It’s been constantly listed as one of the best side hustles to help you generate a legitimate income source or as a profitable side hustle. So, you’ve finally decided to start your dropshipping business this year! It sounds too good to be true – a business idea requiring no upfront cost and inventory management.
You cannot pass up such a good opportunity.
But getting started is the hardest part about building an ecommerce store. It’s especially daunting if this is your first time engaging in dropshipping activity.
Finding the right platform is critical. But it’s only the start. If you’ve decided to build an Aliexpress dropshipping business, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you are a seasoned dropshipper or your first venture into dropshipping, you will want to use f the tips you can find here to ensure a successful dropshipping business.
Getting Started on Aliexpress
Since its founding in 2010, Aliexpress has become one of the most popular online marketplaces. It is owned by Alibaba, which is a China-based company. Today, Aliexpress ranks as one of the top ten ecommerce sites, with over 100 million products sold online. Aside from having a vast array of products, Alibaba is notable for its affordable price.
Aliexpress is based in China, meaning most of its suppliers and manufacturers are based overseas. It is part of the reason why most products are available at an affordable price range.
The vast majority of products at Aliexpress provide interested dropshippers access to a rich array of dropshipping products. The vast array of categories includes women’s clothing, jewelry, and consumer electronic products, to name a few. Therefore, Aliexpress is a popular choice for the best dropshipping suppliers. Aspiring Aliexpress sellers can source products for their ecommerce store, especially if they want to find the best selling products that will help them make a good profit.
If you’re trying to decide if Aliexpress dropshipping is a good option, it’s important to know how Aliexpress dropshipping works. You can learn why it’s a good option over other popular dropshipping platforms like Amazon and eBay. Get ready to up your ecommerce game with these tips on how to have a successful dropshipping business.
How Aliexpress Dropshipping Works
Does Aliexpress allow dropshipping products? Yes!
The dropshipping business model is ideal for anyone looking to build an ecommerce store in Aliexpress or those looking for the best Aliexpress suppliers for your online store.
Here is an overview of how Aliexpress dropshipping works:
- You find Aliexpress products to sell n your dropshipping stores.
- You develop a pricing strategy for your store to ensure you can make a profit per sale.
- When a customer orders from your online stores, you pay for the product at wholesale prices.
- The Aliexpress seller will ship the product to your customer, so you don’t have to handle the inventory and shipping yourself.
Many Aliexpress suppliers are retailers or Aliexpress sellers. But it is a well-known fact among Aliexpress users that many are resellers on the platform. The advantage to this is you can find the best suppliers for your Aliexpress dropshipping store with plenty of experience working with dropshippers. Therefore, they are willing to work with your needs to ensure a profitable dropshipping business.
Before you get into the process of choosing top dropshipping products from Aliexpress, let’s look at how you can start setting up your online store.
Step 1: Set Up Your Online Store
The first step to Aliexpress dropshipping is setting up your online store. Online store owners can choose from various ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, and WooCommerce. Research each ecommerce platform to determine the features of each and help you pick the best one to set up your ecommerce store.
Ideally, choose an online store platform that enables you to customize the store layout and branding. The goal is to set up a unique store from other sellers and deliver a positive shopping experience for your customers.
Step 2: Choose Dropshipping Products
Once your store is set up, you can begin the next step: looking for the best Aliexpress products for your store. You have many suppliers to choose from within Aliexpress across various product categories, so pick one according to your preferred niche.
Later, you will learn various strategies for doing market research to find the top selling products that are high in demand and low competition. Use it as the main criterion when picking products from Aliexpress.
Step 3: Import Products to Your Dropshipping Store
Once you have picked the top dropshipping products from Aliexpress, your next step is to import those products to your online store. You can manually import the products or use plugins for faster product integration. You can also use dropshipping apps that make integration faster and more seamless.
If you plan to important many products to your online store, it’s best to use these dropshipping apps to save time and effort. Automating the product import and integration requires just a few clicks.
Step 4: Product Pricing
Once you’ve built your product portfolio in your online store, you must come up with a product pricing strategy. The main reason why many dropshipping stores and owners choose Aliexpress is it offers lower prices than other suppliers and manufacturers. Sourcing products at lower prices gives you plenty of room to markup the price and still earn a decent profit.
To help with pricing your products, look at the competition. Assess the average pricing for the same products online so you have an idea of how much other sellers are selling it for, and compare that with the supplier’s price. You must strive for a balance between keeping your prices competitive and making sure you get enough profit for each sale.
Aside from the upfront cost of buying that product from the supplier, you must consider other fees, such as shipping and commission fees on Aliexpress. These factors help determine the final selling price for your products on Aliexpress.
