AliExpress to eBay Dropshipping – The Complete Guide

If you are looking to start an eBay dropshipping business, then you have likely looked at using AliExpress as your supplier. The following guide will touch on all the important information that you need to know before you start your AliExpress dropshipping business journey, as well as a useful guide to get you started.

 

how to dropship from aliexpress to eBay

 

NOTE: This guide has been updated to be relevant as at Feb 2024

Key Takeaways

  • ✔ Mastering eBay dropshipping with AliExpress involves setting up your eBay store, sourcing products wisely, and managing listings effectively.
  • ✔ Align your store policies with AliExpress terms and optimize your payment options for seamless transactions.
  • ✔ Efficient order fulfillment and understanding the intricacies of international shipping are key to providing excellent customer service.

 

Watch: A Step by step guide on AliExpress to eBay in 2024

Before You Get Started

Before embarking on your AliExpress dropshipping journey, familiarize yourself with eBay’s platform and AliExpress’s supplier terms. Ensure you have a solid understanding of international shipping processes and are ready to navigate the nuances of managing an online store.

 

1. Get your eBay store ready

To get started, we need to get our eBay store set up. Your first step here is to open up your account on eBay, and then select the “selling” option in the “my eBay” tab.

 

To proceed, you will need to provide your name, location and other contact details so that eBay can verify your account.

NOTE: If you have been using a regular eBay account prior to this, it is always best to use this account to sell with to leverage your existing feedback. This will help increase your conversion rate as buyers will see you as more trustworthy.

While there are associated fees, we always recommend opening up an eBay store if it is in your budget. This is important as it allows you to get access to cheaper seller fees, and increases the amount of products that you can list – especially when starting out.

 

2. Set up managed payments

NOTE: As at time of this update in 2024, eBay no longer uses Paypal as a payment processor. This has been the case since 2021. eBay now only allows eBay managed payments, which means that your fees and payments are all handled by the same account.

If you are a dropshipper, who runs more than 1 store and you found this verification process tedious. You can rest easy knowing that you can still use the same Payoneer account for multiple stores.

The next important step is to set up your payment processor so that eBay can process funds on your behalf, charge you fees and pay you for your sales that you make on the platform.

Payoneer is the processor of choice in this scenario. Linking your Payoneer account to eBay managed payments is simple.

Payoneer is an eBay partner, so the integration is seamless. Once you apply for managed payments, eBay will send you an email to link your Payoneer account. You simply need to follow the prompts and you will be up and running in no time.

 

3. Set up your store policies for Ali Express Dropshipping

The next important step is to get your store policies ready, and have them mirror the terms that you see on AliExpress. As the eBay dropshipping model is scruitinized by eBay policy, using Ali Express as your supplier can cause some issues due to AliExpress being considered another “marketplace”.

Therefore, we need to do all of the things we can to keep our store safe. This includes using store policies that set the customers expectations right, to match the shipping times, payment policies and returns policies of AliExpress.

 

store policies

 

To get started, open up the “business policies” page in your eBay store and “Opt In”. You then simply hit “get started” and you are on your way.

business policy

You are now able to create your various eBay business policies for your online store.

 

Returns Policy

First we set up the returns policy. This policy will need to be specific to AliExpress supplier terms, so we can name it something like “Return Policy for AliExpress”.

returns policy

The way that you set this up is dependant on your risk tolerance. Having a longer return period is a ranking factor on eBay, and also helps instil buyer confidence in purchasing your product which improves conversion rates.

That said, there is a lot of risk to having a longer return period, especially with AliExpress which has a 15 day period for disputes once the product is delivered.

We recommend setting a 30 day refund period, and requesting for photographic proof of the issues, as well as a description of why the customer wants a refund. This way, if there is a fault with the product, you can always reach out to your supplier on AliExpress, and try to recoup some of your money.

Most AliExpress suppliers are easy to work with and will work with you to get to a reasonable solution.

 

Shipping Policy

Your shipping policy again will need to reflect that of your supplier on AliExpress. Being a successful eBay seller means that your policies need to be air tight to match your buyers expectations.

One of the issues with using AliExpress as a supplier is that most of their warehouses are based overseas. This means that your shipping policy will need to reflect the delays experienced with international shipping.

A great way around this is to select the warehouse location on AliExpress to match the country that your store is located in. This will give you more favorable shipping times and gets around the issue of delays due to international shipping.

 

shipping policy

 

Payment Policy

Your payment policy does not depend on the supplier that you are using. It is just a business decision on how you want to get paid by your customers.

