by Reg Sanders
What is Alibaba?
Alibaba is a global platform where anyone from anywhere in the world can buy and sell products; in fact Alibaba is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined. Even though Alibaba is a publicly traded company in the United States, it is an operator out of China, which does come with some complications and challenges that are to expected when dealing with international suppliers. Alibaba is nothing more than a giant marketplace that connects buyers and sellers and that’s the whole purpose of the dropshipping business model – to connect you, the buyer with the right seller, so you can source products for your business, typically via shopify best sellers.
How do you make money using Alibaba?
To answer this question let’s look at the following example: Let’s say that you wanted to start your own business selling sneakers. It wasn’t that long ago that in order to start your own business you should find thw best suppliers, then you would need a lot of money to buy shoes at a wholesale price, the supplier might even require you to prove that you’re a real business and that you have good credit. And that’s not even the half of it, because you still have to sell those shoes and if you can’t do that, you start with bunch of shoes that no one wants to buy.
The capital investment involved along with the high level of risk alone were good enough reasons not to start your own business, but today all that has changed because now you have companies like Alibaba which have eliminated all the barriers to entry. Here’s how the process looks today:
You start by finding a supplier on Alibaba, the supplier sells you 50 pairs of shoes for $15 each, you then turn around and sell those shoes for $75 each giving you a $60 net profit per pair of sneakers, making them best sellers aliexpress. How you sell them is up to you: You can sell them on sites like Amazon, eBay or on your own e-commerce site or you can sell them wholesale to another business. In fact, if you go on Amazon or Ebay or a small e-commerce website you will find that the people selling products aren’t big businesses, they are ordinary people like you and me who are sourcing products from China and other countries and selling them for a substantial profit on the different platforms which are available to everyone and that’s what makes Alibaba a game-changer.
They have eliminated all the barriers to entry and made it so that anyone can start their own business, you don’t need a lot of money, you don’t need credit or even a real business to get started with Alibaba. All you need is a willingness to learn and to try.