Step 5: Order Fulfillment
The next step in the Aliexpress dropshipping method is order fulfillment. Since Aliexpress dropshipping sellers don’t manage their own inventory, the supplier is responsible for fulfilling and shipping the orders for your customers.
When a customer places an order through your online store, you will receive the payment for that order from your customer. You must purchase the corresponding product from your Aliexpress supplier, who will package and fulfill the order for your customers before shipping it to their address. Therefore, you won’t physically have access to the product since it is shipped directly from the supplier.
The order fulfillment process in Aliexpress dropshipping program shows the importance of picking the right suppliers. You must trust your supplier to choose high-quality products and to use good-quality packaging so that products are in good condition when the customers receive them.
Step 6: Shipping and Inventory Management
Like fulfilling orders, Aliexpress dropshipping suppliers are the ones to handle the shipping and inventory management for your products. It eliminates the hassle of running an online store so that business owners can focus on the core aspects of running their business: doing market research, marketing their products online, and providing customer service.
The lack of in-house inventory management is one benefit of Aliexpress dropshipping (or dropshipping, in general). You don’t have to incur additional costs for your products, such as storage rental.
Step 7: Building Your Dropshipping Brand
Providing excellent customer service is one of the best ways to build your online brand. To have a successful dropshipping business, you must prioritise customer service.
Since you are not dealing with order fulfillment and shipping, you can focus on delivering quality customer service by responding to customer queries promptly. You can use that time to develop effective marketing strategies and a positive customer shopping experience. These steps can help generate repeat business and boost referrals from word-of-mouth marketing.
How to Pick Good Aliexpress Products to Dropship
Dropshipping products are central to your dropshipping business. If you want to build a successful dropshipping business, you need good quality and trending products for which people are willing to pay.
Follow this guide on picking the best Aliexpress dropshipping products and suppliers for maximum profitability.
1. Check the Reviews
Like when you purchase a product, it is always a good practice to check the reviews before you buy it. Use this same approach when choosing Aliexpress products for dropshipping. The reviews provide valuable insight into the product’s quality and performance based on the feedback from the buyers who have used them.
Look for products with a review rating of 4.4 or higher. This rating indicates a positive experience among the majority of the customers and users. Therefore, it gives you confidence in choosing products from Aliexpress that will bring customer satisfaction when they purchase those products from you.
Spend time to read both positive and negative reviews. You need those insights to understand the products’ features and benefits comprehensively.
2. Look for Products from Reputable Sellers
If you want to boost your seller’s sales volume, you must pick the top selling products that reputable sellers have on their product portfolio. Competitor analysis ranks among the best techniques for a dropshipping venture since you can use it to identify the top selling products and determine the most competitive pricing.
But first, who are the reputable sellers on Aliexpress and other ecommerce platform? Look for sellers with a rating of 94% or higher. These sellers are the ones that have generated a lot of sales volume on their ecommerce store and have delivered a high level of customer satisfaction. Therefore, based on their history, these sellers will most likely generate positive customer service.
Additionally, it would be best if you spent time reading the buyer’s feedback. It will provide insight into the seller’s reliability, shipping times, and responsiveness to the customer’s needs. Buying from reputable sellers reduces the risk of getting counterfeit dropshipping products or ones made of low quality.
3. Choose Clear and Detailed Images of the Product
Many Aliexpress suppliers provide images of the products you add to your dropshipping stores. When you start dropshipping and searching for the best products to sell, always check the quality of the images the suppliers provide. Since you won’t be able to access the product in your inventory, you must rely on the products supplied to you when listing that product in your store.
Therefore, consider the quality and clarity of the product images when choosing which products to sell on your online store. Pick products with crisp, clear, and detailed images. The best Aliexpress dropshipping products feature the product at various angles. You must include numerous angles to make it easier for the potential buyers to inspect the product closely as if they are examining it in real life.
In addition, the quality of the product images shows professionalism. You want to portray yourself as a reputable dropshipper, so only use images of superior quality.
4. Read the Product Descriptions
Aside from the product images, it would be best if you also examined the product descriptions. As a buyer, you must pay the same due diligence in looking for essential product information, such as the material, size, specifications, and other crucial details. Therefore, choose products with comprehensive and detailed product descriptions.
Aim to provide accurate product descriptions, such as the product dimension, weight, color options, and additional features. Specifically, look into the material because it can directly impact the quality and durability of the product. Detailed product descriptions provide more insight into the product and its features so you can make an informed decision before adding it to your product lineup.
Best Practices for a Profitable Dropshipping Business
Making money with Aliexpress dropshipping is a dream of many, but only a select few live that dream. You must understand that simply setting up your store and listing products won’t guarantee that you’d make sales fast and consistently.
