How DropWired works
DropWired is a tool you can use to easily sell products to your customers, sourced through the AliExpress.com website.
What is AliExpress?
AliExpress.com is part of another website company you may have heard of, Alibaba. Founded in 2010, AliExpress is a marketplace where Chinese merchants (and merchants from some other companies) list their products for sale. The products available are similar to products you may find on websites like Amazon or eBay but at a much cheaper price.
Typically the products on AliExpress are made by Chinese/Far-Eastern manufacturers, but products from manufacturers in Turkey and other countries in Europe (e.g. Spain, France) are available too.
Often, manufacturers ship from different locations around the world meaning that shipping times vary for different items.
AliExpress has a wide range of products available; fashion, beauty, jewellery, watches, electronics, accessories for smartphones, shoes, electronics, sports equipment and much more.
Using AliExpress is reliable and safe but the quality of products isn't guaranteed to be the same as products sourced from 'Western' suppliers. Shipping times can also be longer than drop shipping companies in UK or European countries offer because the products come from China or other far-eastern manufacturers.
How does drop shipping work?
Drop shipping allows website owners not to physically stock the products they are selling. Instead, when they receive an order on their products they send this to the supplier who directly fulfils the order (i.e. sends the product(s) to the customer).
Because products on AliExpress are significantly cheaper than from western suppliers, the potential to make a large profit on each order is available.
For example, the product shown below (at the time of writing this guide) is available for £8.45 with shipping costing £2.20.
A very similar product called BlendJet is charged at £33.95 (with free shipping).
The potential profit for this product could, therefore, be estimated at somewhere around £33.95 - £8.45 - £2.20 = £23.30.
The advantages of drop shipping
There are many advantages to selling products using drop shipping:
• You don't have to hold any stock of products
• You therefore don't have any 'upfront' stock purchase costs
• You can dump poor selling products in an instant (you don't have to clear unwanted stock)
• You don't have to fulfil orders yourself, the entire process is handled by your supplier
• You can focus on marketing your website
How DropWired works
DropWired has two main functions:
1) You can easily import products from the AliExpress website into your ShopWired account
2) You can easily place orders on AliExpress when you receive orders for the imported products
To use DropWired you'll need to open both a ShopWired account and a DropWired account, which you can do at www.dropwired.com.
Once open, you should then download the Chrome extension. The DropWired Chrome extension is a Chrome browser 'add-on' that provides the capability for you to import products and fulfil orders. The extension only works on Chrome, so you'll need to use this browser for DropWired related activities (it doesn't work on other browsers like Microsoft Edge, Firefox or Safari).