directly to that store without necessarily searching for the store again.

Please note that you cannot search for store names, you can only search for products.

Registration does not take more than a minute, it’s no different from registering on Amazon.com

Before you start choosing a supplier for your products when you want to dropship from Aliexpress, there are certain key metrics that you must look out for.

Metrics for Choosing a Supplier

1 How long has the supplier been open for Business:

Before you choose to order from a supplier the first thing that you should check out is how long has this store been selling on this platform. This will give you a sense as to how reliable that supplier is. It will do you no good to pick a newcomer on the platform who is still trying to get off on his business. There will not be enough reviews for you to know if that person has been consistently delivering to her customers. I will normally go with someone who has been in business for over two years.

How to Dropship from Aliexpress

2 Check for Feedback scores:

On the Aliexpress platform, all shops have a feedback score attached to them which are usually graded in percentages, this feedback score is a sum total of an average number of people who returned a good feedback on the products they bought from the shop.

How to dropship from Aliexpress

Most times, the shop owners are always encouraging you the buyer to leave a good feedback. In fact, they often remind you via emails to come back and leave a feedback so that they will know you were satisfied.

Your feedback is often in form of written notes, star ratings and perhaps even pictures to show that you received the item. This score is perhaps what Aliexpress uses to grade a particular seller. I will go with sellers that have a 98% feedback score and upwards. Sometimes you will see a seller who is considered a Top brand, such sellers may not have a feedback score percentage attached but they have a top brand badge on their platform, this indicates that Aliexpress trusts the quality of products sold by that store.

3 Number of Orders

Before selecting a supplier for your products, you need to check for the number of orders they have processed, it may be for your particular product or for another product from the seller. This is because you want to know that the person you are going to buy from is really selling products consistently. You want to check out the hot selling products and the number of orders that product has sold out.

How to Dropship from Aliexpress

Most times, you will see that the hot selling products for that store have a lot of reviews, you should take your time to read the reviews not just the good ones but the bad reviews too. You want to know how the seller handles bad customer experience. It’s not enough to say that we will refund your money if you do not like our products, but do they actually do that? Of course, Aliexpress offers buyers protection but you may want to buy from someone who has integrity.

4 Check for shipping options:

What shipping options do they have? and do they offer epacket? I will always go with anyone that offers epacket because it gives you the opportunity to offer free shipping to your customers which will make the customer happy and encourage repeat sales.

5 How long does it take for your Product to arrive

Depending on where you are selling in, perhaps in US or UK or maybe you are shipping worldwide, you have to check what time it takes for your order to arrive. Orders that are shipped to the US take from 12-20 days to arrive via epacket. I sold an item during the Christmas period to a customer and my order reached my customer in 10 days. I was quite impressed. The time it takes for your customer to get their order is important since you dont want an irate customer that did not get his or her orders on time. I will suggest that you add a little lead time to your own product shipping time, this will give you leverage for any delay in shipping from your suppliers.

6 Communicate with your supplier by sending him a message.

Contact your intending supplier to find out if they dropship from Aliexpress. It’s important not to assume that every seller on Aliexpress must want to dropship. Some may not want to, so it’s important to check out with the seller and let them confirm to you that they are willing to dropship for you, should you make a sale.

7 Make a test order:

You could test order the product you want to sell so that you can check out the process, as this will enable you to know what the whole process will be like. It will also give you an idea of how the actual product looks like. Pictures don’t always tell the whole story. You may need to handle the product and packaging to know if its worth using that person as a supplier.

8: Take advantage of the App To Dropship from Aliexpress

Aliexpress has an app which you can download on your phone to use. I have noticed that goods are often cheaper on the app. You can take advantage of the app to get cost savings on your product sourcing.

After you have completed these preliminaries, you now want to start your online shop.

Complete supplier solution for your Dropshipping business — Salehoo : Vetted suppliers for your dropshipping business

Cost of Setting up your Online shop

There are basically two options you can go with when you want to start drop shipping a product. You can choose to sell on an online marketplace e.g Amazon, Bonanza, or you can choose to sell on your own hosted ecommerce shop using such deliverers like Shopify, Big commerce or Wix.

I wrote a post on Online marketplace versus ecommerce shop, you can read It up to check out the pros and cons of using any of those methods.

Selling on Amazon as an individual seller is free while selling on Bonanza is free except for charges which you only pay when you make a sale.

If you choose to use an ecommerce shop deliverer as I noted above, it will cost you the following amount

Shopify- basic- $29

Wix -$16.50

Domain name registration through each platform is – 10 dollars.

So the big question that is still hanging now is how to add these products to your e-commerce shop.

How to Add Products to your Ecommerce shop

You can choose to do it manually- quite time-consuming- you have to cut and paste each picture to your online shop. Plus you will have to manually maintain your pricing, ordering, and tracking.

or you can use this very important Plugin Alidropship which takes care of the following

Product Automation: This includes search and importation of products to your shop, pricing update, epacket filter options, Order fulfillment, auto tracking and also the auto update on product information. For more on how this plugin can change your dropshipping business, click Here.