It requires three essential strategies and best practices to ensure a profitable Aliexpress dropshipping store.
1. Market Research
Market research is crucial in building a profitable business, whether dropshipping or reselling products online. Market research entails studying market dynamics to understand customers’ wants fully.
For this to happen, you must identify your target customers first. You have to create a customer profile and persona to determine the customer preferences and use that to predict their buying behaviors online. You can also create subgroups for your target customers, allowing you to understand their needs fully (and wants) and plan your marketing accordingly.
Another crucial part of market research is to analyze industry trends. Research the top selling products on leading platforms like Aliexpress and Amazon. Another way you can determine trending products is to look at competitors and see what products are selling fast. This approach to market research enables you to identify potentially profitable niches and the best products to sell. Determining the top product categories help you to narrow down your product selection.
Manual research can take time, and you might not have access to the needed data. Using product research tools like ZIK Analytics will help leverage your research capabilities and gain detailed insights for a data-driven decision.
For example, when you launch the ZIK Analytics tool, you can see the trending products from Aliexpress (for an eBay store). You can inspect these products closely to help gain insight into actual sales data that you can use to determine if they are profitable products to sell in your online store.
This product is a wireless Bluetooth earbud, one of the top-selling products on eBay. You can use that to explore this product category or niche on ZIK Analytics to find products you can source for your online store and determine if you can add them to your ecommerce business.
When you input the keyword wireless Bluetooth earbuds on the ZIK Analytics product research tool, it shows actual data for this product based on sales volume and performance. The sell-through rate is 6454%, with a total sales earning of $122,309 and a successful listing rate of 85%. The average product price is listed ($18.92), and you can use that to inform your decision about your own pricing strategy for this product.
2. Keyword Research
Keyword research is another essential aspect of running a successful dropshipping store. It involves identifying relevant keywords and phrases that you must incorporate into your title and product descriptions to optimize them for search engines and boost organic traffic to your listings. The more visible your listings, the higher the possibility that you can attract more customers to buy from your store.
Keyword research provides insight into what customers use to find specific products in an ecommerce marketplace. Therefore, you can craft your listing title and product descriptions to target those keywords and align them to what your customers are looking for.
Using the same example above, you can use the Title Builder feature on the ZIK Analytics product research tool. The keyword research tool provides you with a list of generic keywords and long tail keywords to incorporate into your listings.
Ideally, you must add a mix of generic and long-tail keywords for maximum visibility in organic search traffic. When choosing your keywords, look at the average searches and level of competition. Those details are supplied for you in the ZIK Analytics tool,, so incorporate them into your product listing.
3. Find the Best Suppliers
The choice of suppliers can make or break your dropshipping store. You must spend a great deal of time researching the best Aliexpress suppliers to ensure they offer superior quality products, timely shipping, and good customer service. A reliable supplier can create a positive shopping experience for your customers, while one that fails to do that can negatively impact your seller’s performance online.
Choose suppliers with a positive review and high rating, especially from fellow dropshippers. You want a proven supplier as it is directly linked to your reputation as an online dropshipper. Otherwise, they could be the downfall of your business.
Finding the Best Aliexpress Dropshipping Suppliers
Aliexpress dropshipping is tricky because you can’t access the products you sell. Therefore, you must trust that you have chosen the right supplier to provide superior quality products for your customers, as they are shipped directly from overseas manufacturers and suppliers. As an entrepreneur, this business model is tricky because you have no way to do quality control on the products before they are shipped.
The best way to navigate this challenge is to vet your dropshipping suppliers on Aliexpress carefully. These are the top tips to consider when choosing a supplier to help you achieve a profitable online business.
Don’t settle for the suppliers that offer the lowest price.
While Aliexpress is known for its affordability, don’t fall into the trap of choosing products solely on their price tag. Every dropshipping business owner must focus on quality first; otherwise, concentrating on finding the lowest prices can cause the quality of products in the marketplace to go down. These are called artificially reducing prices to stay competitive.
You would not want to work with these suppliers because it could lower your customer satisfaction level and deny you the chance to build a sustainably profitable business.
Keep an eye out for suppliers selling fake products.
Your reputation as an online store owner could take a hard hit if your customers discover you sell them counterfeit products. Since you cannot physically inspect the product, you must be more careful in researching the supplier and looking at buyer reviews and feedback.
If possible, avoid buying branded products on Aliexpress, especially those listed at affordable prices. While it does not mean that all branded products on Aliexpress are fake, they are scarce to find.
Choose suppliers with a higher feedback rating (90% or higher).
A positive feedback rating reflects the supplier’s reputation on Aliexpress. But aside from the quantitative rating, examine the qualitative feedback from previous customers.
