Dropshipping from AliExpress to Shopify is one of the most popular business models in the eCommerce industry today. It is a profitable venture that gives us a flexible time managing our online business anywhere globally.
Many dropshippers have already established their eBusiness through these platforms. However, as beginners in dropshipping, we first need to equip ourselves with the right information so that our online stores will thrive in this industry.
Newbies in dropshipping need not worry because this article is a complete beginners’ guide on how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify. We will discuss the steps to dropship successfully on these platforms, from establishing an online business to increasing sales.
Before we proceed, let us first discuss the basics of dropshipping for those new in this field. Essentially, dropshipping is an online business model that allows the seller to fulfill customers’ orders online.
Likewise, this eBusiness framework does not require the dropshipper to retain a physical inventory of the items. As a result, the seller only oversees the marketing and selling of the items. Conversely, the quality, storage, inventory, and delivery of the products to the customers lie in the supplier’s hands.
Here is how dropshipping works: The customer buys the product, the seller fulfills the order, the supplier ships the package, and the dropshipper makes a profit. In connection with that, AliExpress and Shopify are key dropshipping platforms. So, prior to knowing how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify, let’s first discover the key features of each.
Undeniably, AliExpress is one of the world’s largest eCommerce platforms based in China. Now, here are the key features that make AliExpress a dependable supplier for our dropshipping ventures:
Primarily, AliExpress offers about 100 million product choices that we can list in our online stores. Plus, these products are available at competitive prices. Therefore, sourcing items at lower costs can lead to higher profit returns.
Additionally, this supplier ships items to almost anywhere globally, enabling us to reach a broader market. Besides that, AliExpress has a Dropship Center that helps online sellers find trending products to sell. Given all these benefits from AliExpress, it is undoubtedly one of the best suppliers for dropshipping.
Meanwhile, Shopify is an online selling platform where we can dropship products from AliExpress. Let’s discover the top reasons that make the Shopify dropshipping business so attractive:
To begin, there are no listing limits on Shopify, and the platform has no inventory restrictions. This is a promising avenue for dropshippers who wish to offer various products without limitations. In addition, Shopify stores are more scalable, allowing us to reach larger markets and test as many products as we see fit.
Moreover, Shopify allows us to fully customize our dropshipping stores. On top of that, it conveniently offers product customization, mobile shopping apps, and easy website development, among others. Finally, Shopify is a user-friendly platform without the need for technical skills.
At this point, we know that dropshipping from AliExpress to Shopify is possible. However, is AliExpress dropshipping to Shopify legal? Well, the answer is a big yes! In fact, AliExpress and Shopify encourage dropshipping.
When dropshipping from AliExpress, we should avoid offering copyrighted items in our Shopify stores. We can check out the VeRO Database for the list of intellectually protected brands. Also, this tool provides names of companies keen on enforcing these rights on any dropshipping platform, including Shopify.
Also, our dropshipping stores must not contain dangerous or illegal categories. These categories include but are not limited to weapons, ammunition, tobacco, and alcohol. Overall, we can select millions of legal products from AliExpress and dropship them in our Shopify stores.
Without question, dropshipping from AliExpress is far from dead. On the contrary, dropshipping with AliExpress is a profitable business to manage, and it continues to get better each year.
In fact, Statista forecasts show that by 2026, the dropshipping market will reach 476.1 billion U.S. dollars. These data prove that dropshipping is a thriving industry. With that said, now is the best time to venture into AliExpress dropshipping on Shopify.
Remarkably, AliExpress dropshipping on Shopify is a promising venture. However, it comes with benefits and drawbacks, like any business venture.
One excellent advantage of AliExpress dropshipping on Shopify is the access to a wide selection of low-cost products. Plus, we can expand our market reach through global shipping. Besides that, these dropshipping-friendly platforms offer business solutions to online sellers, such as low startup costs.
On the other hand, most products from AliExpress take time to ship from China. Additionally, we can’t enjoy bundled orders from AliExpress, as the supplier ships each order separately. To address these downsides, we can select products from AliExpress’ domestic warehouses and suppliers that can ship orders faster.
