Starting Dropshipping with AliExpress

MikeAus

MikeAus

New member
Sep 10, 2013
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Finally, I have developed my first AliExpress dropshipping store - WorldOfHarry.com and want to share some experience with you.

The site uses unique theme and plugin developed from scratch. There is a possibility to search and import products directly from AliExpress through your WP admin panel automatically.

I have studied the experience of some successful AliExpress dropshippers and decided to take a narrow niche that I think will be easier to promote.

I made a research and selected the most popular products in this niche with the wholesale price not more than $20 and with worldwide free shipping option only. Then I increased prices on my site at about twice the standard cost.

Another feature of this site is that the plugin imports only products that participate in AliExpress affiliate program. So, if I get any order I will be able to purchase necessary item on AliExpress using my affiliate link to get additional 5%-50% commission.

I am going to start promoting the site soon; however some improvements are still needed.

It would be great if you could review my site, give some recommendations, ideas, share your experience or just wish me Good luck!
 


I like the idea and the execution too. The domain name is a winner and the branding is good too. I would not worry about putting my CC on that site. Good job and good luck man.
 
MikeAus said:
Another feature of this site is that the plugin imports only products that participate in AliExpress affiliate program. So, if I get any order I will be able to purchase necessary item on AliExpress using my affiliate link to get additional 5%-50% commission.
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Buying things through your own affiliate link is almost always a TOS violation. I'm not sure if they would ban you from buying products period, but I would read the TOS very carefully before going down that path.
 
Insaint said:
Buying things through your own affiliate link is almost always a TOS violation. I'm not sure if they would ban you from buying products period, but I would read the TOS very carefully before going down that path.
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I contacted AliExpress regarding this issue and was told that there is no any problem. As for me I always buy products for myself using my affiliate link.
 
Brandon said:
Which cart plugin are you using?
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This dropshipping site uses the solution based on the platform of AliPlugin. However there is no possibility to build dropshipping sites with AliPlugin, only affiliate ones.

I am not sure when I can release a dropshipping version of the plugin. There are a lot of things needed to be optimized before pushing it to the market. It searches and imports products well from AliExpress but there is still much manual work need to be done in order to build such dropshipping store.
 
While putting the finishing touches and preparing my site for the market, I would like to share with you my experince and recommendations regarding choosing a niche for such websites.

How to find a good niche for AliExpress drop shipping store?

1. Popularity and Trend.

Choosing a niche for your drop shipping website you should focus only on products that are always in demand and have positive or at least stable trend.

Go to https://www.google.ru/trends to get better idea about selected niche. For example, we are going to build a store that will sell ‘Harry Potter’ products for Harry Potter fans.

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We can observe a small decrease since 2004 but the overall picture looks good, there are no dramatic falls and the trend is rather stable. So, Harry Potter niche seems interesting to me for a drop shipping site.

Or let’s take ‘GoPro accessories’ as an example:

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Here we see the trend that is increasing year by year starting from 2011. This is a good niche to be taken and tried.

Below you see the niche (‘Nokia’) that is not worth trying:

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2. Competition.

It is impossible to find any popular niche with a good trend without competition of course. Before launching your drop shipping store it is strongly recommended to search for similar web stores in the Internet. If you find many good sites offering the same products (especially by good prices), probably you should think about another niche and products, which are generally more hard to find. Obviously, there is no point to create another usual “Shoes”, “Car parts”, “Gardening” stores. It’s better to take some narrow niche and try to be creative.

3. AliExpress Stock.

Before starting building your web store, make sure there are enough categories and products available in the niche. Go to AliExpress.com and enter necessary keywords in search bar. In my case with ‘Harry Potter’ everything looks fine.

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4. Prices.

Generally, AliExpress offers very competitive (often unbeatable) prices for many products. However, I would always recommend making a small research about the products’ prices you are going to sell on your site. Ideally, AliExpress prices should be twice lower the prices of your competitors.

You should pick at least 5-10 products in the selected niche and find best prices for these items on AliExpress. Then go to search.aol.com, enter shopping section and search for the same products in order to compare their prices with prices at AliExpress.

Let’s take an example.

I found such Harry Potter Scarf on AliExpress for $9,05/piece.

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Then I went to search.aol.com and found the same item sold by other sellers.

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As you can see the prices are much higher. In my opinion, it’s a good item that is worth adding to my store.

to be continued...
 
MikeAus said:
I contacted AliExpress regarding this issue and was told that there is no any problem. As for me I always buy products for myself using my affiliate link.
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Ah, well in that case it's a nice bonus.

Once you are getting some orders you should take a look at Stripe as an extra payment option. Slightly better rates (unless you are doing a ton of transactions through PayPal) and in my store I saw a nice conversion boost from offering direct CC payments.
 
