Starting Dropshipping with AliExpress

I want to share with you my experience of working with Instagram Shoutouts once again.

My recently launched shoutout (I paid $20 for) generated 15 orders from my dropshipping site and brought me $282 in profit!

This method works really great for me and I want to leave a small guide for you here.

1. Firstly choose the most popular accounts with the niche similar to yours. For example, if you are selling Harry Potter merchandise, you should look for the 'Harry Potter' accounts. There are different services for the account picking, but I personally recommend Websta (Websta - the best Instagram web viewer (Webstagram)). Simply enter the preferred theme in the “Username or tag” field and you’ll get a list of popular accounts to choose from:

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2. Once you have picked the preferred accounts (the more the better), you have to contact them through Instagram Direct (direct messages on Instagram). Unfortunately, this function is not available on PC; on Instagram you can send direct messages only from your mobile phone or tablet. Log in to your Instagram account and search for the chosen accounts in the search field. I usually send them a short message concerning ShoutOuts, and ask them to contact me on e-mail (it’s more comfortable to communicate through e-mail than through Instagram Direct). My message usually looks like this:

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3. Send this message to all of your chosen accounts and wait for their reply. Check your e-mail. Normally they contact me later on the same day, so you don`t have to wait long. Agree upon the terms and the prices, ask for the payment details. Generally I try to make ShoutOuts for 24-48 hours (longer time makes no sense). The price depends on the number of followers; try to find popular accounts (10k followers and more).

The ShoutOut basically consists of the grabbing picture of the item (it can be a collage of different pictures as well) and a promotion text. The text should be short and simple providing some information about the product and its price, name of your account and link to your webstore. You should add some hashtags as well.

This is an example of my ShoutOut text:

Harry potter golden snitch bracelet

Nice, right?

@world.of.harry for only $ 9.99 & FREE shipping worldwide!

check out WorldOfHarry.com for more deals like that!

ask @world.of.harry for more merch!


4. So, the payment has been transferred and the ShoutOut posted. Finally, you should get this:

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After your ShoutOut is posted you will immediately start getting more traffic and sales and have a fast followers growth as well. I recommend making ShoutOuts once a week per account to get regular sales and constant followers growth.

Try it!
 


Stats for February:

WorldOfHarry.com

Traffic:

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Income:

Total income: $1389,55
Supplier costs: 498,76
Net profit: $890,79

Most sales came from organic and social traffic.

EmpireNeedsYou.com

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Total income: $475,65
Supplier costs: $175,71
Net profit: $299,94

Most sales came from Instagram shoutouts.

kSort.com

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Total income: $119,43
Supplier costs: $32,89
Net profit: $86,54

Most sales came from social media traffic.
 
It's been 9 months since I have started working with my first dropshipping site WordlOfHarry.com. Today I prepared for you a small summary of what I have now and what I learnt during past 9 months.

I will share with you the list of my most profitable webstores, show you some traffic and income stats for the last month (March) and shortly describe the main promotion strategies I use regularly to make money with AliExpress dropshipping sites.

First of all, it should be noted that I have already developed and run 14 dropshipping stores.

Below I will show the most successful ones.

Stats for March

WorldOf Harry.com

Visitors: 6,898
Profit (gross): $1,228

EmpireNeedsYou.com

Visitors: 1,684
Profit: $790

SevenKingdomsMart.com

Visitors: 717
Profit: $523

BuyItCarl.com

Visitors: 613
Profit: $302

NailsStuff.com

Visitors: 549
Profit: $350

GoPutin.com

Visitors: 871
Profit: $333

LeggingsFan.com

Visitors: 451
Profit: $290

kSort.com

Visitors: 737
Profit: $197

And I got several orders last month from my new sites: KittenRules.com and Sockinstock.com

I should also mention 8% affiliate commission I get from AliExpress for each purchase. When I was just starting and had only several orders per month such kind of commission seemed not so serious to me. But when you passively earn $300-400 monthly owing to these affiliate commissions only, you understand that it is a really great addition to your main dropshipping income. By the way, now I know how to get 10% cash back from AliExpress but unfortunately this system works only for Russians for this moment.

