Late Night Internet Marketing with Mark Mason -- Affiliate Marketing Tips, Online Business Advice, Email Marketing and SEO
More Common Drop Shipping Questions: Additional FAQs About eCommerce with AliExpress, Oberlo and Shopify [LNIM145]
In this episode, I continue to answer some more common Drop Shipping Questions about using AliExpress, Shopify and Oberlo. This all started with episode 143, where I described the
drop shipping business model. Last week, I answered a lot of common
drop shipping questions. This week, I discuss whether or not you can run a drop shipping business from outside of the United States, how to handle returns, and how to select good suppliers.
I also discuss how “analysis paralysis” might be the thing that is keeping you from making progress in your business, and what to do about it.
Common Drop Shipping Questions Show Notes
What to learn all about how to drop ship with Shopify and AliExpress? Check out this amazing
free webinar from our friends at Shopify.
Can I get my products somewhere other than AliExpress?
If you are not that comfortable in getting products from China and want to drop ship from other locations, this is absolutely possible. You can drop ship from anywhere and you can search Google for a long list of companies that you can use. There are lots of alternatives outside of AliExpress but I focus on this site as our example as it is super easy to get started using this site and AliExpress, Oberlo and Shopify work together very harmoniously. There are actually items which are shipped from the US inside AliExpress, you can use filter searches to find these.
Can I run this business from another country other than the US?
Yes, absolutely. People run drop shipping from all over the world and the only complexity is that, when you are dealing with AliExpress and getting money back and forth from Shopify and PayPal, there are charges associated with this. There are foreign exchange fees because your money is going in a big circle: your customer is giving you money through Shopify or PayPal (US-based companies), then you need to move this money to your local bank account, after which you will send it to AliExpress to buy the product and to pay Facebook using a credit (which may have fees if you do not have a US card). You can mend this by adjusting your prices to handle the fees, which is not a big deal, as we are just talking about a few percentages; look for credit cards which pay cash backs; or AliExpress Loyalty programs.
The best place to start marketing is the United States mainly because this is where the money is. There are a lot of affluent users in this country, a lot of the population use Facebook and a lot of online consumption happens here. It is recommended to start in the US and fan out from here but yes, you can also target other countries with higher standard of living and expendable income.
What do I do with returns and will there be a lot of customer service involved?
For providing customer service, the best thing to do is set up a support email for your store. Put up a contact form in your Shopify website so people can fill it out for any help needed and these would be forwarded to your store’s email.
When you get emails from customers who would like to return an item, maybe because the shipped product is broken or it didn’t work the way that they expected it to, empathize, apologize and get details of the concern and then send over a Return Merchandise Authorization number. Some people, when they learn you need more information, they would just forego the issue because they didn’t really pay that much.
As a rule, stay away from products which generate a lot of returns such as clothing and rings as often times, they won’t fit. When you are looking at products at AliExpress, pick those with lots of positive reviews and when choosing supp...