Dropshipping Agent vs AliExpress

In the previous video we talk about the China domestic market, international market, and you got a clear picture of the entire china market, and so far you recognize that there is no perfect platform in the market, 

You may wonder if there is any better solution, and I have heard there are dropship agents in China, but there is no such dropship agent platform, so it seems invisible and not available to the public. and even more question marks jump out from your mind, what is dropship agent, how do they work, is it good for my business, is it trustable, and what’s the difference between AliExpress and dropshipping agent.

And after you do some searching online, you will know that both the AliExpress model and dropshipping model have pros and cons, and there are many videos on youtube listing the pros and cons to compare these 2 models. but the problem is that you only seem to know the difference when they talk, but when it comes to your own business, your mind is just empty, and you don’t know when and how to apply the pros and avoid the cons.

So the most useful way is to go through the dropshipping business process to explain all the pros and cons, so you can get a deep understanding in the practice mode.

Let’s look at the dropshipping business, it can be divided into 2 stages simply, one is the test stage and the other is the production stage. The mission in the test stage is to find the right niche and prove your business idea works. and the mission in the production stage is to scale your business and keep it growing up and up.

Dropshipping Test stage

In the test stage, you have 3 types of work to do: product research, store build, and marketing. and in this stage, you don’t have to make everything perfect, and everything should be built up as quickly as possible, and you keep learning, make the changes, do the adjustment, and keep everything in a minimum state just only to prove it works.

So let’s go to the details. In the product research step, everything in the public resources can help you a lot. The data from Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, and Google trends, by using some professional research tools, you can read and analyze the data more efficiently and quickly get the result you want. 

now go to the store build, for example, you are building the Shopify store, AliExpress really can help you a lot, there are all kinds of product listed, you can do the price comparison and choose the suitable one, and you can use their pictures and Description, make some changes according to your requirement and put them on your store, and the automation tool DSers can also help a lot during the process. After some work, Bang, your store just can open so quickly that maybe you are surprised by yourself.

Now go to the marketing part, compared to the Chinese people you are already much better at English. and as you know your customer’s history, culture, what is trending now, and you also know how to play in the social media, yes, what you have to do is just put some effects to improve your skills, and then you can rock and roll in the market you are already very familiar with.

so now your business is running. You are now using all the public resources, organizing with your thoughts, and after some days, you already play the game very well.

and in this stage, the AliExpress which is highlighting can help a lot. Yes, now you already feel so many pros that AliExpress has.

Now it looks like a real business, and you just wanna play it even better, and then there comes the limitation you must feel and want to break it. 

Dropshipping Production stage

Now let’s go to the production stage. Yes, you’re gonna grow your business faster, and make decent money, it must be very exciting. and now you are going to solve the issues, break the limits, and optimize your process. 

Speed

The first thing is the speed, if your package speed is quick, your consumers will feel happy and that will reflect in your comments in a positive way. The speed includes 2 steps, 1st is the processing step, once the consumer places an order, the vendor should prepare the product and do the package and send it out. Because you are in the AliExpress platform dealing with different sellers, the processing time is not always controllable, some sellers may be very slow, due to various reasons such as the product shortage that you really have no idea what’s going on. 

and they always use AliExpress standard shipping method, because this method belongs to AliExpress, and the AliExpress platform can earn a lot of money, so it opens a back door for the platform sellers, if there’s negative comments or something else course by the package delay, the negative comments can be erased, if and only if you are using AliExpress standard shipping. Oh, that sounds ridiculous, right, it can be erased in the AliExpress platform, but it can’t be erased from your consumer feelings as well as your store-related comments. This will be solved easily if you are using a dropshipping agent, they use many fast shipping methods such as YunExpress, 4px, CNE, Yanwen, and others, and keep monitoring the speed, to make sure your package is always in the fast shipping line.

Another thing is the mixed product issue, if your consumer buys different products which you dropship from different AliExpress stores, the consumer will receive different packages at different times, not only will it cause the unhappy and confusing feeling for them, it also makes you pay more money on the shipping fee. For this, by using a dropship agent put all your products from one order into one package and send it out asap, everybody will be happy. 

Price

The basic business rule is to buy low, sell high, right, so get a lower price for the product, not only can bring you more profit but also can turn your business into a more competitive status. So the dropship agent can always get you a lower price for the product than AliExpress, simply because he can do business with you directly not on the AliExpress platform, and I will explain it in detail on the next page. 

