Since the beginning of online ecommerce business, many people tried to get their share of pie and achieved different level of success. Indeed, selling products online from the comfort of your home or office and turning a profit sounds very attractive to a large public.
One of the online ecommerce business models that have been praised by the mass is AliExpress dropshipping. But what is dropshipping exactly? What do you need to get started and how much does it cost? Which platform should you choose? What is the point of AliExpress? How to use it?
There are so many questions to answer that we created this AliExpress dropshipping guide to help you better understand the ins and outs of this business model and give you the keys to start your dropshipping journey.
Quick look at the full content:
Dropshipping 101 – The BasicsRun a Successful Dropshipping StoreExpand Your Dropshipping BusinessEnd Word
Dropshipping 101 – The Basics
What Is DropshippingHow Much Does It Cost to Start DropshippingChoose the Right E-commerce PlatformWhat Is AliExpressWhat Is Dropshipping CopilotHow AliExpress Works with Dropshipping Copilot
Dropshipping is a term that has been flying around for many years. AliExpress dropshipping is often considered as the best way to start an online ecommerce business, but what is dropshipping exactly?
What Is Dropshipping
Dropshipping is a business model which consists on having an online store, without owning a stock of products.
You work with suppliers, manufacturers or agents to whom you will forward the orders you receive in your online store. Once you sent those order to the product provider, they will then directly ship and send the product to your client. This online business model alleviates the burden of dealing with stock of products and helps to focus on growing your business once you start to have a steady amount of orders.
Like any business, there are pros and cons that should be considered before you launch yourself into the adventure. On the positive side, dropshipping is easy to start as there are hundreds, if not thousands, or dropshipping videos on YouTube and other platforms from which to learn from.
It’s also easy to manage as you don’t have to stock the products you are selling like a regular brick and mortar store or need a warehouse, making the amount of money needed to get started very low! There are also some throwbacks like possible low margins and supplier quality control. Feel free to read on to learn more details about what is dropshipping.
How Much Does It Cost to Start Dropshipping
As we saw previously, one of the benefits of AliExpress dropshipping is low cost of entry, but the price for starting a dropshipping online business can still vary greatly depending on many details. One of the first things to take in consideration concerns the platform you will use to create your store.
Different options are available, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix and more. They offer various plans, some of which are free, like WooCommerce, not considering other necessities we will go through after, to hundreds of dollars per months. Make sure to choose something to fits your needs.
Once you decided which platform you want to use, you will need to choose a domain name. Creating a real brand will help immensely in the future, so carefully choose a name for your store, then buy the name! Domains prices can vary from $1 to a lot more depending on the URL you wish to use.
You may also need to use some web hosting service depending on the platform you decided on using (such as WooCommerce). Just like the platform and the domain name, the cost can be exponential, so it’s advised to start low and learn before growing.
Finally, some costs to be expected concern you. If you decide to do everything manually, it may take you hours and hours of hard work. It is recommended to use third party tools and app, such as Dropshipping Copilot, to help you in managing your products and orders. Dropshipping Copilot has a forever free plan, so it’s great to get started with.
Similarly, you will need a budget to advertise your products, and you need to count the hours you will spend working on your store, time is not free!
Choose the Right E-commerce Platform
So, you know what is dropshipping and how it should cost you, now let’s talk about making the right choices for you. Choosing the right e-commerce platform on which to create your online business can be challenging, sometimes it can even be confusing.
To simplify things, we’ll go through the three main platforms, all widely used, which are Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix.
Shopify is one of the simplest way to create a online store for people with all kind of knowledge level. Different plans are available and many step by step guides can be found online to set up your store, customize it, importing products and so on. Furthermore, thousands of apps are there to help you with all sides of your business.
WooCommerce is also quite popular for online ecommerce business owners. It is based upon WordPress and let you create a very personally customized and detailed store. While it may look less intuitive that Shopify or Wix, it is quite easy to get going with and it also offers plethora of plugins and has a huge base of developers and extensions to help you run your store efficiently.
Wix is famous for website creation, there is no question on the quality of the store you can create with it. It can be more intuitive for beginners and lets you create the store you want, the way you want it but also use some already available theme. Just like the other platform we mentioned, it boasts hundreds of apps to assist you in running your online store. Other platforms are available and we go into more details in the article below, have a look!
Learn more:
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What Is AliExpress
Alright, you now chose your platform, now let’s talk about AliExpress. If you ever went online shopping or read ecommerce news, you have heard about it, but what even is AliExpress?
