AliExpress Dropshipping : A Definitive Guide To Dropshipping During The COVID-19 Period
The world has been changing undoubtedly fast as a consequence of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy has also suffered. Even though some enterprises have struggled through this hard time, as a result of which many companies have filed for bankruptcy and factories had been shut down, also some brands laid-off employees to cut down the operation costs.
During quarantine time, people have realized how it is important to have a steady job or a part-time business with stable income which would make it easier for them to go through a tough time.
There’s no doubt that it’s a great chance to start your own business as your formal work or just a part-time job with no/limited budget.
1. Why AliExpress dropshipping is the first choice to start an e-commerce business?
1). How dropshipping works?
Dropshipping is an order fulfillment model which allows entrepreneurs to start an online store without considering stock inventory, the store sells the product, and delivers the sales order to a third-party supplier, usually to wholesalers, who then ship their products to the customers’ home directly.
2). Benefits and drawbacks of dropshipping
benefits
minimize startup risks
As a startup personal retailer, you don’t need to invest too much money or register a company at first, the cost of trail and effort is much lower, even if the trend changes, you can also change direction, which means your business is less susceptible to loss of revenue.
lower costs
Lower product, storage, and logistics costs. New products are less expensive to launch because they don’t require any money before they can be sold, there’s no need for you to find a storage facility to store your products as well.
easy to operate
Easily start a business only by yourself, you can choose anywhere you like only if there has a network.
drawbacks
need a strong personal ability
Skills will never be a burden if you run the store on your own. You may have to edit videos, advertising, and contact with customers from different countries.
contact with different suppliers
Supplier is an important part because you couldn’t only put one or two products on your store shelf, you might have to deal with several suppliers, and the source of commodities might not be stable.
cargo freight
Although you may promise a free ship to your customer, the supplier would not always offer a free ship for you, so you have to take it into account.
Anyway, contrary to popular thoughts, dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick pattern. However, there still has a great number of people making big splashes through the dropshipping model. As a low-risk business model, dropshipping minimizes startup risks and costs while offering practicality and convenience, it’s still a great e-commerce way for you to start.
3). Is dropshipping still profitable in 2020?
As Google trends shows above, the word “dropshipping” has really popularized in Europea and The United States since 2015, and it has been getting more popular in the last few months. It looks like a little bit strange because, with the continued worldwide spread of coronavirus, many countries had been lockdown, the factory closed, which did a great impact on dropshipping stores, meanwhile, many products had been delayed. But why the “dropshipping” has become more popular? One of the reasonable conjectures is many people find that it’s still a lucrative opportunity to start dropshipping, obviously, most of them are getting on board. Of course, if you use the mode which I am going to talk about next, you, as an early mover, are going to seize the best chance.
4). benefits of AliExpress dropshipping
AliExpress has all the benefits of dropshipping mentioned above, besides, there are some more advantages.
-No financial requirements before starting
-Can purchase in bulk straight from the manufacturer
-AliExpress’s vendors provide tons of different items from which you can select to sell
-You can find a relatively low price on AliExpress so that you can mark the purchase price of products, while still keeping the price low for customers
2. Pluses and minuses of Shopify operation?
Compared to other platforms such as Magento, WordPress, Shopify is quite simple and easy to get started, it’s friendly to individuals and small-scale sellers, it’s ok if you don’t have any knowledge of writing code, merchants could set up their own online shops by using various templates which have been worked out, and new users also could get 14-day for free trail, besides, without any restriction, you are freedom on your store, all your customers are yours, therefore it’s good to build your own brand.
Another benefit of Shopify is, it has combined with many practical extensions. Shopify, now, can be well bound with Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Google shipping, that is to say, for example, syncing your Shopify product to Facebook, or importing your products through AliExpress to Shopify only need a simple step.
One of the minuses of Shopify is you need to pay for monthly rental fees, transaction fees, and other spendings, such as specific theme or domain. Another one is that it could be hard for you to drive traffic to your store at first. It’s good to establish your own brand, and it could be very difficult instead.
3. Perfect pattern of AliExpress dropshipping and Shopify
Having been considered the most common pattern of dropshipping, “AliExpress suppliers+Shopify stores+Facebook ads” mode is very popular among drop shippers. That is to say, selecting products and suppliers on AliExpress, building your e-store on Shopify and advertising on Facebook to promote your products.
To be honest, the competition will be stiffer because there are a lot of competitors are going to the front. The good news is the market is not fully saturated, you still have a chance to stand out.
4. How to use AliExpress to start your Shopify dropshipping(guide)
1). opening process
If you have read the steps above carefully, I think you may have a clear understanding of the process of opening a store. The main procedure is to select specific categories and suppliers, set up your Shopify Store, and launch your products. In the beginning, you can build your brand’s official account on different social media instead of advertising aimlessly. When you receive the sales order, tell the supplier to ship your product.
2).start your Shopify business through FindNiche
Finding winning products is the core of your business, a good product could make you get twice the result with half the effort. The dimensions of how to find your niches are many, including price, quality, logistics timeliness, supply stability, payment method, etc.
choose your familiar category to start
Big categories have a bigger market, however, you’d better not be blind when selecting, because it also means the more fierce competition, you will face more competitors and challenges. You can choose the field you are familiar with in a large category which offers a great supply of goods in this field. For example, if you have no idea about auto parts, you have to re-learn all the models, specifications, and value configurations of auto parts. If you force yourself to engage in this industry, it will be difficult to sell the products.
If you don’t know how to choose, you can log in to AliExpress to see what categories it has, which may inspire you. Here I would highly recommend you a great niche spy tool called Find Niche, the categories of which are the same as on AliExpress, besides, it’s much powerful with many filtering functions, you can select popular countries, source countries, total orders, or price as a filter condition, which is incredibly powerful.
find niches and suppliers
Being a successful e-commerce professional doesn’t mean always trying something new, or special, sometimes it means trying something proven, you can understand it as trying to duplicate others’ successes.
If you were a beginner, you don’t know the market trends, then you would not go wrong by following others’ step, Find Niche offers you the most popular products that others are selling.
For example, if I am going to sell handbags, when I check out the hottest niches on FindNiche, I find this one, the order quantity is large, and it has a certain great margin.
When I look at the details page of this product. I can see much relevant information.
It can also link to the certain supplier’s AliExpress page if I want to put this one on my store shelf, it’s convenient.
Besides, it shows Shopify stores that are selling this product.
Before you launch your products from AliExpress, remember analyzing how top Shopify store runs, you can find your Shopify competitors and top Shopify store on FindNiche, learn from them, it doesn’t mean copy their stores, but at first, you can imitate their store designs, product categories, and store settings, investigating which of commodities are promotion or high margin products, which platform they drive their traffic most. So when you build your store, you can take fewer detours, save more time, and get closer to success.
3). advertising
As I mentioned above, it would be better for you to build your store’s official account on popular social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube in the first place. Then choose several key media to promote your products. Driving traffic to your store is also a big task for you to study.
Luckily, we have posted a blog that may give you some inspirations. I‘ll not repeat it here.
By the way, if you do Facebook advertising, there is a great chrome extension of Facebook I have to recommend you, it is free but fantastic! (AdLibrary Helper)
Generally speaking, it takes time and hard work to start your business through this mode, because no one could just open a store, leave it behind and all products are sold out. These platforms and tools do help you feel convenient with the e-commerce business, but as a shop owner or ready to be a one, I highly suggest you study the operation of the internet marketing basically and thoroughly, as well as the promotion of stores and SEO job, you couldn’t just sit and wait for the money to come to you. Go into action right away!