Customization: This includes Free themes, built in product customization, unlimited products addition, woocommerce support, product variation.

Marketing: This includes, email lists, cart abandonment, discount coupons, product reviews.

Managing: This includes Live statistics, cashback system, payment gateway integration.

If you chose to go with hosting your shop on Wix, you may find that you have an extra 23 dollars which you will use to set up your first Facebook Ad, in other to attract your first customers.

Please note: Aliexpress is different from Alibaba.com. Most people think they are the same but they are not, Alibaba.com caters to people who want to import physical goods and then distribute or ship themselves and they often require a minimum order number for you to use them.Alixpress selles to anyone even if it is one article you want to buy.

Other alternatives to Alixpress could be joining online directories who curate and qualify manufacturers. An example of such online directory is Salehoo. You pay an amount yearly to have access to suppliers in their database who are prequalified by them. The only thing is that you still have to do the due diligence of reaching out to each one supplier and creating a relationship.

Do you want me to help you do all the written due diligence above? contact me for consulting.

I will help you set up your first shop and ensure all the necessary job is done. I can provide a done for you shop as long as you have picked your Niche. send an email to elizabeth.uchealor@thehomebusinessowner.com

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September 17, 2017November 25, 2017

5 Steps to starting an Online Shop on Bonanza

Online Shop On Bonanza Marketplace — Logo culled from Bonanza website

I have this passion to see stay at home moms or anyone who desires to stay at home with her kids to be able to do so without financial restrictions that is why I am always advocating starting a home business to support your lifestyle. You can call it a Lifestyle business if you want. Today I will be writing about how to start an online shop on Bonanza

While researching online platforms that allow you run a business from your home.I ran into the online selling platform Bonanza and since then I took interest in checking out how its platform operates. I actually came to know about this platform when I was writing the article on how to resell used items as a business. Please read that post if you have a lot of stuff you would like to resell or you want to start selling used stuff as a business.

One of the things that struck me about Bonanza is that it does not charge you anything until you make a sale meaning that there are no listing fees. I was really intrigued about it hence I went foraging for more information about this unique marketplace and what I found really amazed me hence my decision to make a post about it.

*Please note there may be affiliate links in this Post, please read my Disclosure policy.

In this post, the online shop is the same as Booth, they can be used interchangeably here so do not get confused. Okay let’s get to it

Steps to take to start an Online shop on Bonanza

1)Register on the Bonanza Platform:

You have to register on the Platform to be a seller for free, with your registration all you have to enter is your name and email address, an email is then sent to your email address to confirm its really you, after that you can then confirm your registration by clicking on the link that will be sent to you, the link then takes you back to the registration page in other to continue with setting up a Booth.

2)Setting up your Booth on Bonanza

Now Bonanza is quite different from some platforms I have seen out there because you have two options for displaying your shop. The first is the Booth, for the booth to be set up you will be required to get a store and username, your username is what will appear as the icon on the booth you have set up.

The second is the web store. The web store is the paid version where you get to pay before you can start using it, while the booth is free to set up, the webstore is not. You are only given some free days trial before you are charged for setting up the webstore. The good thing about the webstore is that you don’t pay any listing fees after you make a sale.

-The webstore is like your average standalone online shop which you can create online, the difference is that you are creating one via Bonanza, you can use your own URL or you can use your Booths URL. The only snag with webstores is that you are going to have to drive your own traffic to it, unlike when you have a booth that you get to use their various adverts options.

Webstores give you the opportunity to create your own brand and customize it as you wish. It also gives your overall ownership of the store and you get to do what you feel with it.

Having itemised the differences between a Booth and webstore, I will advise that as a Beginner you start with a Booth and when you have established your self you can determine if you want to get a Webstore or not.

To complete the setup of your booth before you can list your products, you will be required to fill out the following necessities.

–Credit Card information: Now some people may balk at this information but Bonanza collects this information because they do not deduct their fees before passing on the rest to you like some selling platforms will do rather you get billed every month that you make a sale. So the credit card information is held just in case you fail to pay up your bills they can then charge the card. They are quite sincere and open in the way they deal with their sellers so I should not think there will be an issue with that.

-Phone Number confirmation: Because the online marketplace is changing so fast, Online selling platforms are now requesting for phone numbers so that they can get in contact with sellers should there be a dispute that can not be handled by email alone. So you are required to verify your number before your booth can be updated. If you are uncomfortable with displaying your personal number in a public place, you can make use of Google Voice. A free service from Google for forwarding calls to your local number. Another option is to make use of Virtual number operators.

After getting all these niceties tidied up, you can then head back to your booth to put some certain things in place.

–Choose a Banner: the Platform provides you with different kinds of free banners that you can use for the header section of your Booth. I will advise its best you choose a Banner that goes with what you want to sell on their platform. This will make it easier for your Booth to be optimized and come up during searches.

For example, if your Niche is fashion jewelry, ensure that in choosing your store name and username you get to insert Jewelry in it to make sure that it fits in with the products you are going to sell on your booth. The good thing is that they have a lot of free banners which you can choose from so you don’t necessarily need to create one if you don’t want to.