AliExpress is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms and is owned by the Alibaba group, a massive multinational company (think Amazon big). It groups thousands and thousands of manufacturers and suppliers selling and even greater numbers of goods and products.
On AliExpress, you can find anything, from clothing to electronics, from a small bracelet with a heart-shaped stone to car equipment. There are different types of sellers on AliExpress, and you can find yourself buying directly from manufacturers, a retailer or some big companies made of hundreds of smaller businesses. Simply said, the choice is vast.
One of the biggest advantages of AliExpress is the price of the products. Because you are cutting the normal line of distribution by getting products directly from the manufacturers, you can buy good at a fraction of the price that you would normally see them on other website or at that store at the corner of your street.
What Is Dropshipping Copilot
You now have all the basics in order to start an online ecommerce business with AliExpress and try dropshipping. In order to avoid trouble and simplify your management of products and orders, we advise that you use a dropshipping solution such as Dropshipping Copilot.
Dropshipping Copilot is AliExpress official dropshipping partner and helps you with every aspect of your business. You can use it with any of the previously mentioned store platform, like Wix, Shopify and WooCommerce.
With its partnership, Dropshipping Copilot helps you to place 100s of orders from your online store to your AliExpress suppliers in a few seconds only. This is the only solution able to do this so fast and it will allow you to save a lot of time and manual labor.
Dropshipping Copilot will also help you in importing new products from AliExpress supplier to sell in your store. You will then be able to edit those products to customize them as you please before you publish them online and decide to start to sell them.
You can also take advantage of the Dropshipping Copilot Supplier Optimizer if you have some existing products. This feature is here to help you find better AliExpress suppliers for your existing products. It will automatically search for other sellers and manufacturers selling the exact same product, but with a lower price and with better rating. This is very useful to increase your margins. While
Dropshipping Copilot also allows you to create product bundles, custom product offer, such as buy one get one, can automatically apply price increase on your products, help you follow the stock and prices and much more. You can check everything available on Dropshipping Copilot in the article below.
Learn more:
How Can You Start a Dropshipping Store With Dropshipping CopilotUse Dropshipping Copilot dropshipping tool to start your business today. Check the best dropshipping app to grow and become successful as an entrepreneur.Dropshipping Copilot BlogLaura Danes
How AliExpress Works with Dropshipping Copilot
Like we mentioned just before, Dropshipping Copilot is AliExpress official dropshipping partner, but what does that mean exactly? Well, Dropshipping Copilot is using AliExpress API for efficiency and lossless information transmission for products and orders.
In other words, with the AliExpress dropshipping API that Dropshipping Copilot is using, when you import a new product from AliExpress, instead of just copying the product information available on AliExpress like most other solution do, Dropshipping Copilot directly get the information from the AliExpress database, ensuring that you get the correct data, pictures and variants.
In the same way, when you place your orders from Dropshipping Copilot to AliExpress, the customer’s information is adapted to fit the AliExpress requirements and Dropshipping Copilot ensures that the correct data is transmitted. With the AliExpress API, there is no need to manually fill in extra information or to answer captcha.
This helps you save a lot of time as Dropshipping Copilot is up to 90% faster to place orders. Dropshipping Copilot also used the AliExpress API to develop a unique feature called Supplier Optimizer. Using big data, it’s able to find all the suppliers currently selling a specific product.
You just need to enter the AliExpress link of a product, and Dropshipping Copilot will help to find all the other suppliers selling the same product, at lower prices and with better ratings. Dropshipping Copilot is definitely one of the best solutions to accompany you in your dropshipping journey, and it’s free!
Run a Successful Dropshipping Store Show list
Dropshipping ShipmentDropshipping TaxesHow to Link Your Store with Dropshipping CopilotHow to Look for the Right Niche How to Find the Right Products on AliExpressHow to Get Your First OrderHow to Deal with Your First OrderHow to Deal with Refunds / ReturnMust-Have Plugins to Help with Your Dropshipping BusinessHow to Link Your Store and Start Dropshipping with Dropshipping CopilotHow to Find a Reliable AliExpress Supplier with Dropshipping Copilot
Knowledge is important, but so is acting on it! You now have all the basic knowledge required to move forward and start your own online ecommerce business.
You can now make the decisions corresponding to your need and create your store and find the right dropshipping solution to help you manage your online business.
It is also time to decide which kind of product you want to sell, maybe you already have an idea, but how to find good products for this niche? We’ll see that below.