For this step, you simply log in and name your policy “payment policy” or similar. You can then go through and select the payment options that you are comfortable accepting.

Be sure to set this as your default payment policy, and select the main payment provider that you are using. Be sure to set up “require immediate payment” as an option.

This is done when the buyer pays with “buy now” and it reduces the admin work of having to chase up the customer for payment if they don’t complete the transaction in the one go.

 

4. Sourcing your products from AliExpress.

The next part is to source your dropshipping products for your Aliexpress to eBay dropshipping store. This is the part that most eBay sellers and dropshippers enjoy, as this is where you make your money!

To do this with confidence, we use ZIK Analytics.- an eBay dropshipping tool that allows you to easily find profitable products to sell on eBay.

You can sign up for a 7 day trail below

 

zik analytics trial

 

To get started, we jump into the “product research” tab in ZIK analytics, and set our shipping location to China. Our goal here is to find other eBay dropshippers who are running a successful eBay dropshipping business, and to mirror their best selling products by listing the exact same product or similar aliexpress products in our store.

To do this, we search for a broad niche, in this example we search for “men watch”

men watch

 

PRO TIP: We search for “men watch” instead of “mens watch” as sometimes international dropshippers can miss spell words, so it allows us to discover a few untapped dropshippers stores that we otherwise might not find using the correct spelling.

ZIK gives you the first 100 listings on eBay. To get information on these sellers, we select all, and hit “ZIK Selection”

zik selection

 

ZIK pulls in all the information from eBay, and gives you the statistics for the last 30 days. What we want to look at here is the list of dropshipping products, where you can see the various AliExpress sellers, their feedback, where they come from and other important seller metrics.

One way that we are able to identify other dropshippers is by looking at the country that they are located. We find that (in general) a lot of dropshippers live in Lithuania and Israel.

So it is always good to scan these stores to see if you are able to identify another dropshipper. Once we find one that we like, we go ahead and hit the “scan seller” icon.

 

scan seller

 

This allows you to gather all the information about this dropshipper. From doing this, we can see their stores overall statistics, and calculate their monthly income.

We can find products to target by looking at their successful listings that have at least 5 monthly sales and no more than 10 competitors.

Once we find a product that meets our criteria, we simply click on the title inside of ZIK Analytics and it will open up their eBay store where we can get more information about their listing.

We can get information about where the item is located, what kind of shipping terms they offer. If we decide that we like the listing, we can go back into ZIK and select the option to “add supplier product manually” and “search for the product on Ali Express”.

 

add supplier

 

From here, we want to find a reliable supplier who has good feedback and has been around for a long time. You can also look at their detailed seller rating. We recommend looking at dropshipping suppliers who are 4.5 or above.

Once we select a supplier, we can look at all the important information such as the aliexpress product cost, the shipping methods offered, the shipping speed and shipping cost.

Our next step is to calculate your profit.

 

How to calculate profit when Dropshipping from Aliexpress to eBay?

This part is extremely important in being profitable. You need to get your numbers down to the cent, because a miss calculation could result in you doing all the work for none of the reward.

To be accurate, we like to use the ZIK Analytics eBay Calculator here, however if you want to do it manually you can follow the following calculations.

Dropshipping Profit = Sale Price*Fee Modifier – Listing Fee – Purchase Price – Shipping Price

Where:

Sale Price = $7.90 (From what other sellers are listing for)

Fee Modifier = 0.86 (This is a constant that we use which deducts 14% from our selling price to account for eBay and Payment Processor fees)

Listing Fee = $0.30 (eBay standard listing fee)

Purchase Price = $2.20 (per the listing on the AliExpress)

Shipping Cost = $0.77 (Supplier shipping fee on AliExpress)

We come out with a profit of $3.52 when dropshipping from aliexpress to eBay which may seem like a small profit, but when you do this with enough products that are selling multiple times a day on eBay, the profits really stack up!

 

5. Listing your AliExpress products on eBay

The next step is to create your eBay listing with your profitable aliexpress items. To do this, we are only going to touch on the most important elements of the dropshipping process on this guide.

If you want to know how to sell on eBay as a beginner you can view this guide.

In our guide, we get very detailed as to what you need to do to start selling, and listing products on eBay. However, if you want to know how cover most of the important steps, we will touch on them below.

In this example, we will be listing a PS4 remote control.

 

Creating your eBay Listing

First we need to create the actual listing. To do this, we visit the “sell” tab on the top of your eBay shop, and you simply let eBay know “what you are selling”.

