How to start your successful DROPSHIPPING BUSINESS with AliExpress

Online business in itself is a convenient alternative way to make money. Wonder why?

First, it is quick and easy to start even with little or no experience.

Second, it can be launched with minimal cost, that is, you don’t need a huge investment at the first step of the online business journey. A basic simple website with free marketing tools is all you need to begin with.

Third, it can be managed from any geographical area. Any convenient place (ranging from your room to a sunny beach to wherever you choose to) will do as long as the place has stable internet connection.

Well, just as every business has its pros and cons, the following might be the advantages of online business models:

1. It has multiple requirement in the sense that most of these business models or affiliate programs set limit on the intensity of business activities which can reduce profit.
2. In typical business model, you will have to wait for about a month or two before the earned money get transferred into the virtual account.
3. The business is controlled by the business owner, as such the business is not 100% yours. Therefore, trying to develop the business might be impossible.

How does Dropshipping differ from these online business models?

To start with, lets consider the principle of Dropshipping business.

• You start by posting your product (by taking the picture and descriptions from your chosen supplier) on your own platform or website.
• Along the line, a customer gets interested in the products, places an order and pays for the product to you.
• Thereafter, you ask the supplier to deliver the the products directly to the address of your customer.
• Finally, the customer receives the order and the deal is sealed.

Having known how the Dropshipping type of business works, what do you gain by venturing into it?

• It is the best business deal for newcomers as the supplier does majority of the job for you.
• It is cost minimized, hence huge sum of money can be saved . No money spent on rentage and stock purchase. You only spend your money on a product after a customer has placed an order for it.
• Dynamism of product to sell: You can change the product you sell or add anything to your product offer. You can also decide to go on products variety before narrowing down to at a particular category.
• Advertisement is made easy as you can reach a really wide audience since it is based on an online platform. You get to connect with any person in any place in the world.
• There is ample time to market, advertise and promote your online store as the task of shipping and managing the business is done by the supplier.

Having known what Dropshipping business is all about, Aliexpress Dropshipping business is a perfect recommended platform to use when starting a Dropshipping business.

Also Read: Top 10 Alidropship success stories to kick start your Dropshipping career

What is Aliexpress?

It is one of the biggest e-commerce platform in this world as it bring together Chinese manufacturers and buyers from all over the globe.

Why is Aliexpress the Perfect Dropshipping platform?

• Diversity in products: There are over a million products hemised on the platform. A Dropshipper only need to choose from any of the product categories to begin with.
• Affordable Prices: Items are offered for a very low price which means that the Dropshipper can benefit by asking a higher price for their product. Even at that, your customers still benefit from the deal.
• Up to date transactions and products: As the platform gets increasingly popular, the manufacturers get updated with the latest trend in fashion, culture e.t.c. So as to offer nice deal to shoppers.
• Reliable Seller: The most important task for a Dropshipper is getting trustworthy sellers. Aliexpress has a feature on its platform where you get to choose your seller out of the more than 200,000 sellers. You as well get to review the sellers rating by going through the selling profile to see how long the seller has been in the business and other useful information.
• Easy to get started: You don’t have to pay any fee or have an already set up business before you can start working with the platform. You can begin without any cost.
• Shipping made easy: Products can be delivered to any place in the world , Express shipping or free worldwide shipping can be arranged from postal service such as UPS, FedEx, ePacket e.t.c. There is feature, it is necessary to choose the platform with the highest profit.

What are the available platform to choose from?

1. Social Network account: You only need to post your product offer alongside the product. Information on your accounts on Facebook or Instagram. The only disadvantage of this is that the order can not be placed and payments cannot be made on it.
2. Online Classified ads portals: This platform brings together private buyers and sellers. Therefore, specific customer, audience can not be reached.
3. Blogs and Forums: Connects people with similar interests.
4. Established market places such as Amazon, Ebay e.t.c. You get to create your own webstore within the website but you are not totally dependent as you will have to pay lots of fees to build the store.
5. A personal dropshipping webstore: It is preferable to have your own dropshipping webstore for the following reasons:

• High Revenue
• No Rivalry: Marketing product in marketplaces such as Amazon might not attract purchases as there will be other competitors selling the same product. When you use your own webstore, visitors to your webstore can only make purchase from you since there is no other seller.
• Technical convenience: Communication with customers is made easy, placing orders by shoppers and handling the orders by Dropshippers is done quickly and easily.
• Total control of the store: Free choice of products to sell pricing methods and market strategy you prefer.
• Analysis: You can easily track the activities going on in the store such as the number of orders placed, total income, visitors to your site, e.t.c.

How do you get to start your Dropshipping bussiness with Alexpress

First and foremost, Get Your Niche: How do you get the right niche:

• Browse out other stores to check their best selling products so that you can have an idea on how to go about yours.
• Choose products with high demand or a stable trend.
• Check out other similar webstores to see if they are offering the same product as you.
• As much as possible, avoid products that have high competition. You can decide to narrow down your products from its category.

Why narrow down your niche:

1. It is the fastest way to develop your business and also earn shoppers trust.
2. You will have a clearer understanding of your products.
3. Uniqueness as people will always come to you for that particular product you sell.
4. It will be easy to locate your store while going through the search engine because you will rank higher with respect to the particular products.
5. It will be easy to plan your marketing strategy.

Also Read: Dropshipping: Niche Store vs General Store?

