Alibaba.com and dropshipping

Alibaba can only be relied on if you want to ship large machineries and indusrial items. I have seen people successfully order and receive industrial dye from alibaba. But i dont have any personal experiences.

Have you been to Alibaba.com?

They are a directory of manufacturers and wholesalers.
They don't sell products or drop ship.

You have to ask those questions from the listed company.

Any product for sale and their raw supplies, machines and components for the making
of them, can be found there.

Alibaba have put security in place to protect both the buyer and seller,
by using symbols showing the business has been checked, has certified quality controls in place, able to use a third party to hold the money to save you from loss.

It's for you to decide on a product which you can market it well.

They won't help you there,
therefore you must do a lot of research yourself.

Avoid buying well known brand names.
They are either counterfeit, or the lister is a fraud and you won't see your money again.

Best,
Ewen

I am not sure about finding a drop shipper through Alibaba. I have only seen companies that manufacture products and you pay up front for your order. Usually it will be a large minimum order to even order any products. I have purchased plastic packaging with a custom design printed on it from a company in Shenzhen China. The quality was actually really great, but it depends on which company you choose to do business with of course.

As ewenmack said, stay away from brand name items because you will get scammed. And I'll say it again, do not buy any brand name items! Also, just because a company is a gold supplier does not mean that they will not scam you out of your money. Verify everything you can about the supplier before you hand them any money.

I must also agree that Alibaba does not do dropshipping. They just serve as directory/network for suppliers and manufacturers in Asia. You can directly ask the Company if they offer dropshipping. But make sure that you pick one that is very legitimate. I have heard a lot of stories that there are scammers in Alibaba. So you also have to be careful.

I've been involved in dropshipping and generally selling products like this online since 2005. I've setup a website to provide a dropshipping service targeting the consumer electronics market (which is HUGE). Check out MJ Distribution - Leading Distribution In Consumer Electronics.

If you need any help, feel free to PM me or message me through the website.

Alibaba is just a B2B platform that connects factories with buyers and everything in between. Is easy to find drop shippers. Back in the day when I first started importing 8yrs ago I bought my first container from a supplier I found on Alibaba.

Drop shippers are like a middleman or wholesaler that will ship out your goods for you, so you don't have to touch inventory.

It's important to note there a 2 types of drop shippers.
1. Drop shipper in your country.
2. Drop shipper in the manufacturing country

Each has advantages and dis advantages.

But one thing they both share is "YOUR GOING TO BUY AT A HIGHER PRICE THAN BUYING DIRECT FROM THE FACTORY PRICE"

(That’s why IMPORTING YOUR OWN PRODUCTS IS THE WAY TO GO. It's not hard.)

Be careful because some drop shippers in China claim to be the factory but they're a salesman working from their own office and lias between you and the factory and take their cut. There's nothing wrong with being the middleman but it's not ethical to say they are officially part of the company when they are not. I have dealt with salesman who have posed as official company reps before.

If you sense something fishy, the way you check up on them is ask for the factory name they work for. This salesman will usually have their own alibaba page that's how you found them in the first place. Go back to Alibaba and search for the official company profile page. Call the factory and ask if the rep works there. Watch them go running.....

Always deal directly with the factory and you'll get the best price instead of getting 2nd hand prices like buying off a drop shipper or wholesaler.

Recently Alibaba developed Aliexpress.com which caters for the small volume due to the explosion of eBay and Amazon e-commerce. On Aliexpress you will find Chinese drop shippers but also know you will be buying at slightly inflated prices if you buy per item basis.

I actually put a guide together on how to Start your own importing business on a shoe string budget of $300. I sell this guide on Clickbank as a bonus for $27.

You can Download it free at http://www.importingriches.com/Impor...tart-Guide.pdf

Cheers

Nigel

Not all sellers on there drop ship. So you might want to make sure whoever you buy your items from do if that's what you prefer.

I would strong advice against dropshipping from alibaba. You can never know with some of the sellers shipping times, which will customers very unhappy, especially on eBay.

Thanks for the contributions. Is it easy or possiblt to ship fro china to the UK.?

Thanks

As everyone above me said, Alibaba doesn't sell anything. Companies listed on there do. I have been importing from China since 2005 very successfully from suppliers sourced on Alibaba. As far as drop shipping, there are 3 thingsI would take into consideration:

• Shipping Economics: If they're shipping all the way from China to your customer in the USA, the item better be expensive enough to warrant such a shipping cost. I know there are a lot of Amazon items being sold this way from a new Hong Kong shipping hub that gets shipping prices down ridiculous, but you'd have to position your products from Hong Kong or Shenzhen to make that possible.
• Quality Control: Can China produce awesome stuff? Yes. If not we wouldn't have things like iPads. They can also produce CRAP. I've made 3 trips to China on sourcing trips and let me just say their standards are much lower than ours. The only way to get a good thing from there is to either have a QC person there, or make sure you get samples prior so you can make sure the quality is there. This is the one thing that has probably cost me the most money starting out. Don't believe the listings on alibaba. Believe your samples in-hand.
• Supplier Reputation: Check the reputation and how long they've been on there. It should go without saying, but just remember Alibaba is a platform for B2B, not a seller. Each supplier's reputation is independent. If you can find a Gold Supplier then do it. When I was in China last, my supplier was in the process of applying for that. It costs a ton of money (Something like $5,000 a year) and they have to be verified and have a certain level of reputation to get it. So chances of being screwed by one is less, because if you have an issue with them, they have more at stake if you report them to Alibaba.

I had a supplier in alibaba dropshipping chin up bars for me for a couple of months until I got sick of misdeliveries and errors in pricing etc, in the end the admin was far too muc for a side business which was what it was for me.

But the lesson is that yes some of them will dropship and if you don't mind the hassle of tracking orders and customer service etc then you can make some good money.

I also considered getting USB sticks shipped to sales agents in the UK to sell on ebay for me but the margin just wasn't there (there was also an issue with them advertising them as 128GB when they were actually 128gb).

Maybe with a higher ticket item it could work.

Also it might be worth noting that in 6 months my ebay seller rating dropped from 100% to 94% due to late deliveries, and this is below ebay quality guidelines and can affect selling limits if it gets much lower.