Everyone wants to have his own dropshipping business. When you are buying products from Amazon.com, from eBay, from Facebook or Instagram, or when you are surfing online, you have seen those vendors making huge money from you. You also want to start by yourself. Is that easy? Yes, It is easy.
What is Dropshipping?
Let’s first have a look that who will be involved in a transaction. There are actually three different roles.
- Supplier
- Retailer
- Customer
The logic is very simple. The retailer gets the goods from the suppliers and sells the products to the customers through certain channels. This is a very common selling mode.
You follow this pattern whether you sell on eBay, Amazon, or AliExpress. Dropshipping actually follows this pattern as well, but its process is more portable and simple. Retailers now
- Noneed to stock
- No need invest a lot to start (main cost is to get leads)
- Noneed to pack and ship your own
Shopify has given a definition to Dropshipping. “Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the merchant never sees or handles the product.”
What about the whole process of dropshipping?
The first stage: the retailer will upload the product information provided by a supplier who is supporting a dropshipping service on the website.
The second stage: the buyer goes to the retailer’s website to place an order, and the retailer sends the buyer’s order information, as well as the ordering cost and shipping cost, to the supplier who supports the service.
The final third stage: the retailer earns the difference after deducting all costs.
You can see that in the first phase, retailers put their products online, often using shopify to build them. (you can of course sell them through other platforms, we will talk about this later)
In the second stage: the retailer sends the buyer’s order information to the supplier, this is the pattern of buying and selling (usually using Oberlo to import products or from Aliexpress ).
The following picture from Oberlo is a good explanation of the entire process of dropshipping!
Let’s make a comparison between the traditional business model and the dropshipping model.
Traditional method.
The traditional method, you need a certain amount of venture capital first. Assuming your starting capital is 10,000 USD, then if you open a new store, you may have to go to alibaba.com to purchase the goods. Not mention that you need to visit China. The cost of getting the goods is much less, Let’s say that you can get an order with goods value of 4,000 USD.
The remaining 6,000 USD has a variety of expenses like shipping, warehousing, etc. So there is not much money spent on advertising. And more importantly, the goods you are buying and investing will not be sold out in a day or two. You may also consider the inventory pressure.
If you made wrong choices, then the process may be slow-moving, inventory pressure, no advertising conversion, then the goods become dead inventory. Then you may find it hard to move your business forward.
Dropshipping mode.
With Dropshipping, there is no such problem. In the Dropshipping business model, the seller successfully transferred the inventory risk to the supplier, and also outsourced the package delivery to the supplier, and only needs to focus on the operation and promotion of the website. Sales is the King.
In this way there is no inventory. You don’t handle shipping, packaging, you just need to focus on marketing, getting more traffic, or you can have more time to test different products.
In this process, it means that more budget can be invested in advertising. 80% of the same startup cost can be used as marketing and promoting in the Dropshipping model.
So from this point of view, the advantages of dropshipping are obvious! And usually the practice of foreigners is to push a certain product, if you do not sell a single order for a week or a small number of orders, you can directly change the product. If you have a lot of stock in your hand, it’s not that easy.
After Introducing dropshipping, let’s have a look of Oberlo.
What is Oberlo?
First of all, Oberlo is a plugin or a marketplace, and must be linked with shopify to take effect.
Oberlo works exclusively on Shopify’s platform. In other words, Oberlo can only be used in shopify. Other channels, such as wordpress, magento, and so on can not use Oberlo.
With Oberlo, you can import the products you want directly from Oberlo platform or AliExpress. You don’t need to edit the picture manually. You don’t even need to write a title, description, etc. Of course, you’d better do that as titles and descriptions are not optimized normally from the original suppliers.
You only need to install the plugin in shopify, and then import the products either from Oberlo itself or from AliExpress into your shopify store with one click, which is super convenient.
This process is easy as well.
- Install the Oberlo plugin in the back end of your Shopify;
- At the same time, you can install the Oberlo plugin on the Chrome browser.
- Open the AliExpress product page and add the required products to Oberlo;
- Set price rules in Oberlo; modify product information like title, description, picture; and import them into Shopify in batches;
What Function Does Oberlo Have?
We open the official website: https://www.Oberlo.com/features and Let’s take a look at his main function.