Down to our most awaited part, we’ll explore how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify. Generally, there are seven steps that we need to undertake to set up an AliExpress to Shopify dropshipping business:
Our first step is to find winning AliExpres dropshipping products to sell. Essentially, product research lets us access thousands of product options, check various customer reviews, ensure items’ quality, and more. With that in mind, here are the ways to search for winning items on AliExpress:
A good way to start product research is to check what is trending on social media, especially TikTok. It is a favorite platform of popular influencers, which makes it an ideal place to find hot items. Using tools like AutoDS Ads Spy can make our research quick and efficient. TikTok Spy allows us to easily browse the newest TikTok videos and ads with trending products. And by using its robust filters, we can sort videos to find potential best-sellers in no time.
Moreover, the AutoDS Product Finding Tools allow us to find best-sellers and import them to Shopify in just a few clicks. Here, we can access the hot products, new arrivals, and other diverse categories of items to dropship. Plus, this tool uses filters, such as price range, shipping locations, and more, to help narrow our search.
Meanwhile, the AliExpress dropship center features valuable tools to help us find and analyze trending dropshipping products. In particular, it provides metrics like sales performance, customer reviews, and more. Moreover, this dropshipping tool allows us to apply filters to generate winning items that can bring massive sales to our stores.
All in all, these product-finding tools enable us to add products to our Shopify store easily. Thus, we can choose from millions of highly profitable products to dropship.
After identifying the top-quality products to list in our dropshipping stores, the next step is to create an account with AliExpress and Shopify. Primarily, creating our accounts is a pre-requisite on how to link AliExpress to Shopify later on.
Starting a free AliExpress account is simple. First, we’ll go to the AliExpress website. On the home page, click the ‘Join’ button.
Then, fill in the necessary details, and our AliExpress account is good to go. After establishing our account with AliExpress, let’s proceed with starting a store on Shopify.
To continue our dropshipping adventure, we need to open a Shopify dropshipping store. To do this, go to the Shopify website and register for a free trial and your first 3 months is $1/month (Shopify promotions are subject to change). Then, Shopify will ask us to input our store name, and we can also utilize a custom domain when available.
Shopify users can now elevate their store’s branding with a .store domain, which can be set via store settings. The first year is free, allowing users to see its impact before a third-party service handles ongoing fees.
After doing so, we’ll select a template for our dropshipping store. Now, we can start listing items in our Shopify store, including their titles, description, and other necessary information. Likewise, we can further optimize our products by adding high-quality photos and other related media.
Finally, we’ll set our products’ prices and publish them in our store. Here, our Shopify adventure commences. But let’s see how we can simplify this process in the next step.
Do you want to know how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify without facing the computer all day? We got you! To manage our Shopify dropshipping business efficiently, we can automate our business processes.
At this point, we need a dropshipping automation app to help us run our stores. Remarkably, dropshipping automation can help us save time, so we can allocate our efforts to expanding our eCommerce empire instead.
As one of the most efficient and convenient software, AutoDS is an all-in-one dropshipping solution. Also, this software lets us connect our Shopify stores directly with our suppliers, such as AliExpress. With that in mind, here are more features that we can enjoy using AutoDS’ Shopify dropshipping extension:
With AutoDS, we can manage multiple Shopify stores on the platform. Moreover, AutoDS works with over twenty-five suppliers globally. This feature gives dropshippers the liberty to choose from a wide selection of products to sell to multiple markets worldwide.
After selecting our Shopify dropshipping app, we can begin AliExpress dropshipping on Shopify. Generally, we have two methods to import products: manually and automatically. However, the manual listing of products consumes significant time and effort since we’re copying and pasting all product details one by one.
Therefore, product importing automation is a more time-saving way of listing items on our Shopify dropshipping stores. To emphasize, the AutoDS dropshipping product importer can add items from AliExpress to Shopify in multiple ways:
Now, let’s demonstrate adding several AliExpress products to our Shopify stores simultaneously.
