Nope, I will not be teaching you exactly what product to sell, who to sell to, and where to sell it, but you will be much more convinced anyone can start up new businesses after reading this post. For those of you are looking for a business-in-a-box detailing all of the above, please go pay some online scammer to buy his latest ebooks.
I will do this tutorial in a Q&A format.
1)What is Alibaba.com?
What?? Are you like, 3 or something? Alibaba was set up in 1999 by Jack Ma and other shareholders. Its primary role is to provide an online marketplace which brings together the needs of business owners with the suppliers, who wish to sell to these buyers. That’s in a nutshell.
2)Why Alibaba.com?
Well, Alibaba.com allows you to go crazy shopping for prices for almost anything, be it from replica Iphones to MP3s, and sculptures. Alibaba also has in place several security measures that make buying easier.
3)Who typically buys from Alibaba?
Everyone! From the end consumer who wants just one fake handbag, to the top earners on ebay who sell silver jewelry, to the home and decor shop selling “exotic” chinese vases and sculptures.
Just read the book, “The world is flat” by thomas Friedmann to learn more about this phenomenon.
Read This!4)How do i use Alibaba.com?
As with any other service like email or twitter, just take the plunge and sign up. Do bother to play around with the settings and the help guide contained within the site.
5)How do i select suppliers?
Well, good luck on this one because there are literally thousands of suppliers for any chosen product. Do not however base all purchasing decisions on price alone. A product which is X dollars but arrives at your destination is infinitely better than a product which is X/3 dollars but never does reach.
You can decide on a supplier based on the credibility of the supplier based on previous transactions, the reviews it has, by googling the company name and seeing what people in forums have got to say about them and so on. Some suppliers operate on escrow, others on cash upfront. Personally, i have had nothing but only good experience on alibaba. ALL my items arrived on time. There was one time where 2 items came in damaged. I complained, and not only did i get replacements, but i also got to keep the 2 products which were only slight defects!
6)Ok, so how do i actually make any money?
Think. What is in demand which is under-represented by current sellers? Are gemstones in demand in your community or online? Survey the norm price of these items, then check the selling price on alibaba. If there is enough margin after factoring in marketing and delivery charges, then you may have a winner.
A lot of consumers are aware they can buy this or that item from alibaba direct, but the overwhelming human nature tendency is one which is full of doubt. They are always afraid the item will never arrive and they will get scammed of their money. That is why your role as the seller solidifies the whole selling-buying trust process.
7)But i don’t have enough money to set up a shop! Where can i sell these items?
Well, do yourself a favour. Go to Weebly.com and set up a free account. Its a wonderfully simple web editor which is copy and paste. No programming at all needed. Trust me. Stop reading this post and check that site out and come back here. If its not the simplest web builder around, just email me with your comments.
Weebly allows you to create beautiful sites for FREE. The catch is all your sites which when built for free will have the .weebly.com domain on it. For example, yourname.weebly.com
If you rather have your own .com, then simply purchase a domain through them, it is all really PLUG AND PLAY. They do everything for you.
Once you have a website, that is not the end of the story. You have got to start selling! There is a saying,” Once you build it, they will come”
But that advise doesnt apply to online businesses. Just because you have a website does not mean there will be ready buyers clicking to your site and ordering. You have got to build some decent web traffic and convert these traffic to real sales!
How can you create traffic? This is what i personally do for some of my businesses.
1)Classfieds and forum posting
2)Pay per click adword ads from google (Targeted traffic! and instant too!)
3)Social media outlets such as twitter and facebook (just remember not to spam!)
4)Insert GREAT content! Only with great info will your site be bookmarked and visited again, and recommended to others.
5)Do some SEO. Please, i don’t wish to go into this, I am by no means an expert on this, but many of my keywords has appeared high on google due to outsourcing my SEO work to freelancers from India.
6)Write articles and offer them to other blog owners.
See? You don’t actually need much money to start selling with alibaba! Let me repeat the process
1)Identify needs and wants which are currently not met
2)Look for products on alibaba which meets these needs/wants
3)Check if the prices are viable enough for business purposes (not charity)
4)create a weebly.com website
5)get the products from your chosen suppliers
6)start marketing your website, just google “internet marketing”
7)convert the visitors to your site with great sales copy
8)set up payment accounts, i use paypal business account
9)keep the momentum going, add new products to your range as you see fit.
Read my post on “entrepreneurial ADHD”. Stop trying to sell everything at the same time, focus on one project at a time. You can always add in more later.
Trust me- This only works once you have mastered a SINGLE service or product offering… Try to do too many at one time and you will end up burnt out (Don’t even think of trying to catch two rabbits at once)