We will then review some strategies to help you get your first orders and how to deal with them, how to ensure good shipping and manage the potential taxes issues or refund. We’ll also introduce you to some of the recommended plugins and apps to help you!
Learn more:
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Again, take the time to check what you should be careful about and make sure to get in line with the laws you should follow. Many information can be found online, and people are often willing to share their experience freely, so don’t be afraid to ask around!
Creating your store come next! Depending on the platform you chose, different steps will be required, but the most important one is the name. Choosing the right name for your store can immensely impact your future success! Spend some time thinking about potential names and ask your friends and family what they think about it.
Don’t make any rushed decisions, this will be your brand and what your products will be associated with, better sleep on it! You have the platform, you know the laws, and you have a name, you are well on to become an online entrepreneur!
Learn more:
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Dropshipping Shipment
How will your products be delivered to your customers? How long will it take? At what cost? Shipping is as important to the careful dropshipper as the products themselves. Knowing exactly how your AliExpress supplier will deal with your package, how many days your customers will have to wait, and how much it will cost you are signs of success.
Depending on the country of destination of your orders, different shipping methods may be available for the same product and different shipping methods mean different delivery time and price!
When you choose an AliExpress product, you should take the time to check what the shipping options are offered by the supplier, along with the estimated delivery time and the cost. Include that information on your product page, and take them into account in your pricing.
Many online sellers offer free shipping, which just means that they include the shipping cost into the product itself. It’s a proven method, people like when something is free and they have the impression of saving money, even if it’s just a couple of dollars.
If you want to go the extra mile and offer quality shipping for your customers, you can also get in touch with the supplier directly, and discuss some potential customized shipping solution, like your logo on the package, or extra wrapping. This may slightly increase the overall delivery cost, but can improve your company reputation!
Learn more:
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Dropshipping Taxes
We mentioned it above: make sure your business is correctly registered and follow the regulations of your country. This may mean paying taxes! Depending where you live, dropshipping may be regulated and the products your buy can be subject to taxes upon their purchase or delivery.
Imagine if your customer has to pay an extra 20% on top of his original order to receive his delivery? You can be sure that he will never buy from you again, and he may even create some bad publicity about your website or leave negative reviews.
As of July, 1st 2021, the European Union, for example, will tax all products. If you are a registered business buyer on AliExpress, it can help alleviate some of the cost. Each country can have varying rules toward products sent from China, or related to dropshipping, and the amount of tax you, your customers, may have to pay can also vary depending on the size, weight and cost of the products.
It is imperative that you comply with those regulations and pay the required taxes if you want to run a sustainable dropshipping business and don’t want to be liable, closed down, or end up with a fine that can cost you thousands of dollars.
The best way to have a general idea of potential taxes and specific regulation is to talk with fellow dropshippers and meet with a professional. It is better to invest some time and money in ensuring your business future, instead of losing all your hard work and money suddenly!
To help you deal with your taxes, you can consider using Osome.
Osome is an online e-commerce assistant that offers company formation, corporate secretary, accounting, and taxation services in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. It combines personal care and experience with artificial intelligence’s efficiency. The company’s business model uses automation to significantly increase efficiency and customer satisfaction, resulting in a high potential for growth and profitability.
Osome provides international services as well as a team of dedicated accountants. The company also assists with business formation and provides corporate secretary services, adding to its distinctiveness.
Learn more:
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How to Link Your Store with Dropshipping Copilot
Whether you are a beginner or a more experienced dropshipper, your store management can make the difference between success and failure. There is nothing worse than not being able to properly follow a customer order’s status and keeping up to date with it. This is why it is highly recommended to use a dropshipping solution.
A dropshipping solution will help you to import products, place orders, follow your earnings, and more! Many are available, such as Dropshipping Copilot, Oberlo, Dropified and more. They all have their own benefits, but we believe Dropshipping Copilot is the best suited for businesses of all size, like the more than 150 000 installations and its 4.9 star rating prove it.
It’s easy to get started, simply go to Dropshipping Copilot.com website, and create an account. From there, you will just have to follow the directions to first link your store to Dropshipping Copilot. After the store is linked, a short tutorial will teach you the basics of handling your products and orders inside of Dropshipping Copilot.
There are dozens of different feature you can test for free, all designed to help you improve your benefits, your products, simplify your entrepreneurial life and save plenty of time to let you focus on growing your business!
