In this article you’ll learn some Aliexpress alternatives for dropshipping. They will help you take your business to the next level. At this point of the course, you now have absolutely everything you need to build out a fantastic business. But what if you want to take it to the next level? What if you want to go to $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month, $100,000 a month? I mean, the sky really is the limit with his business model.
The only limit, if you like, is you, your dedication and your ability to take action and really make it happen. But as you grow, there are some things that you need to consider. It’s those things that I want to teach you in the upcoming lessons so that you’re really ready when you get to that point.
Introduction to AliExpress Alternatives for Dropshipping
Now, the first thing I want to address is alternatives to AliExpress. I’m not talking about replacing AliExpress. I’m talking about building on top of what you already have.
Why would you want to consider alternatives to AliExpress? Well, as you increase your revenue, alternatives to AliExpress makes good business sense. That does sound a little bit vague. I understand that. Let’s delve in therefore a little bit into the detail. Why is that the case? In fact, there are three main reasons.
The first reason is resilience. It is probably the most important because if you’re building up this business, or any business in the future, whatever you do, resilience really is one of the keys to success when you’re building something really big. When you’re smaller, it’s not necessarily so important, but as you grow, it really is. So, what does resilience even mean?
Well, it means that you can withstand outside shocks. Let’s imagine that you had an employee who was absolutely key to the business and they left. What you want to be thinking is, okay, that’s a bit sad that they’ve gone, but no worries. I’ve got a plan B. I’ve got another person who can just easily slot into that position while we look for somebody else. That’s resilience. You don’t want to have somebody that you rely on 100%, and when they leave, it’s a disaster and the whole business collapses. You never want to be in a situation like that.
Now with AliExpress. Imagine you’re making $50,000 a month and suddenly there’s a problem with AliExpress itself. Maybe your account is blocked, maybe you have a problem with a payment system, maybe the site goes down. It could be anything like that. These are real-world problems. It’s very unlikely, but these are real-world problems that you need to consider it.
So, what you want to be thinking at that point is no problem. I have an alternative to AliExpress. I can go over here and do this for some time, while I fix my AliExpress problem and then I’m back on track. No problem whatsoever. No stress I have built in resilience.
The second reason is shipping times. Now I always get asked this about AliExpress in the shipping times and you’ve probably seen now that in some cases the shipping times can be quite long. Now if you’ve actually been taking action and doing orders, you will have also seen that the shipping time took typically nowhere near as long as the supplier will state. The reason for that is because the supplier will always overstate how long it’s going to take.
Think about it. If they say it’s going to take 5 days and it takes 15, they’ve got a problem. You’re going to complain. But if they say it’s going to take 30 days and it takes 15, suddenly they look great. So, it always makes much better business sense, at least from their point of view, to overstate the shipping times. But we can improve shipping times and some of the alternatives to AliExpress allow us to do exactly that.
Then lastly, branding as you grow. It’s always nice to have the option. You don’t have to do it, but it’s always nice to have the option to possibly brand your products, put your own product name on the packaging, or maybe even on the product itself.
Now with AliExpress, we don’t really have that possibility. It’s not really their business model, but there are ways, there are alternatives that allow us to brand our products going forward and help us build that global business. So, those are the three main reasons.
Now, I’m not saying they’re the only reasons, but they’re certainly the principal reasons. Also, you may be in a country where AliExpress is blocked entirely, and that does happen from time to time with some countries. If that’s the case with you, and you’re looking for a workaround to AliExpress, then the upcoming lessons are also going to be very interesting. With that said, clearly that begs the question, what are the best alternatives?
Well, as ever, there are hundreds of different possibilities out there, possibly thousands. But of course, I’m going to show you the best. I’m going to take you straight there so that you don’t have to wait thousands and thousands of hours trying to figure all of this out. So, let’s have a look at those in the upcoming lessons.
AliExpress Agents
First up, let’s have a look at AliExpress agents. Now there are many of these, but of course I’m going to show you the best ones. In fact, there are two in particular that I want to draw your attention to. The first one is EPROLO-Dropshipping & Branding.
But what is an agent? Well, an agent is somebody who will buy products of themselves from AliExpress, store it in their own warehouse. Then you order directly from the agent instead of AliExpress directly. I hope that makes sense. They will buy the products, store them in their own warehouse, and you will interact with them directly, no longer with AliExpress. I hope you see the difference.
Now, by doing that, an agent can then establish warehouses in locations all around the world. For example, let’s imagine that they establish a warehouse in the United States. When it comes to ordering and particularly with shipping times, they can now deliver far more quickly because now they’re based in the United States. They’re no longer shipping directly from China, which drastically reduces shipping times.
Also, by having their own warehouses, they can offer additional services, including branding. You can probably imagine the product is sitting there in the warehouse is quite easy for them to put your own brand name on the product or on the packaging prior to sending it to the customer. So, I’m sure you can already see why an agent could make sense.
First of all, it gives you resilience. Okay? Again, we’re not replacing AliExpress. You can still continue to have your Oberlo and AliExpress processes working, but should there be any kind of issue you’ve got EPROLO as a potential backup or always running alongside. It’s entirely up to you.
You now have resilience built in and then, as I’ve just described, you’ve got your faster shipping time. So, a big tick for that, and you also have the option of branding. Learn more about EPROLO and the second agent in this video.
Now you’ve got EPROLO and CJDropshipping apps for fantastic resilience, faster shipping times and if you want the possibility to brand your own products.
Spocket
I know you’ve already got a couple of great AliExpress alternatives, but of course those still rely on AliExpress itself. If you want to build out real resilience, it would also be good to have an option that doesn’t rely on AliExpress. This is where this app called Spocket – US & EU Dropshipping comes in. The Spocket suppliers are based in the US, EU, Canada, Australia, Brazil and more, not China. Learn more about Spocket in this video.
I would definitely encourage you to at least have a look at the free trial offered by Spocket. And once again, I want to emphasize all of these solutions that I’m showing you can live together. They can run concurrently.
You can have, as ever, your AliExpress and Oberlo solution. You could also have EPROLO. You could also have CJDropshipping, and now as well you could have Sprocket. But it doesn’t mean you have to use them all at the same time. You have that option should you ever need it.
Importify
Now, another really great app that’s been around for quite some time is this app called Importify. Now, this app allows you once again to bring in products from outside of AliExpress. It does also work with AliExpress, but I want you to view it as working with alternatives to AliExpress. Watch the video to learn more.
However, beware some of the limitations mentioned in the video that you might have with this app and never, ever forget the golden rules.
Directory of Wholesale Companies
In this last lecture on Aliexpress Alternatives for dropshipping, I want to introduce you to the world of directories which you may or may not be aware of. Up to now we’ve been looking at AliExpress and associated apps, but there also exists directories of wholesale companies. These are directories of suppliers who are willing to have their products dropshipped.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’re going to have the beautiful integration of some apps. But what it does mean is you get access to a completely new source of products that you might otherwise not have had.
Now, probably the best-known directory on the Internet at the moment and has been, to be honest for many years now, is what’s called Salehoo which you can learn more about I the following video.
Now, you have the possibility of Salehoo for a more simplistic yet still very powerful way of finding very exciting suppliers. Now that you’ve learned some great Aliexpress alternatives for dropshipping, I hope you’ll be able to create resilience for your business.
In the next post I’ll discuss how to sell internationally on Shopify.