AliExpress sellers are your most important partners when you run a drop shipping business: This article will teach you how to find the right suppliers for your drop shipping store on Aliexpress (aliexpress dropshipping). To do this we will be using SaleSource – the company that has developed an expert solution to start and run a dropshipping business. The best thing about dropshipping is that you don’t have to handle manufacturing and product delivery – your supplier does that, on the other hand finding a reliable supplier is crucial for your success, I have 7 criteria that make a good seller to share with you.
What makes a perfect supplier?
In the dropshipping business you want two things from your suppliers:
- Low prices: Otherwise you won’t make a profit
- Credibility: This guarantees high quality goods and timely delivery
Finding the cheapest supplier is easy just compare different sellers on AliExpress, but finding the best one is more complicated. To do that, follow these tips.
1. Supplier’s store rating
Each seller on AliExpress has individual rating. Find the product you like and click on the store home tab: It will take you to the seller’s store where you can see the percentage of the positive feedback
Rating is your most important indicator, as a rule of thumb, if it’s lower than 95%, you’d better find another seller. If you use our plugin you can also benefit from our own rating system – it takes into account more indicators than AliExpress
You can see seller’s rating when using a low dropship extension in Google Chrome, it also shows you a lot of useful information on particular products.
2. How long the seller has been operational
High ratings are good at all and short-term success is one thing but it’s another thing to keep up with the expectations of your customers – the longer sellers has been around the more you can trust their rating, this one has been on AliExpress for eight years:
which is definitely a good amount of time.
3.”Top Brand”
AliExpress rewards its most reliable and successful sellers with a special designation “top brand”
if a seller has it then it’s another score for the seller.
4. The number of followers
If someone says they have positive feedback from 90% of their clients it sounds great, right? But what if they had only ten customers? This store has 3000 followers:
which is enough to take its rating seriously.
7. Rating over the last 6 months
Even if the overall rating seems great it may hide important details, for example a seller could provide excellent service for three years, but one month ago something went wrong. To see these dynamics go to the seller store page and click on the positive feedback tab, that takes you to the sellers feedback page, there you will find the stores’ rating based on its performance for the last six months, this one has maintained a good reputation:
6. The last 3-6 months feedback
Since you are on a seller’s feedback page, now you can find more valuable details there. Check out the store’s feedback history to know how many products is sold in the past one, three and six month, then examine the customers reviews below to learn more about the quality of the product.
7. Quality of the visual materials
In the dropshipping business (including shopify dropshipping), marketing becomes your main task –to succeed you need high quality promotional materials, such as videos and photos. In most cases, you’ll have to take them from the original stores on AliExpress – make sure the sellers provides high quality visual materials, it also great if there are videos available.
If a given store on AliExpress has passed all seven tests consider it a good potential supplier, one that is most likely safe to work with. Another thing worth mentioning is that if your story is built on SaleSource plugin – download and install “my suppliers add-on” – it’s quite affordable and it will make your store management much easier – it will show you how many suppliers you work with, how many products you put it from each of them and how many products use so per supplier you will also see how much profit each of your suppliers bring you so that you can choose only the best ones.