Choose a domain name and Hosting provider

• Choose a domain name that is relevant to your niche.
• Avoid long domain (1 or 2 words is most preferable) and domains with hyphens and digits. It is better to use “.com” domains as it helps attract more customers and it is considered as more trustworthy.
• Choose from the WordPress platform a light weight script that is compatible with your store.
• Ensure you go for free or reasonably priced plans.
• Thereafter, Install WordPress.

What is WordPress

It is a free and open source creation tool installed on the web server. It is infact the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (CMS) being used.
To begin creating your WordPress site, download the WordPress. Then install using either quick installtion or manual installation.

Then, Set Up Alidropship Plugin, Alidropship Custom store or Shopify Store

Alidropship plugin makes running your webstore easier and successful. This Plugin takes care of products listings, Promo codes, and other issues that usually complicate the process of building and running the Aliexpress dropshipping store. It makes changing and addition of products to your dropshipping store easy. Alidropship Custom Store is a complete prepared e-commerce solution, while Shopify is a complete, easy to use  e-commerce solution.

Also Read: 9 Steps To Start A Dropshipping Store With Shopify

Fill your store with products

Now that you have the a WordPress store with Alidropship Plugin, an Alidropship Custom Store or Shopify Store, importing products into your store is made easy. However, while importing products, it is important to take the following into consideration:

1. Add products with high volume of order (at least 300) and a higher rating (4 of 5 or more).
2. Try to choose products that qualifies for free shipping (such as epacket shipping which is economical and fast), or that has low shipping rate.
3. Ensure you offer your customers free shipping since the delivery offered by Aliexpress sellers is very low.

You can detect products with an epacket shipping by installing the Alidropship Google Chrome extension(for Alidropship), or the Oberlo Google Chrome extension(for Shopify) on your browser. It will show items with epacket automatically.

Promote your Dropshipping Business

There are several highly proven online promotion methods you can consider. Choose one that best suits your products from the underlisted:

1. Social Media Marketing: It is a form of internet marketing which involves sharing contents on social media networks(such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) to achieve branding goals. It also helps to communicate with customers on the social media accounts. Blogs and forums are other social media marketing medium.
2. Facebook Advertising:
   * Create a Facebook page that contains all the necessary information for new visitors
   * Select products to be promoted from your Dropshipping store
   * Give a detailed description of the products including their benefits on your Dropshipping store
   * Create a campaign on Facebook and define your audience
   * Start with a small campaign.
3. Search Engine Optimization: It is the process of improving the online visibility of your Dropshipping store in a web search engine. It aims at maximizing the number of visitors on your Dropshippng store by ensuring that the Dropshipping store appears high in the list of results returned by a search engine. The higher a Dropshipping store is ranked, the more visitors received which can eventually be potential customers.
   To get more customers from search engines, put the following into consideration.
   * Edit the product names: keep the names short and as well containing important keywords.
   * Edit URLs of the product page making it shorter and more logical.
   * Give a unique description of not more than 150 words for each product.
   * Create meta tags for all products pages.
   * Create unique meta tags and tags for every category of not more than 3 words.
   * Optimize your home page.
   * Create your keywords.

Other ways to promote your Dropshipping Business

1. Video Marketing: It is the component of an integrated marketing communications which is designed to increase audience engagement through social activity around a given video.
   It can be done by creating video reviews of products offered by the Dropshipping store. The video can be short by yourself, your friends or ordered at minimum cost.
   Moreover, you can decide to create your own YouTube channel by creating your channel name. Give a detailed channel description, customize your URL, enter the channel keywords into relevant field.
   Thereafter, optimize your video immediately you upload it.
2. Email Marketing: It is the most cost-effective channel for promoting products. It returns up to $44 for every one dollar you invest which generally leads to high conversion.
   It accumulates the personal data of your prospects because people show their details including contact details voluntarily. You get to attract highly motivated clients and accrue targeted traffic. Your established clients are re-engaged by means of loyalty programs, fresh offers, promotions, sales, e.t.c.
   How do you go about this?
   a) Provide a lead generation form on your Dropshipping site, offer something worthwhile in exchange for every email address.
   b) Accumulate your list of subscribers in a trusted postal service such as Aweber e.t.c. Once in a while, send emails containing promos, discounts and other necessary information to them.
   c) Design your newsletters, create your designs.

No matter how perfect your Dropshipping store seems to be, you still can’t afford to sit and wait for customers to come and buy.

How to place an order

While placing your order on Aliexpress, ensure the seller knows you are Dropshipping so that invoices or promotions will not be included in the package to be sent to the customers.
Then, after you get an order, with the aid of the Alidropship plugin, Alidropship Custom Store or Shopify (which uses oberlo) go to the order section and click on the “Place Order” button. Any of the platform you use moves to Aliexpress, find the product and place the order itself with all necessary details and information . You only have to wait for your customer to receive his order.

What to do should customer not receive the order

Follow the Aliexpress Protection Policy. If the products are inexpensive, your Aliexpress supplier refunds you immediately which enables you give a full or partial refund to your customer.
Conclusively, for those interested in running an Aliexpress Dropshipping business, any of  WordPress store with Alidropship Plugin, an Alidropship Custom Store or Shopify Store is a good solution to use as you

Click to learn more about Alidropship Plugin

Also learn more about Alidropship Custom Store

Click to learn more about Shopify