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Marketing

Most of my orders (about 90%) I get with the help of social media promotion. There are some sales generated through organic search traffic, but generally these sales come from my social pages which can be found in top of Google. So, actually we can consider this SEO traffic as a social media source as well.

My main social media marketing methods can be devided into 5 techniques:

1) Social Rabbit Plugin: Instagram & Facebook promotion
2) Instagram: ShoutOuts
3) Facebook: Group Sharing
4) Pinterest: Follow Liker
5) Twitter: Twidium

I will describe these techniques using WorldOfHarry.com as an example. These strategies are applied to all my sites.

1) Social Rabbit Plugin: Instagram & Facebook promotion

With the help of Social Rabbit plugin I post products on Facebook, Instagram and promote my webstore on other relevant groups in Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

On my Harry site I have all of the Plugin promotion options enabled, such as auto-posting and auto-promotion. Auto-posting time in different networks may vary and I am trying to test different time frames. On World of Harry for instance I enable auto-posting each 2 hours. As for auto-promotion, the Plugin launches it on Facebook every 5 minutes and every 10 minutes on Instagram. With auto promotion option Social Rabbit finds popular niche related groups, visits them, gives likes, leaves comments and reposts the most popular posts on my own Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts/pages.

You can learn more about how it works here: Knowledge base | Social Rabbit Plugin

2) Instagram: ShoutOuts

On WorldOfHarry I usually make ShoutOuts once a week (four times a month) on different Instagram accounts. Each time I try to pick one of the best selling products on AliExpress, choose an attractive picture or make a collage of pictures, make a short catchy description and place it on the chosen Instagram account for 24 hours.

I am working with following accounts:

https://www.instagram.com/perksofamuggleborn/

Number of followers: 65.5K
Price per ShoutOut: $6

https://www.instagram.com/hpfashion934/

Number of followers: 131K
Price per ShoutOut: $28

https://www.instagram.com/butterbeermug/

Number of followers: 70.5K
Price per ShoutOut: $28

https://www.instagram.com/hermionegranger44/

Number of followers: 183K
Price per ShoutOut: $20

3) Facebook: Group Sharing

I create a new Facebook account, choose a profile picture, add personal information and add some friends to make an account look nice. For example, this is a profile created for sharing World of Harry posts : https://www.facebook.com/carlos.payne.98

After the profile is created I join different popular niche related groups: for Harry for instance I choose fan groups such as Harry Potter Hogwarts wizard, Harry Potter fan etc. Twenty five – thirty groups are enough.

After your join requests are approved you can start sharing your posts in the chosen groups. I usually share posts created by my Social Rabbit plugin, because these posts already contain some comments, a site name, URL and hashtags. Or you can create a nice post on your FB fan page manually and then share it using your new Facebook account with groups you selected.

4) Pinterest: Follow Liker

Pinterest account of World of Harry is mostly promoted by Follow Liker. This program promotes your account by auto-scraping users and pins, likes, user following and unfollowing. You can get it here: FollowLiker - Best Pinterest Bot & Pinterest Marketing Automation Software - Follow Liker. After buying you will be able to download the user’s guide.

5) Twitter: Twidium

Twitter account of World of Harry is promoted by Twidium Twitter Edition. This program mainly serves for auto-following and unfollowing Twitter accounts. You can get it here: https://twidiumapp.com/index.shtml. Read the instruction carefully to make all necessary settings.

That's all.
 
It was not an easy trick but finally I have integrated Google Analytics in the Plugin. Now I can observe all my traffic stats without leaving my plugin admin area.

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I have re-developed importing option of the plugin. Now it looks more attractive and works very smoothly.

