New and experienced sellers alike can expand their product lines and make more profits by reselling items from other retailers.
Retail arbitrage is as old as e-commerce itself. The term means buying goods in a brick-and-mortar store and then selling them online. AmazoneBay, or branded e-commerce sites.
The dropshipping version involves buying from discount marketplaces such as China’s AliExpress.
Let’s explore AliExpress arbitrage with Shopify and DSers: Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, and DSers is an arbitrage app that connects e-commerce stores with AliExpress.
Shopify starts at $29 per month, while DSers starts at $49. Store owners will also need a free AliExpress account, and will set up three accounts: first Shopify, then DSers, and finally AliExpress.
Product Selection
In DSer and similar applications, the first step is to select the product of interest. Direct shipping Via AliExpress Arbitrage.
Dsers and similar applications allow business owners to find products on the AliExpress marketplace.
DSers allows store owners to search AliExpress’ inventory directly using keywords and filters, and with one click the products are added to the import list.
Add Dsers items from AliExpress search results to your import list.
Within your import list, any items that have already been sent to Shopify (via other merchants) will have a semi-transparent grey banner, and you can edit and split any item.
Products that have already been submitted to Shopify by other merchants have a grey bar at the top of the listing. You can edit or split any product.
Edit a product
Products on AliExpress usually have few descriptions or information, so editing your products is key.
First, add your Shopify collections, types, tags, and vendors.
Before you send a product to Shopify, you specify its collection and type.
Secondly, products on AliExpress may have descriptive but bland titles, for example one sci-fi t-shirt was titled “New Fashion Men’s Star Trek Mr. Gone Fighting School Vintage Pure Cotton T-Shirt Short Sleeve T-Shirt Crew Neck Clothing Party.”
I edited the redundant product name to “Star Trek ‘Mr. Gorn’s Stick and Rock School of Fighting’ T-Shirt.”
DSers description sections contain basic product specs and overviews, but may be loaded with images that aren’t necessarily useful for the US market. Be sure to spend time customizing these sections.
It’s also a good idea to check your product’s variations. This t-shirt example looks bad when printed in bright colors. Removing these variations would make the product detail page look better.
The Variant section of DSers also allows you to update the prices of products and do a ‘Price Comparison’.
There are many other websites selling the same product so be sure to check the price.
Update prices and “compare prices” on the DSers app.
Push to Shopify
Once your product description and pricing are complete, with just two clicks of a button, your items are sent from DSers to Shopify, and the item and all its variations are loaded into the appropriate collections.
It may take a few minutes for all your images to appear in Shopify, so don’t be surprised if you need to organize your product listings. Sorting t-shirt sizes by “sm”, “md”, “lg”, and “xl” is a common step.
DSers move product information, variants, and product photos to Shopify.
Sell
From a shopper’s perspective, ordering a dropshipping arbitrage product on Shopify is just like any other, with one exception: delivery takes 7 to 10 days.
Once a sale is complete, the seller orders the items on AliExpress via DSers. The default setting for DSers is to pay for each item separately in two stages: order the item and then pay on AliExpress.
Orders made on your Shopify store will show up as orders on DSers and will need to be purchased on AliExpress.
Inventory Gap
Online arbitrage can be used as a standalone business model or Stock shortage.
The Shopify store in this article was completely lacking in licensed products, which are essential for t-shirt marketing, and was low on inventory. Online arbitrage allows stores to sell licensed products without purchasing inventory.
There is nothing special or unique about arbitrage on AliExpress. The same product is being sold by many sellers. Therefore, Marketing is important.
Your job is not to post products, but to promote them.