Learn more:
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How to Look for the Right Niche
Once you get the hang of how to manage your store, you can start to import new products to sell, but for that, you will need to first decide which niche you want to focus on. In case you don’t know what is a niche, and why choosing the right one is a necessity, here’s a quick explanation.
A niche is a smaller part of a larger market. For example, selling short sleeves t-shirt is a niche of the clothing market. Choosing the right niche for your online business is crucial and I know we say that a lot, but the competition can be extremely fierce in some markets.
Selling summer dresses will be a lot more difficult that selling dog feeders, even if you target the right audience. That’s why you need to choose a niche that both as a scaling potential, but is also not saturated.
A good rule about choosing the right product niche is the following: have you seen advertisement for this product recently? If you constantly see ads about a specific type of product, you can be sure that many people are also trying to sell it, so it will be difficult for you to get potential customers attentions, and the margins will most likely be low.
Analyzing the market and checking on different platform and bigger store what is currently popular is a good way to avoid the busy markets.
Similarly, you can check which products are slowly getting more and more sells or specialize in a product type that you really know. Being able to see a future trend or having extensive knowledge will help you tremendously in creating content for your products and to give valuable information to your customers.
Learn more:
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How to Find the Right Products on AliExpress
Finding the right niche is crucial, since it will determine your future audience. Now that you have decided on what type of products you want to sell in your online business, you need to find those products.
AliExpress can be a little overwhelming because of the humongous variety of products it offers and the thousands of different suppliers available. Doing extensive research is necessary, you need to check the suppliers’ ratings, the quality of the product and the different shipping options available depending on the countries you plan to target.
To help you sorting through all the different supplier and product, Dropshipping Copilot has developed a unique feature called Supplier Optimizer. Once you have found a product from an AliExpress supplier you like, you can copy the AliExpress URL and paste in Dropshipping Copilot Supplier Optimizer.
Dropshipping Copilot will then automatically go through all the suppliers selling the same products on AliExpress and provide you with a list of the identical products sold by other suppliers. This list will include the price for which each supplier sell this product, the product rating, the shipping cost, the sale number and more!
This is the perfect way to improve your product listing in your online store. By finding more reliable and cheaper suppliers, you will save on the cost of the product, on potential complaints and improve your customer’s satisfaction.
How to Get Your First Order
Your store is online, you have products, now it’s time to get some orders, which is easier said than done. The hardest part of dropshipping is not about creating a store, we saw that it’s quite easy, it’s not about finding cool products you can make benefits from either, it’s getting customers who want to buy your products!
There are different ways you can generate you first couple of orders, but you need to make sure of a couple of things first: Your store should look great and professional. It should also be ready to accommodate customers. Try to use your store as any normal customers would and place some orders to make sure everything is working properly.
One the most proven ways to get your first order is word to mouth. Talk about your store and products to your friends and family, share on social media and let everyone know about what you’re selling and why they should give it a try. You can consider some discount for the first buyers to get things going too.
Another way to spread the word about your store for free is to post about it in different groups, or in the comments of other publications. It may catch the eye of some potential buyers, but focus on groups and posts related to your niche!
Finally, you already have some budget; you can give social media advertising a try. This is one of the best methods to generate orders. There are plenty of free guides online that will be able to teach you how to create and posts your first advertisement. Don’t go too big, too fast, take the time to learn what works, and what doesn’t!
How to Deal with Your First Order
You’ve got your first order, congratulations! Every little steps count, and the first order is a great achievement. What you have to do now, is to ensure that your customer gets his product as smoothly as possible.
If you not using any dropshipping solution and are handling orders manually, you will need to create an order on AliExpress for the exact same product that your client ordered. You will then need to enter his information, address and details, then pay. This is manageable when you have to deal with one or two orders, but make sure you don’t make any mistakes!
To avoid mistakes and simplify the whole process, most successful dropshipper use dropshipping solutions. We mentioned it earlier in the article, but a good dropshipping solution will help you save time and energy, and will ensure that no error is done.
Generally speaking, the solution you decide to use should synchronize the orders you receive in your store in their platform, with all the product and customer information. You can then easily place the order directly to AliExpress from the dropshipping solution without having to manually copying all information. This will prevent any misclicks or errors.
Dropshipping Copilot is especially appreciated because of its ease of use and all the feature it provides. With Dropshipping Copilot, all the orders you receive are synchronized instantly and you can place 100s of orders to AliExpress in a few seconds.
Furthermore, Dropshipping Copilot will help you to keep track of the status of each individual order easily, and will also automatically synchronize and transfer the tracking numbers from AliExpress to your store.