You can enter in a broad search of your product, including the colour and the model and then eBay will bring up similar listings. We enter in “PS4 Remote Control”

listing a product

 

Find something close to what you are selling, paying attention to the color, model and other item specifics. If you have this correct, you can select it and then edit the title.

PRO TIP: If you are not quite sure how to build eBay titles that rank, you can check out our eBay title builder tool here.

We recommend building a title that uses as many high traffic and common keywords as your competitors who are ranking. This will allow your listing to show up on eBays search more often, giving you more exposure to potential buyers.

You also want to make sure that you add several images, making sure that your main image is as unique as possible. This allows you to stand out from other sellers, which will increase your click through rate.

Also fill out your item condition and any other information that they ask for.

 

Fill out your listing information

To fully optimize your listing, you need to completely flesh out your eBay listing so that it can rank higher on eBay. Here are a few items that we recommend focusing on:

  • Title and subtitle
  • Description
  • Categories
  • Photos
  • Item Specifics
  • Variations
  • Shipping and returns policies (Including various shipping costs if you have multiple options)

Making a conscious effort to fully flesh out these items will go a long way to feeding eBay the important information that they use to help rank your listings.

 

6. Fulfilling your orders from AliExpress

So you’ve sold your first item!

Now comes the part where you have to actually fulfil the order and send the product to your eBay buyers.

This part of the process is fairly simple, but it is something that a lot of dropshippers stumble on. The worry is that buyers will get their information, or will know that they are dropshipping the product due to the labelling on the package.

Below is how we navigate the order fulfilment when dropshipping from aliexpress to eBay.

The first step is to simply find the item that you have sold on AliExpress, and add it to cart. Once we are in our cart, we will fill out the details as though we are ordering the item for ourselves, however we will add the customers details into AliExpress instead of ours.

PRO TIP: Look at all the shipping options, making sure to select the quickest option at the most reasonable price.

We want to make sure that we add all of the customers details directly into the shipping address, and no information of ours is present. We do this by selecting “add new address” and then filling out the details accordingly.

 

adding customer information

 

Worried that the package will be shipped showing the lower price of the dropshipping product? Simply “leave a message” to your supplier, letting them know that this is a dropshipping product and that you don’t want any pricing information included in the package.

 

leave message

This will let the person from AliExpress know that this is a drop shipped product and to keep any sensitive pricing information out of the package.

Finally, you will place your order and you are good to go!

Next, you can mark your item as shipped on eBay. Your supplier will give you your tracking details so you will be able to keep track of the item, ensuring it arrives to your customer.

Be sure to use a shipping policy that reflects the shipping time that this product will take to reach your customer. The item arriving on time plays a big impact on your seller rating, so this will need to be accurate.

 

What to Avoid Doing

  • ✘ Don’t overlook eBay’s selling policies and risk account suspension.
  • ✘ Avoid misaligning your store policies with those of AliExpress, which can lead to customer dissatisfaction.
  • ✘ Don’t underestimate the complexity of international shipping and customer service in dropshipping.

 

How to Prevent Potential Issues

  • ✔ Regularly review and align your policies with those of AliExpress and eBay to ensure compliance.
  • ✔ Stay informed about international shipping trends and update your shipping policies accordingly.
  • ✔ Prioritize customer service by efficiently managing order fulfillment and addressing customer queries promptly.

 

Final Thoughts

Drop shipping from Aliexpress to eBay, like any online business requires work. For many ecommerce business owners, the dropshipping business model is attractive because it allows you to live a lifestyle that affords you a lot more freedom than the traditional 9-5 job.

We truely believe that anyone who applies themselves will be able to make dropshipping from AliExpress to eBay a successful venture, if they are willing to stick through teething challenges that are faced with any new business.

 

FAQ’s

Is it safe to use AliExpress as my supplier?

According to eBays dropshipping policies, you have to be aware that there are risks when using AliExpress as your supplier. Ebays policy states that drop shipping from a wholesale supplier is generally allowed.

AliExpress however is not considered a wholesaler, but is another market place.

eBay explicitly states that this is not something that they allow. That being said, there are several members in the ZIK Analytics community who are doing this with massive success.

It is important to understand the risks before getting started, so that you can make an informed decision.

 

How do I place a dropship order on AliExpress?

To place a dropship order on AliExpress, you simply check out as you normally would, however you use your customers details in the purchase information. To ensure that the customer is not provided with any sensitive pricing information, always leave a note to your AliExpress supplier that this is a dropshipping order, and to keep any promotional or pricing information out of the order.

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