Essentially, the bulk importer enables us to add several items simultaneously using a CSV file. But first, we must install the AutoDS Dropshipping Helper extension.
Now, head to AliExpress’s website and find the products we want to add. When done searching, click the AutoDS icon on the lower-right corner of the screen.
Next, click the ‘Extract’ button, and all product IDs appear in the dialog box. Then, save the CSV file by clicking the ‘Export as CSV’ button. By this time, the CSV file will automatically save to our computer.
Afterward, we’ll proceed to the AutoDS platform and click ‘Add Products’ on the menu bar. Then, choose the ‘Multiple Products/Stores’ option.
In the dialog box, click ‘Upload CSV’ and select the CSV file. Alternatively, we can easily drag and drop the CSV file into the dialog box.
By clicking the ‘Add As Draft’ button, all product IDs inside the CSV file will move as drafts. When the products are on the ‘Drafts’ page, we can start optimizing them. At this point, we must set search-engine-optimized (SEO) titles, descriptions, tags, and other relevant keywords.
Notably, product optimization lets us present our items professionally in our Shopify stores. Plus, it helps our products rank higher in customer searches. Hence, more audiences can access our Shopify stores, resulting in greater chances of sales.
If you need help with product optimization or want to save time, you can use the AI Rewrite tool. This powerful tool utilizes AI to enhance titles and descriptions of the products we import. Just press the button, and AI will handle all the manual work.
After optimizing the products, click the ‘Save’ button to apply the changes. Once the products are ready to be published on our Shopify store, click the ‘Save & Import’ button.
At this time, our items are available in the ‘Products’ section of the AutoDS page. Now, customers can start checking out AliExpress dropshipping products on our Shopify. As a result, we’ll start gaining profits from customer purchases.
When learning how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify, it’s crucial to know about marketing our products to customers. Specifically, marketing is a critical component when running a Shopify dropshipping store.
Due to Shopify’s lack of organic traffic, we need a good marketing strategy to ensure a steady traffic flow to our stores. Similarly, many competitors also offer AliExpress items, so we must make our product listings distinct and enticing. With that said, here are various marketing techniques we can adopt:
For instance, PPC ads effectively promote our dropshipping products on different social media platforms. And, one of the most popular platforms where we can market our Shopify business is Facebook.
In particular, Facebook Ads are effective ways to promote our business because the platform has one of the most diverse users worldwide. Moreover, Facebook has significant information regarding its users’ preferences and demands. Therefore, these ads can help us reach more audiences likely to take an interest in our products.
Next on how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify is the order fulfillment process. Once we start driving traffic to our Shopify stores, we need to fulfill our customers’ orders manually or automatically.
To manually fulfill orders, we must log in to AliExpress, purchase the product, and input the buyers’ shipping details. However, high demands can result in a tedious manual fulfillment task. Therefore, automated order fulfillment tools can help us promptly serve customer demands.
For one, the AutoDS Automatic Orders feature uses our buyer accounts to fulfill orders, even while we’re away. Plus, the tool provides real-time tracking updates of our customers’ packages.
On the other hand, we can utilize the Fulfilled by AutoDS service. This tool uses auto-credits so we won’t worry about order purchase limits. Moreover, this feature allows one-click returns and managed fees for supported suppliers like AliExpress.
Ultimately, the order fulfillment process is crucial in attaining customer satisfaction. Thus, we must carry out this method in the fastest and most convenient way possible.
As you might know already, AliExpress is a marketplace and not a supplier. All the products there are sold by third-party sellers. Because of how big and popular this marketplace is, many sellers compete for the same products. Therefore, with time and effort, you might find a better seller with lower pricing or faster shipping for a product you are interested in.
AutoDS takes dropshipping from Chinese suppliers to another level with its latest Product Sourcing feature. The service addresses common pain points dropshippers face, like longer shipping times, quality concerns, and communication hurdles with suppliers. Here is how it works:
1. When you receive an order from a Chinese supplier or an unmonitored source, you can request a quote from AutoDS.
2. Our team swiftly processes your request, typically within 48 hours.
3. After processing, you’ll receive a range of options to choose from, including product variations, shipping methods, and associated costs.
