What is dropshipping?
In the era of e-commerce, there’s hardly a person who has not heard this word. If you have ever wondered “What is dropshipping? What is all this hype about?”, this article can explain it.
Dropshipping is the form of retail where the reseller (and you actually are the reseller) collects orders from customers and transfers them to the actual manufacturer or another reseller (supplier). In this model dropshipper doesn’t possess any stocks, he only markets the goods. However the reseller markets the goods setting the prices that are pretty higher than the ones set by the supplier, this difference is your profit.
When you open a retail store, you have 2 choices: to hold inventory, or not. You can buy products in bulk, unpack them, and ship them to your customers as you generate sales. OR, you can find a wholesale distributor (supplier) who will warehouse the items for you and ship individual items directly to your customer.
Drop ship, “pack and ship”, “direct fulfillment” – they all mean the same thing. A supplier will ship the item to your customer for you, and you never have to handle the product. Drop shipping allows the reseller to focus on marketing the business and eliminate the hassle, time, and cost of dealing with the actual products they are selling.
In dropshipping model although you don’t need to stock the goods you will still need some money at the very start. The reason is when you receive the order from the customer the money he pays won’t transfer to your account immediately but will be frozen for the safety reasons. At the same time you will have to pay for the order to the supplier which will require your own money.
AliExpress dropshipping works the same way as the traditional dropshipping business model. You copy the product from AliExpress to your own store, set your own prices/markups, and after you sell a product, you purchase it from AliExpress and have it shipped directly to your customer.
What products to sell?
Generally speaking, you need to fill your store with high-quality items that are appealing for your target audience. Plus, it’s necessary for you to be able to increase these items’ price so that they would give you enough profit.
To get the idea of such products, you can use the methods described in this article.
And after that, you need to go on AliExpress to find the same products or the items with the identical characteristics. This article explains how to navigate AliExpressin your search for the greatest offers.
After you’ve uploaded the products, don’t forget to edit the product pages to increase conversion rate! To improve the product pages, follow the 12 steps described in this article.
How does the buying and selling process work?
Once you have your website up and running and filled with products from your chosen suppliers, it is time for business. When a customer buys a product from you, you will accept payment for the product for your retail price and shipping costs. Once you have received the funds, you place the order directly with the seller from AliExpress.com. This is typically a usual online order at AliExpress.com. The seller will then charge you for the cost of the item and ship the item directly to your buyer. That’s it! You have just sold an item at your set retail price and processed the order for your customer.
When my customer receives the package, does it have any receipts or AliExpress signs?
There are no any signs of AliExpress and prices on packages. However, sometimes sellers from AliExpress include their business cards in the package. Anyway you can always send a comment with your order asking your seller not to include anything. The sellers on AliExpress have a clear idea about a dropshipping business model and will be happy to assist you.
You can use following sample text:
‘Dear seller. I work as a dropshipper. Please, do not mention Aliexpress and your return address and don’t place your business card into the package. We look forward to continuing and further developing our cooperation with your store. Thank you!’
As for original prices that can appear on the package, we are dropshipping with AliExpress for a couple of years and no one ever complained about the price on the package. Most probably, people don’t even look and are most focused on items inside. Anyway, if they complained you could tell them that the price is lowered to avoid paying import taxes.
How to promote my store?
The more effort you put into your store promotion, the more people are likely to visit it and make a purchase.
In other words, a well-planned marketing strategy is the key to getting bigger drop shipping profits!
To help you experiment with all the various marketing tools and instruments, we created a special ‘Promoting a Drop Shipping Store’ section in our blog.
Here, you will find detailed instructions on promoting your drop shipping store on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. Plus, you will learn more about different marketing tips that we in AliDropship use to promote our own stores – our broad experience of their practical use is described in the Case Studiessection.
Looking for real-life experience and pieces of advice?
Feel free to join AliDropship forum and chat with entrepreneurs who already have some experience of stores management and promotion.