I once tried similar stuff many years back, and the only people that make money are the people that set it up.

If you paid a fee to join or incur monthly charges, then I urge caution. Remember the same products are pedaled to thousands of members worldwide.

I do not know anything about AliExpress dropshipping store, but the setup is similar to many other marketing schemes you can find online.
 
How to choose categories and products?

To find best categories for my drop shipping site I use Google Adwords.

With the help of Keyword Planner I usually start checking different niche related keywords targeting all locations and English language.

For example, I take “Harry Potter wands” and see the results.

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In spite of the fact that this keyword has high competition its search volume looks rather good.

One by one I select 10 main categories and add them to my site.

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Among these 10 categories I also select 3-4 most popular ones to add them to the slider.

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After my categories are ready I go to AliExpress.com to find necessary products.

To find the best and most demanded products I filter all products by orders and pay special attention to feedback score.

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I get product ID of a desired item and add it to the plugin that automatically finds the product and imports all necessary information (images, description, parameters, variations, etc.) in my site.

Or I can make all the process (search, filter and upload products) work through the plugin.

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to be continued...
 
Some SEO aspects:

1. Before choosing main categories for my site, I use Google Adwords to find good keywords in selected niche. As a result all names of my categories are in line with chosen keywords. (For example: category name “Harry Potter wands” = “Harry Potter wands” keyword that has 40,500 monthly searches according to Google Adwords.

2. I am using Senuke software for social bookmarking. It helps to index site well and get stable pages on Google.

3. I write and place a unique article (3000 symbols) on the home page above footer.

4. I write and place a unique article with necessary keywords (2000 symbols) on each category page. For each article I make unique title placing it in H2 tag. It is important that this title (H2) should be different from the name of the category (H1).

5. Using special software (usually WebSite Auditor) I do SEO audit for all my pages to find out if:
- I have any errors in the code;
- robots.txt created and setup properly;
- there are any pages with 404 error;
- a site has any broken links;
- all meta tags are written correctly;
- all pages are mobile friendly.
 
As a part of my marketing strategy I decided to promote the site by video content as well. I have created a promo clip and added it to YouTube channel.

It would be great if you watch it and share your opinions about it.

https://youtu.be/Nh7fxq_Fe2c
 
Using Aliexpress as a drop shipping supplier, doesn't the 30-45 days shipping from China/India basically kill you with user expectations?
 
MikeAus said:
As a part of my marketing strategy I decided to promote the site by video content as well. I have created a promo clip and added it to YouTube channel.

It would be great if you watch it and share your opinions about it.

https://youtu.be/Nh7fxq_Fe2c
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Make a 30 second edited clip of that video and run ads using the same. Also, add a link to your sites, internal category links to your description.

My other concern is your load time. I tried visiting your site and it stuck at a white screen for a while, so I ran a test.

WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : worldofharry.com/ - 08/19/15 14:29:27 - WebpageTest showed it at to be 10+ seconds.

So you definitely have some work to complete in that region.

Other than that, your site mentions a shipping time from 3 to 15 days. I am sure this does get stretches, since most products are shipped from Asian countries. So, as eliquid asked, how are you tackling this? I am sure you receive a ton of "Product still not received" emails?

Also, I see a month-long "upto 80% off" store announcement. Is it a gimmick or a deal from AE?

Good job, though.
 
eliquid said:
Using Aliexpress as a drop shipping supplier, doesn't the 30-45 days shipping from China/India basically kill you with user expectations?
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Some of the sellers I selected have stocks in Europe. However, delivering time is also my main concern, that's why I take the prodcuts with the price that is not more than $20-$30 and the products that have a free shipping option. Based on experience of other successful drop shippers, buyers are usually ready to wait their packages in this case.
 
BlogHue said:
Make a 30 second edited clip of that video and run ads using the same. Also, add a link to your sites, internal category links to your description.

My other concern is your load time. I tried visiting your site and it stuck at a white screen for a while, so I ran a test.

WebPagetest Test Result - Dulles : worldofharry.com/ - 08/19/15 14:29:27 - WebpageTest showed it at to be 10+ seconds.

So you definitely have some work to complete in that region.

Other than that, your site mentions a shipping time from 3 to 15 days. I am sure this does get stretches, since most products are shipped from Asian countries. So, as eliquid asked, how are you tackling this? I am sure you receive a ton of "Product still not received" emails?

Also, I see a month-long "upto 80% off" store announcement. Is it a gimmick or a deal from AE?

Good job, though.
Click to expand...

Thank you for valuable recommendations! The site is still on developing stage, I am updating it daily, so loading speed is not optimized yet.

"upto 80% off" announcement is a gimmick.
 
HURRAY! Got my first sale!

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I am quite glad with it considering the fact that I have not startred promoting the site yet.

Another good news is that some keywords already appeared on the first page of Google.

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