Check this short video and let me know if you have any ideas or recommendations.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rpz_8CrRcA&amp"]Alidropship Plugin - Importing option - YouTube[/ame]
 
I think the best products for dropshipping from AliExpress are cheap ones that cost $2-5 on Ali. In this case you can put x5 or even x10 markup. Besides it is easier to promote and sell such items. My daily stats for these products look like this:

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I want to warn and inform you about scam products (Aliexpress plugins) appeared on Internet time to time.

Recently one of forum members contacted me and reported that he was scammed by ecomlauncher.net.

I spent some time on research and found some interesting information about this product and its creator.

His name is Able Chika, a well-known fraud for me. Some time ago, he copied my AliPlugin and started selling as its own product. As a result I got many refund requests and spent much time on explaining people that they bought not AliPlugin but its poor copy from another seller.

I wrote several complaints and his aliengine was banned from Warrior forum, JVZoo and other marketplaces. Then he tried to sell his 'business' on Flippa and was suspended there as well: https://flippa.com/5807833-aliengine-io

I like a strong and healthy competition and I respect the hard work of other developers admiring their great products, but I have no respect for such people like this Chika.
 
I decided to expand my business and try some new interesting strategy - Single Product Store!

Meet my new site - Time Turner Necklace

I will describe briefly the main advantages of such sites and why I think this strategy can work great for me.

1. As you know I have about 20 dropshipping sites with many different products in various niches. For the last several months I have collected enough information to determine the best-selling products. Based on this data, now I am sure that these items are in high demand and I can create a dedicated site for each of them.

2. Such sites are easy to create and you can make them look very attractive.

3. I think it is much more easy to promote these sites with SEO and you can use keyword-rich domains.

4. I was not successful with paid ads, but in my opinion Google Adwords and social media ads will work much better with single product stores.

5. Besides I can apply the same proven strategies that successfully work with my other big sites.

6. Easy to do A/B testing comparing with stores with multiple products.
 
Sometimes instead of buying from Aliexpress I recommend checking some other marketplaces, at least ebay for getting the best deal.

For example I am selling this product for $59.99.

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And usually order it from AliExpress seller for $34.99.

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So, my profit was $25.

Recently I found the same product on eBay for only $12.36!

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So, my profit now is $47.63. Feel the difference.
 
I want to share with you one SEO recommendation. Probably most of you already know about such essentials, but I will remind:)

When you start your dropshipping store, first you need to figure out what products you’re going to dropship and what categories they will be divided into.

When that is decided you need to select proper keywords for your store main pages including product categories. These keywords should be incorporated into Categories names, URLs, H1 tags and meta-tags of the relevant pages.

For example, your keyword is “Harry Potter gifts”, here is how the page should look like:

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In fact you should pay special attention to URLs of your website – it’s a must to make them as much user-friendly as possible. Use common words that are well known to every user and avoid using special symbols.

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Next time I will tell you how to work with on-site SEO and organize your site content properly.
 
MikeAus said:
Quite well. Now I have more than 20 dropshipping stores which all are generating profit. This month I am going to release my dropshipping Plugin.
Click to expand...

Good work Mike, I've been procrastinating about starting up a Dropshipping site for the last you know 10, 30, or maybe its been like 5000 years now, either or I still haven't done it but I do enjoy watching your progress for some reason.

Keep up the good work.
 
MikeAus said:
Quite well. Now I have more than 20 dropshipping stores which all are generating profit. This month I am going to release my dropshipping Plugin.
Click to expand...
Hi Mike.. you have shared incredible amount and quality of information. When is the launch of the AliExpress Dropshipping Plugin expected? Can't wait for it.
 
sharpalien said:
Hi Mike.. you have shared incredible amount and quality of information. When is the launch of the AliExpress Dropshipping Plugin expected? Can't wait for it.
Click to expand...

This week I started beta-testing. So, I think it will be available very soon.
 
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