Ask for product samples.
The best way to determine the quality of suppliers on Aliexpress and their products is to ask for a product sample. Not all suppliers will agree to it, but it can be an excellent opportunity to evaluate the product quality and make an informed decision before you choose them as a supplier.
Another reason for directly contacting the supplier is to have the chance to assess how responsive they are.
A supplier’s responsiveness is essential because you want to communicate with them when running your dropshipping stores openly. Cross off any suppliers that give you generic responses; focus on suppliers prioritising your business and treating it like their own.
Final Thoughts: Is Aliexpress Dropshipping Business Worth It?
The Aliexpress dropshipping model is a low-cost and low-risk business opportunity. Unlike a traditional retail store, it won’t require any upfront cost or inventory, making it a good business idea for anyone looking for ones with low to no capital requirements.
But running an Aliexpress dropshipping store does not come without challenges. Product selection and choosing a good supplier are among the top priorities for success. It is a highly competitive selling environment, so you must develop a competitive pricing strategy and continue adapting to the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape.
The only way to ensure success and profitability with this business model is to do careful planning and strategic decision-making. It also helps to remain flexible and adaptable if you’re committed to gaining a competitive advantage and sustainable long-term success.
FAQs
Is it worth dropshipping with AliExpress?
Yes. Aliexpress dropshipping is a profitable business model. Aliexpress is one of the best ecommerce platforms since you can find many Aliexpress suppliers at lower prices or wholesale prices for the same products you would find on other platforms.
However, knowing whether Aliexpress dropshipping is your best option depends on your ecommerce goals. Take time to compare Aliexpress with other platforms, especially when searching for the best dropshipping suppliers.
Can you use AliExpress for Amazon dropshipping?
Yes. You can find many suppliers on Aliexpress to source products for your Amazon online store. Importing products and integrating your Aliexpress account with Amazon is possible since the former is known for its wholesale prices that enable dropshippers to maximize their profit margin.
It works the same way as when you are working with Aliexpress suppliers. When a customer places an order, you will get the products from your suppliers, and then they will ship it to your Amazon customer.
Can I make money dropshipping with AliExpress?
Yes, dropshipping is a potentially lucrative business model. However, there is stiff competition with many dropshippers on the platform. You must spend adequate research to find the top selling products that will generate maximum profits for your business. You must also invest time promoting your product listings to gain maximum exposure.
Does Shopify work with AliExpress?
Yes. Like Amazon, importing products from Aliexpress to your Shopify store is possible. It is a great way to find products at a lower price on Aliexpress and then list them to your Shopify store for a higher profit margin.
Where does Aliexpress ship from?
Many suppliers on Aliexpress are based overseas, specifically in China. But Aliexpress won’t disclose the specific location for the origin of the items in the shipment information. Not all suppliers are from China, though, since applying for a Non-Chinese Seller Registration on Aliexpress is possible.
How do I become an AliExpress dropshipper?
It is easy to set up an Aliexpress dropshipping store. There are no upfront costs or fees for signing up for the dropshipping program, so you can get started right away, especially if you have an Aliexpress account. The secret to success with Aliexpress dropshipping is to find the best Aliexpress suppliers with quality products at a lower price.
Is AliExpress dropshipping free?
It is free to set up a dropshipping account on Aliexpress. Therefore, you can use that account to find dropshipping suppliers you can list on your online store.
However, Aliexpress will charge a commission fee of 5 to 8% for each transaction. The commission fee varies according to the type of product you’ve sold.
Will the customers know that the products are from Aliexpress?
Aliexpress is unique from other dropshipping platforms because it has a shipping infrastructure suited for dropshippers. You can opt for custom packaging from Aliexpress suppliers via the premium shipping method called ePacket. Therefore, most customers won’t be able to tell that these products are shipped via Aliexpress. However, most products have a Chinese shipping label, so they will know it is from China.
Are the shipping times on Aliexpress worth it?
The main concern with customers buying from your dropshipping store using an Aliexpress supplier is the longer shipping times. Since products are shipped from overseas, it will take longer for the orders to arrive.
Some customers are willing to wait, while others won’t. It is important to identify your target customers and gear toward those that are looking for a great deal for the same products they can find online. Since many Aliexpress dropshipping products are sold at lower prices, you can offer the products to your customers at a lower price, even with a significant markup.
The best thing you can do in this situation is to be upfront with your customers. Your product page must include an estimated delivery time that automatically calculates shipping times based on the customer’s location. Using this information, they can determine whether they want to proceed with the purchase. Many dropshipping store owners offer their customers free shipping to make up for the longer shipping times.