1. Easy to import products
You don’t need to upload products one by one in the Shopify back end. You only need to install the Oberlo plugin in the Chrome browser, then open Aliexpress, and you can get AliExpress products from a few clicks or directly from Oberlo Supply, a quality supplier product library certified by Oberlo.
2. Automatic order delivery
After promoting your website through Facebook Ads, etc. You may get some orders, just click on Order Product in the Oberlo back end and confirm, Oberlo will automatically send the order information to the corresponding supplier of Oberlo Supply, or directly to the corresponding supplier of AliExpress. Place an order there and let Oberlo Supply or AliExpress send the goods directly to the customer.
3. Product inventory and price automatic update
The Oberlo system automatically tracks inventory information and product price information from suppliers on Oberlo Supply and AliExpress. The price of the products you sell at Shopify will be based on the pricing rules you set in the Oberlo back end. If the supplier inventory is 0, your website products will be automatically removed.
When the supplier adjusts the price, Oberlo automatically adjusts the sales price of the corresponding product on your website according to the rules you set.
For example, if the supplier sells for $5, you set the price of the sales price of your own website product to be three times of the supplier price, and force the addition of two decimal places to .97. Then, your product is priced at $15.97. When the supplier adjusts the price to $8, the price of the corresponding product on your website is automatically adjusted to $24.97.
In addition to the above three functions, Oberlo can also:
- Freely edit the information of your imported products, product titles, product descriptions, product images, make it more attractive to users and increase conversion rate.
- Order transportation status tracking, real-time understanding of your order shipping delivery status
- Support setting sub-accounts, team-based to operate Dropshipping business
- Trackyour sales and expenses, and clearly understand the profitability
- FilterAliExpress products according to whether it supports Epacket shipment, improve the selection efficiency
- Support the wish list function, add the favorite products to the Wish list, and then publish to Shopify later.
- Support the same product to switch to different suppliers
Oberlo Common Problems.
Can Oberlo be used only with Shopify?
Yes. Oberlo works exclusively on Shopify’s platform.
Oberlo is deeply integrated into Shopify. To use Oberlo, you must first register Shopify. Currently, Oberlo does not support any other platforms.
Can I use Oberlo to import products from Alibaba.com instead of Aliexpress.com?
No. Currently, Oberlo only supports importing products from the Oberlo Supply Marketplace (a Oberlo certified supplier) and AliExpress to your Shopify website.
Can I use the supplier’s product image directly on the website?
Yes, you can.
However, we recommend that you optimize the image of the supplier before uploading it to your website, such as removing the logo, watermark, brand name, etc. of the suppliers’ on the image. And it’s best to have your own pictures.
Can I modify the site name of Shopify?
Yes, you can modify your website name at any time.
Log in to the back end and modify your Shopify account information in Setting – General – Store Detail. Note that the Username you applied for when you registered shopify cannot be modified, that is, the link address of username.myshopify.com cannot be modified.
How many products should be imported on my website?
Most successful Oberlo users will focus their time on a few products. We recommend a website with a number of products of 10-200 and products. This way the user’s attention is not too distracting, and they can quickly find the products they need. But if you need it, you can use Oberlo’s most advanced Pro version, which can load up to 30,000 products per month for $79.9.
Can I do dropshipping without Oberlo?
Of course you can! Oberlo is just a tool that can easily help you import products from AliExpress, track information, logistics, etc. You can do it without Oberlo.
Can I use Alibaba to do dropshipping?
Of course you can! Please remember, don’t always think about the Oberlo tool. If you compare it, think that the price of AliExpress is more expensive than Alibaba. If you want to get the goods from Alibaba to do dropshipping, then you should not entangle this Oberlo tool.
The Dropshipping Best Combination
- Shopify
- Oberlo
- AliExpress
Shopify is the easiest platform to build up a website in 1-2 hours. Its starter plan is only 29USD per month.
Oberlo Plus AliExpress to select and upload products. You can have a store full of your wish products in few seconds.
And Facebook is to advertise and promote your products. Get leads, make sales.
In addition, I have to tell you that Oberlo and AliExpress are the perfect combination, but if you have a better source of supply, you do not have to be limited to this plugin. Wondering how to dropship from Alibaba.com, 1688.com or even wholesale market? Our company supports you to source products, store MOQ, pick and pack from China to your worldwide customers. Check our solution for you now.
