My Dropshipping Journey 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:



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:



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:



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!

 

hello yaros, i have read your threads on several forums and i'm loving what i see and learn from you.
i am talking to some people now to help me make my estore but i'm scared about the legal side of all this.
i am from Latvia(europe) and my primary buyers would be from USA. should i make a legal company with company credit card etc. or just open a store with my private paypal and privat credit cards?

 

Big THANK YOU Yaros for taking your time to help us out and make us avoid delays/deception/and bad choices. You're a Trooper.
Cheers
AL

 

I think you should review your country laws first. In my country I need a company if I am going to accept payments from credit cards. But when I started with PayPal only I was acting like individual.

 

Hi Yaros!

Great forum you got going, super helpful tips! I have a question, well a few lol. First, in regards to the ShoutOuts, what terms and prices have you found to be the most fair? or just fair overall. I recently started my own drop shipping page, (my niche is jewelry, but after reading all your tips it might still be too broad :/ ). I created my site on Shopify, and just added some products manually, just to experiment. However, considering that adding products manually takes toooooo loooong. I have been considering the Aliexpress plugin (https://apps.shopify.com/ali) but like you and someone else mentioned before it is pretty pricey, especially now since I'm just starting out. Do you recommend for me to switch to WP instead? (Though, I have put in some work on my site if WP can offer an efficient way for my products to be uploaded automatically like your site then the switch will totally be worth it!) this is my site by the way http://jeweledempire.com please tell me what you think! would totally appreciate it! thanks!!!

 

The most popular groups in my niche cost $10-20 per shoutout.

AliImporter plugin that comes with Shopify is a good one but you will ned to pay $30/month for Shopify and another $30/month for this extension. But I don't know any other solutions. Hope to launch my plugin soon.

 

Thanks Yaros! I'll add you in Skype if you don't mind, to keep up to date about your plugin release, ty.

 

Hi mate. Just a quick question (I dunno if you answer it already, as I didn't read the entire thread):
How do you charge credit cards, especially from US, how do you pay your dropshippers and how do you handle refunds (if any)?

Thanks. I'd really appreciate if you coud answer those.

 

I accept only PayPal on my sites now.
AliExpress has a good protection system with full money back guarantee. So, if your customer is not satisfied with a product and asking for refund you should dispute the purchase with AliExpress seller. If you are selling not expensive products your AliExpress suppliers usually refund you quickly without having to return the items because they don't want the headache of disputes and receiving returns for relatively low value items. This enables you to give a full or partial refund to your customer through PayPal without them having returns either.

 

Stats for February:

WorldOfHarry.com

Traffic:



Income:

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

Most sales came from organic and social traffic.

EmpireNeedsYou.com



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

Most sales came from Instagram shoutouts.

kSort.com



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

Most sales came from social media traffic.

 

Superb!!!

 

Hello, for those using Shopify stores, do you access the funds the customer sends and use it to buy the products from the supplier? If so, which payment processor are you using on your store?

 

hi can you explain me the following:
I understand you use the aliplugin from alipartnership. But with this plugin it generates product and category pages with a buy button that redirects to alixpress.
As the ali mobile site really sucks, and ask for signup the moment they click on buy on my site, i would be interested to know how you integrated your own checkout, and /or what sotware you use for the ecommerce part.

 

unless you are in US, Canada, and one more country I dont remember , Shopify does not worth it.

You will pay monthly 25USD min for shopify + 2 percent of your "Total" sales on each transaction + 2-5% to your gateway (paypal3% , other gateways based on their policies) .
You can not pay to aliexpress for purchases by Paypal. So you need to anyway put some money aside for your purchases.

Other gateways also may have different policies on funding your earnings to your card. This may trigger another charges. If you want to dropship, and be competitive, forget about Shopify.

Go for Woo commerce or opencart.

 

My vote goes to opencart also. And of course, the OP script looks promissing too.

As a paid script, I'll go with CS-Cart.

Any yes, you can pay on Aliexpress with PayPal. I did it multiple times.

 

I have a few questions, and suggestions. First off to make sure i'm understanding this. I'll explain the process how i'm understanding it in my mind then put the things i'm unsure about in bold, then add my personal suggestions on marketing benefits this site has.

-You make a WP site (Is this a paid theme, or do you code it?)

-You buy aliexpress drop shipping plug in

-You hand pick items to import to your site (comes with pics, descriptions, ect)

-You change the prices from your word press or the plug in? (How do you determine mark ups?)

-You buy the items from ali express with your credit card after customers purchase from your site and then they send to customers

-When purchasing with your credit card you insert their address and shipping details?

- Do you have to find items that allow a MOQ of 1 order to put on your site?
( what if someone orders 1 bracelet, i could be wrong but i always thought there was a MOQ on these types of sites)

- The customer receives their package from China in roughly 30 days time, (Whats your experience with shipping times thus far? Any complaints?)

- Does the packaging have your label on it? Does it look like triple wrapped boxes with a million labels on it when it arrives to your customer with foreign lettering?

Im sure ill think of more questions or forgot to mention some but now on to suggestions
-If you are using a credit card to purchase the items, try getting the CC with the best travel benefits. I know some where if you spend up to 3k per month you get lots of airline miles
-Social Media marketing is your friend, i'm a very good marketer and think we could help each other a great deal (We can email or message for details, tho i've already messaged you on instagram)

Legality
Do you run all your drop shipping sites and ventures under one solid LLC or something of this sort?
Does the risk of selling counterfeit goods run in your mind?

Anyways, please let me know!

 

Hi Yaros,
So much in love with your trend and it is full of information. i took my time to read from the beginning and there is no scrap in any. There is fortune in this niche (drop shopping).
It won't be a bad idea if you can come up with video series of how to setup the eCommerce from scratch which will definitely go for a token (another source of income). You will agree with me that there is a lot of grey areas where people need an answer.

 

AliPlugin from AliPartnership is for building affiliate sites only, not dropshipping ones. For my website I use another plugin, however it is based on AliPlugin structure.

 

- Yes, I am using WP and the theme that I developed myself from scratch.
- I am using my own solution - WP Dropship Plugin.
- Yes, my plugin is based on AliExpress API, so it searches, imports and updates products from Ali automatically.
- Yes, I change prices on my own site and my markup formula is: $0<x<$1=7.95|1<x<2=8.99|2<x<5=9.95|5<x<30=x*2|30<x<50=x*1.75|50<x<100=x*1.5|x>100=x*1.35.
- Yes, after a customer made a purchase on my site, I go to Ali and place the order using the shipping details of my client.
- The delivery time is from 7 to 30 days generally. My main strategy now is to take not expensive products and with free shipping option only. In this case customers are more willing to wait longer. So I don't get many complaints.
- 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 adress 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!
- I run my sites under my company (LLC). Have not got yet any copyright issues but there are risks of course.

 

HI, I have followed your journey with aliexpress. I have been dropshipping with them for 6 months now. But a different path. With ebay. But I want to expand to different things and I think owning a site is a safer way to do it. You can control a lot of aspects. I am interested in the plugin and wp theme. Can we discuss more? I left my e-mail address on skype.