This basically means that, when you use Dropshipping Copilot, once you placed an order to AliExpress and you paid for it, you don’t have to do anything anymore, it’s all automated.
How to Deal with Refunds / Return
Once your order is paid, your AliExpress supplier will ship it. But that’s not the end of the road. Multiple issues can occur during the transit of the package and you may face some claims from your customers. If a package gets lost, delayed, broken during the delivery, you may be asked for refund, answers and more.
Dealing with customer service is an important part of any business and a good and reliable after-sale contact with your clients can greatly improve your business’ image. Your website should have a page with all the information pertaining to refunds, broken objects on delivery, and potential delays to make sure that your customers know what to do in each case or can’t make any reclamations.
Depending on the platform you are using, you can create a separated page or add a mention on each product page or on the checkout page.
For refunds, it can be troublesome to ask for the customer to send back the package, to deal with this kind of situations; you can offer the client a brand new identical product instead of giving them back the money. This is great way to minimize your losses and keep your customer happy. Of course, you should first ask the reason for the refund and ask for proof.
Must-Have Plugins to Help with Your Dropshipping Business
There are some applications and plugins that will greatly simplify your daily life when you are running a dropshipping store. While each may have a different opinion, here is a list of application/plugin we recommend:
Dropshipping Copilot: AliExpress dropshipping solution partner for importing products, manage them, and place ordersLoox: Useful application to import AliExpress product reviewsPageFly: Great app to modify and customize you store pagesMailChimp: Solid solution to create and send emails to customersPrintful: The go-to website for customized clothing and productsQuick Facebook Chat: Perfect to talk with your customers live
Note: This list is not sponsored.
How to Link Your Store and Start Dropshipping with Dropshipping Copilot
Whether you are a beginner or a more experienced dropshipper, your store management can make the difference between success and failure. There is nothing worse than not being able to properly follow a customer order’s status and keeping up to date with it. This is why it is highly recommended to use a dropshipping solution.
A dropshipping solution will help you to import products, place orders, follow your earnings, and more! Many are available, such as Dropshipping Copilot, Oberlo, Dropified and more. They all have their own benefits, but we believe Dropshipping Copilot is the best suited for businesses of all size, like the more than 150 000 installations and its 4.9 star rating prove it.
It’s easy to get started, simply go to Dropshipping Copilot.com website, and create an account. From there, you will just have to follow the directions to first link your store to Dropshipping Copilot. After the store is linked, a short tutorial will teach you the basics of handling your products and orders inside of Dropshipping Copilot.
There are dozens of different feature you can test for free, all designed to help you improve your benefits, your products, simplify your entrepreneurial life and save plenty of time to let you focus on growing your business!
How to Find a Reliable AliExpress Supplier with Dropshipping Copilot
Finding the perfect supplier can be a hassle as we saw previously. While Dropshipping Copilot Supplier Optimizer feature would be able to help you find some of the best suppliers available on AliExpress, you may be interested in more reliable and even cheaper supplier.
To help you in that regard, Dropshipping Copilot developed its own Mass Supply Program to give you access to exclusive suppliers and prices.
With the Dropshipping Copilot Mass Supply Program, you will be able to replace some of your current AliExpress suppliers by Dropshipping Copilot’ selected suppliers who offer cheaper prices, have a proven track of reliability in term of product quality, delivery rate and stock quantity.
Working directly with the AliExpress team and 1668.com suppliers, the Mass Supply Program can offer discount of up to 30%. This is especially good for more seasoned dropshippers willing to increase their margins or with higher sales numbers.
Expanding Your Dropshipping Business
BrandingSocial Media MarketingEmail MarketingSEO Improvement
Now that you are receiving orders and getting a regular amount of visit on your online store, you may want to consider taking your business to the next level.
Growing your business doesn’t necessarily mean selling more types of products, it means getting more traffic and more sales by increasing the number of visitors. To do so, different leverage can be used, such as branding, marketing operation, customer reachout or SEO.
Some of those tasks can be tedious and require a lot of work, some are simpler, but they all have one goal: improving your exposure. We will quickly details the different ways with which you can improve you brand recognition or conversion rate, contact and inform your existing clients and show up on the first page of Google.
Branding
In the store creation part, we mentioned how important it is to select a great store name. This is the first step in establishing a proper brand. Creating and using an easily recognizable and memorable name will help you immensely in gathering a crowd of adepts of your products.