My Dropshipping Journey with AliExpress

As I have already mentioned, I am doing it on my own risk. I have not got any issues so far, but anything can happen.

 

I am trying to avoid such items, however have some. Actually there were no much complaints and refunds, may be 3-5 times only.

 

How long does it take for paypal to transfer money to your account? For example on my account it takes a week to transfer it.

 

it takes 1-2 days on my PayPal account.

 

First of all I want to thank Yaros for giving me the chance to become one of beta tester for Alidropship plugin.

Now back to business, I’ve received plugin around 3 weeks ago and start my journey as a total newbie.
I know that aliexpress is a huge marketplace, but I have never buy any items from their website. Inspired by Yaros success story I told my self “screw it let’s do it”. For couple of days I’ve tried to identify best niche for my first dropshipping business. I decided to go with pokemon stuff, a lot of buzz and great amount of stuff available on aliexpress, but hard to promote.

Alidropship plugin is extremely straight forward, starting from the installation process to adding new products. Each step has been detailed described and can be easily find in Alidropship Knowledge Center. Provided Theme is pre populated with a default categories, so your only task is to adjust to your needs. Big Pros for that. One downsize is that this plugin works only with one theme, but I hope this will change in the near future.

Most difficult item is to promote website across different platforms, SEO, social media. But same in this case Yaros has great articles which can help you start.

At the moment I have officially started to promote my web store and try to gain traffic. I know that it still need a lot of improvements, especially seo aspect, but given the fact that Yaros continuously improve Knowledge Center hope this will resolve a lot of my concerns and point me to the right direction.

If you will finds some time, check out me website here shopofpokemon.com. I will be more than happy if you could share any comments feedback what would you change, improve.

Thank you

 

@purbanp
Only my insights.
1. Yellow color looks too bright.
2. Change your products URLs. They are too long
3. Edit pictures, you have many with Chinese Hieroglyphs

 

Yaros,

I'd like to know if this is possible with the plugin or with wordpress. :

When a customer comes to the webshop, they get a sort of popup that advertises an item for 0 $ + shipping.
If they would like this item, that they have the option to add this to the basket.

==> So can I get a popup on the webshop advertising 1 free item + shipping ?

If so, how can I manage this with the plugin? or with another wordpress plugin ?

Thanks in advance

 

Can I also get beta of the plugin? And thanks for great case study in detail here.

 

It's really cool that you made Harry Potter's fan store. Love the idea! And it's really nice of you to share your journey and help others.

I wanted to ask if you have also registered your online store as a company?
Is it necessary to register a company if you are just starting out?

Thanks!

 

You don't need a company to start such a store and can use your personal PayPal account.

 

Hi Yaros,
I have read about buying product for your client via your own affiliate link, so you have "another" web which promote that product or all products that are in your Harry Potter's fan store, am i right?

 

No, it is not another web, you just need to register with AliExpress affiliate program and set your affiliate link in plugin settings.

 

Hi Yaros,
I want to thank you for sharing your valuable experience on this thread, it has been so inspiring!

As I have just make my first step in dropshipping, I have some questions I want to ask:
1. I've found that not all aliexpress free shipping method can be tracked (tracking not available, or only can be tracked locally while in China). What is your solution for this problem? How you explain to your customer?
2. In case of refund, How you send the money back to your customer if they dont have a paypal account (they buy from your store with credit card)?
3. How you handle a returns from customer? do they send to your address, or send directly to supplier in china ?

Many thanks!

 

Finally, I have finished my case study - Best dropshipping niches: how to rate and select them

It should be helpful for those who can't decide on a niche and have no idea how to do a research properly.

Later I will also provide with a list of hot niches selected with the help of these research strategies.

 

1. Use epacket shipping option - it's free or cheap, always offers tracking and rather fast.
2. I am using Stripe to accept payments from credit cards and I can easily issue refunds through my Stripe account.
3. 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. The reputation of the wholesaler is rather exposed and they are willing to do anything to maintain their feedback rating.

 

There are several important points you need to research before making up your mind on any certain niche of your dropshipping business. While it is crucial to research the competition in the niche you prefer, it is worth mentioning that you shouldn’t go for the least competitive one. Niches with no competition most likely will bring no profit.

In order to make the niche evaluation easier for you, I made a scale that will help you decide which niche has more potential in terms of SEO, and which one is almost impossible to squeeze in.

Check my new case study: Choosing a dropshipping niche: evaluating SEO aspect

 

Hi Yaros,

1. About shipping option, what if you get order from customer living in country where epacket shipping is not available, and tracking information is not available too? Do you have to inform them that they cannot track their order, and just wait until it arrive ?

2. I have read on some other thread about Aliexpress dropshipping, where Aliexpress suddenly cancel / closed orders for security reason, and have to contact Aliexpress customer services or security team, and need to provide them some information like copy of license ID / credit card or whatever documentation needed.. For example: I have 100 orders in a day, process all of them and paid with credit card, then Aliexpress canceled 90 orders, saying that "Your payment was not processed due to security reasons. As a result your order has been cancelled". Then I have to contact customer services and provide them with documents and wait for 1-2 days or more until I can start buying from Aliexpress again.. Have you experience anything like this before? What is your advice on this problem ?

Thanks

 

1. Just wait until it arrives.

2. I don't have such issues. Just connect your credit card to AliPay system before placing orders.

 

Why would people buy products at 200% markup in USA from our dropship website when same product can be found on eBay at same or less price compared to Aliexpress. I have checked few products and prices on ebay are more competitive that AliExpress.

 

In eCommerce, you will never be the cheapest but you can be better. First of all, better marketing execution which reaches the potential customer first.