4. Once you decide to source a product, its status changes to “linked.” You can connect only your product to the chosen AutoDS-sourced item (for future orders) or link existing pending orders.
The Product Sourcing service provides considerable benefits, such as shorter shipping times, possibly cheaper products, and products that have undergone quality inspection before they are shipped. Here is why you should consider giving this service a try:
What this means for Shopify sellers is that you can get the perks of working with AliExpress while mitigating the disadvantages. You can enjoy low product pricing and cheap shipping while avoiding quality concerns and longer delivery. And you don’t even have to deal with suppliers – AutoDS will handle it.
Mastering the basics of how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify goes a long way after delivering customer orders. As such, we must extend after-sales services to ensure customer satisfaction with our business. So, here are ways to provide excellent customer service:
Remember that how we provide service speaks about the quality of our business. Additionally, when we value our clients, they will reciprocate with loyalty toward our dropshipping venture. As a result, we’ll gain more customers and enjoy repurchases, leading to massive profits.
For us to optimize how to link AliExpress to Shopify, there are several AliExpress Chrome Extensions that we can utilize. By using these tools, we can save time searching for products, saving images, generating invoices, and more. As a result, we’ll be able to manage key aspects of our dropshipping business efficiently.
Now, let’s go over some examples of these extensions.
We have good news for dropshippers! The invoicing process on AliExpress is now convenient with the help of the AliExpress Free Invoice extension. By using this tool, we can easily turn order details into ready-to-print invoices in a few seconds. On top of that, utilizing this invoicing feature is free.
Moreover, this AliExpress extension is useful when generating invoices for financial records, customs confirmations, and verification procedures. With this tool, we can now bid farewell to long waiting times for an invoice from our suppliers.
Another great AliExpress extension is AliSave. This tool saves us from the time-consuming task of downloading multiple photos or videos. With the help of AliSave, we can rapidly download several images and videos at once.
Remember that we have to provide high-quality photos or videos to give more value to our products. Now, as easy as one click, we can have a collection of pictures and videos to help optimize our Shopify stores.
Next up, we have the Alitools Shopping Assistant, which provides us with a product’s price change history in the past six months. Besides that, this browser extension gives us insights into product reviews, seller trust ratings, and tracking updates under one screen.
By utilizing this all-in-one extension, we can analyze the potential of a product for dropshipping. With AliTools Shopping Assistant, we can choose top-notch items to sell on Shopify.
The answer is definitely yes. You can sell AliExpress dropshipping items on Shopify. Particularly, AliExpress is a dropshipping-friendly marketplace, and Shopify is a dropshipping-friendly selling channel to sell your products. All you need is to search for trending products to sell from AliExpress and list these items on Shopify.
Starting an AliExpress dropshipping on Shopify business is absolutely free. AliExpress doesn’t charge any fees to dropshippers, and you only pay for the products after your customers buy them from you. On the other hand, Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, and sellers must pay a low selling fee of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.
You can reach out to the AliExpress supplier and ask them to ship customer orders without any labels. Nevertheless, most customers don’t care about the product source, as long as they get their products in time.
AliExpress is only one of the many suppliers you can use to source dropshipping products. So, you can also work with AliExpress alternatives like Banggood, eBay, Walmart, and CJDropshipping.
To link your AliExpress account to your Shopify store, you need to undergo these processes:
We’ve come a long way in understanding the ins and outs of how to dropship from AliExpress to Shopify. Thus, it’s safe to say that we’re ready to begin our very own thriving dropshipping business.
With the right tools by our side, we have all that we need to succeed. Moreover, we can expand to more niches and categories to replicate our initial success once we start getting sales. Plus, incorporating business automation into our dropshipping stores will lead us to profit scaling.
Ultimately, we need to continue reaching greater heights with our dropshipping career. To gain more insights about AliExpress dropshipping, check out these related articles:
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