Another thing is when your sales volume goes up, you deserve a lower price for the big amount of product order, and it always can not happen on the AliExpress, and another negative result is that the product sales volume on the AliExpress platform also goes up, the data will be displayed and collected by all the research tools, that means it will Bring more competition you really don’t want it to happen. While working with an agent it is absolutely not an issue anymore.

Quality

If you wanna improve the product quality or make some changes to the product according to your consumer’s request, the common way is just to search and go to another AliExpress supplier that Brings a more uncertain situation as I described above.

and refer to the packages, if you just wanna simply put a thank you card or make some beautiful packages and even put your logo on it, it is impossible on the AliExpress platform, they don’t wanna do it for you because of the extra work.

All about this, your agent will do this with you together, and if you have more ideas, they are just glad to help you to improve all the quality that makes the consumer feel happy.

Communication

If you are dealing with many AliExpress suppliers, it will cost you a lot of time. The standard communication method is on the AliExpress platform, the response time is very slow, and in most cases, the English level is always a big issue, you may feel exhausted especially when confronted with something urgent or important.

Working with an agent, you just have to communicate with one person, and he uses all kinds of communication apps according to your need, such as email, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook messenger, etc, and the response is very quick, and their English level is also much better than the AliExpress. It can save you a lot of time and energy to do more things on creativity, marketing, and customer service.

Now you know in the production stage you are using the public resource, and work with a dropshipping agent as your private resource to hit the market. and your business will be in a more steady, healthy, and strong status, for yourself you are feeling more happy and confident to see the bright future of your life.

Why Dropshipping Agent Model works

Now it’s time to solve your curiosity. Why is the dropshipping agent so fantastic while the AliExpress seller is not.

look at the business model, the dropshipping agent model has 2 layers, 1st layer is agent, and the 2nd is 1688 and factory, compared to the AliExpress seller model, the AliExpress layer is gone. That means the 8% commission fee for each order charged by AliExpress is gone, that’s why the price for the product can always be lower than AliExpress. As a result, what you always hear, lower prices with faster shipping is not a joke, it is real and reasonable, right.

the 2nd thing is that in AliExpress, every seller is limited in one category or even one sub-category, so if you wanna buy different products, you have to go to different sellers, while the dropship agent has no category limits, they can access all kinds of products, and provide consistently high-quality service.

The 3rd thing is the most important one, the agent and you are on the same page while AliExpress sellers are not. The AliExpress sellers have their own store on the platform, so what they care about is all focus on their store data, for the sales volume, and all the positive comments, and put all their energy on ranking high in the AliExpress platform. That’s why you always feel like you are not on the same page, and it is difficult to communicate with them to solve your particular problem.

 While the agents just have no store, what they care about is your store, they really care about your product quality, your shipping speed, the nice package consumers receive, and to communicate with you about all the stuff they can do to grow your online store.so it is much better for you to build a long-term relationship with the dropshipping agent to grow your business on the same page.

How Dropshipping Agent works with your growth

now let’s figure out how the dropship agent works with your growth 

the ideal model for the international business, is just hiring an employee in China that have the access to all the china domestic market to do the purchase, but there come to some problems, 1st you have to pay the monthly salary which is not affordable when you just start your business and have only several orders per day, 2nd is it’s very difficult for you to find and verify an employee is good or not to do this kind of job, 3rd what can you do if your employee just quit the job. these are serious issues, so there comes the dropship agent company, they just choose the good quality employee whose English must be good as an agent for you, it’s a little bit like the cloud computing, you can communicate with a shared agent at the start because your business can only occupy the agent small amount of time when you grow bigger, then you can occupy the agent all his working time, it is just turned the ideal model into reality, right. and when you grow much bigger, the agent assigned to you is too busy to handle all the work, so he can have his own assistants, which means you have built a team to help you work on the supplier chain. And what you have to do is just communicate with one agent, the agent is responsible for all your product-related things. This flexible, well-designed pattern really makes your job very easy and you will feel that everything is under control.

you all know that the product from China can be much cheaper, the reason is the labor force in China is cheaper, so if you are using an agent or an agent team in china, you can take all the advantage of china’s cheap labor force, that is what the large international companies are doing by setting a company in China. Now the dropship agent company can make it happen, so even when you are running a very small business, you can benefit from that model, and grow your business faster.

From now on, you will find dropship agents more visible and clear, it may open a brand new world for you. and if you have any questions, you can leave a comment down below, I can answer you in the comments or in my next video, to help you make the right decision and grow your business, thanks for watching, see ya.