–Fill in your Shop Policies: In this section, you get to put the policies that will be guiding your shop sales, this includes your shipping policy, return policy, refund policy and also your various discount policies.

-Fill in your Profile details: People like to buy from people they can identify with. So it will be nice to provide your shop with a profile picture they can identify with, this way people know where to contact you and what you stand for. In your profile page, you get to write about your shop and what ideals that your shop identifies with.

-Social Profiles: You also get to fill out your social profiles this includes, your Facebook, twitter handle etc.

bonanza online selling platform. Everything but the ordinary — Bonanza online selling platform

3)List your Products:

This is the best part of having a shop right, displaying your goods, that is what listing is in the online marketplace. I like this aspect because you get to display or showcase the goods that you want to sell to your customers. In listing your products in your online shop on Bonanza, here are things that you need to do:

–Choose a title for your Product: This is basically what comes up when people search for your products, so you have to provide description of what your picture display looks like, the good thing about the Bonanza platform is that it gives you different marks for the different sections of your listing steps so you know how well you are doing. A good description makes it easier to sell your products.

– Upload your Pictures: The second part is to upload the pictures, pictures are the new product samples in the online marketplace, without pictures people, won’t know what your product looks like so they won’t buy. Therefore if perhaps you are selling your own physical products which are to be fulfilled by you then you have to invest in a good camera with a good props and lighting options to ensure that your products come out looking like the real thing on the pictures

If however, you are drop shipping the products you are selling then it’s easier to do because you already have the pictures from the product manufacturer so all you have to do is copy and upload them on your booth.

–Product Description: In this aspect, you get to describe your product via the various categories that are available, this makes it easy to classify your product. In this section, you get to give correct details of your product like if it’s real gold, karat number or if it’s a vintage product when it was produced. All these details are essential to give a buyer a feel of what your product is made of and what they should expect. The quality and what kind of material it is made of. This makes it easier for buyers to make a better decision.

I suggest you take on the mindset of a buyer when describing your products, this is also where a keyword research will play a big part because you store will come up via keywords that people use in searching for a product. So a keyword research is in order before you commence listing of your products

–Shipping Options: In starting an online shop on Bonanza, you get to set your general shipping policies but you have to also choose what shipping options that will be available to the buyer and what shipping rates you will be offering or if you are offering free shipping. This section provides you with all the countries that you will be able to ship to should you choose to or restrict your shipping to a specific country or continent.

–Setting your Price: In this section, you get to choose the selling price of your product. You also set whether that price is negotiable or not. All these boxes will be properly ticked before you can then upload your item for sale.

Because the Platform assigns different scores for the different aspects of the listing process, it’s always better to ensure you get a 100% score on your listing score in other to ensure maximum exposure of your online shop on Bonanza

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4)Advertising your online Shop on Bonanza

The good thing about selling goods in your online shop on Bonanza platform is that they offer you different paid options of advertising your products on the different platforms. For example, they have a plan in which your products get advertised through bonanza affiliates, Bonanza organic traffic, and google shopping. They also have other options for listing your products on eBay so as to increase your options of selling.

They also have different paid packages for attracting traffic to your shop. I love the fact that you are not left all on your own to do your marketing but you are helped to succeed via their different marketing packages. Of course, you will have to read up on the offers to know which one suits you.

5) Sell via the following Methods:

–Drop shipping Via Aliexpress: You can drop ship other peoples product via Aliexpress in the online shop on Bonanza. I have written about drop shipping before, if you would like to read about my first post on drop shipping please read it here

-Feature your own products whether handmade or by someone else

-Import your other products from other platforms such as your own online shop, Ebay Etsy, Amazon.

Features of Bonanza Online Selling Platform that are quite Unique and Cool

-You can import your already listed products from other platforms you are using such as Amazon, Etsy, Ebay or your own online Shop.

-You can list your goods for free, you only pay for your listing and advertising when you make a sale

-You can drop ship on the platform from Aliexpress

-The platform is easy to navigate for anyone that is a first timer. There rules and guidelines are written in a friendly way that makes you feel like you are reading stuff made for you alone.

-It was voted the best online selling platform by over 50,000 people in 2016

-It has the lowest selling fees compared to Amazon and Ebay, take a look at the picture below:

How to start an Online shop On Bonanza — Photo credit; Bonanza Online selling Platform

-It has flexibility when it comes to selling on other multiple platforms, meaning that your product can be advertised on other selling platforms depending on the advertising package that you choose.

-Its endorsed by many organizations such as CNN, Mashable, Time Magazine, Bloomberg Newsweek.

-The last Cool thing about this platform is that I opened an online shop there, you can check it out by clicking here: Eleora Fashion Store

Categories that are featured on Bonanza Selling Platform

-Men’s Fashion

-Women’s Fashion

-Home & Garden

-Health & Beauty

-Handbags

-Jewelry

-Others: This includes sporting goods, toys e.t.c

-Collectibles and Arts.

Do you have other ideas on how to start an online shop on Bonanza ? drop your comment below