Thinking of dropshipping via AliExpress? You’re on the right track – the dropshipping industry is currently worth almost $150 billion! And it’s expected to keep on growing at least for the next five years.
To get a piece of that pie, you first need to find the best selling products for your store. This is where the AliExpress Dropshipping Center becomes very useful.
The Dropship Center is a tool created by AliExpress to help dropshippers connect with trustworthy suppliers and resell the hottest products on the market.
Our ultimate guide to the AliExpress Dropshipping Center gives step-by-step instructions on how to use this great tool to boost your sales.
Let’s dig in!
What is the AliExpress Dropshipping Center?
The AliExpress dropshipping center is a tool that AliExpress created to help dropshippers run their businesses more efficiently. Merchants use this tool to find winning products for their stores.
The Dropshipping Center gives you the chance to dig deeper into AliExpress and find suppliers that you otherwise may have missed on the massive platform. Plus, this tool can help you to analyze the products before putting them in your store, so you can be sure you found the next best thing to sell.
What’s even better, it doesn’t cost you a penny to use the AliExpress Center. It’s free, even if you use another platform for dropshipping!
What is AliExpress?
AliExpress is one of the most popular marketplaces where shoppers around the world buy products online. It was founded in 2010 by Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, based in China. AliExpress is very similar to Amazon or eBay. You can find all kinds of products there, ranging from beauty and health to electronics and security categories.
What is AliExpress Dropshipping Center for?
On AliExpress, you can find over 100 million products to sell. You can sort them by category, price, shipping location, and more. While this is pretty cool and makes the search on the main AliExpress dashboard convenient enough, the AliExpress Dropshipping Center can help you refine your search queries much better.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center can help you to:
- Find new products for your store faster.
- Connect with more suppliers than you would on the main AliExpress dashboard.
- Evaluate products before you start selling them.
For example, you can sort products by the delivery time, rating, and the number of orders from shoppers and other dropshippers.
How to activate the AliExpress Dropshipping Center
First things first – here’s the step-by-step instruction on how to access the dropshipping center. Make sure you have an AliExpress account created beforehand.
- Log in to your AliExpress account.
- Go to this link: https://home.aliexpress.com/dropshipper/ds_center.htm
You’ll see this window:
- Accept the terms and conditions of the General Agreement and Data Service Authorization.
- Enter your full name.
- You’ll see this window – this means the Dropshipping Center is activated for you.
This is the most recommended and easiest way to activate the AliExpress Dropshipping Center. However, if it doesn’t work for you for some reason, there are more ways to activate it.
Alternative ways to activate the AliExpress Dropshipping Center:
- Order a lot of products.
If you start placing many orders, AliExpress will think that you’re a dropshipper and will offer you to use more tools.
- Install the Shopify DSers app.
After you install the DSers app, link it to AliExpress. Once your AliExpress account is connected and authorized, the Dropshipping Center tab will be activated for you.
Check this video for the step-by-step instructions:
Here’s how to access your Dropshipping Center
If everything goes well, you’ll have a new section under your profile named “Dropshipping Center.” However, if it’s not there for one reason or another, simply bookmark this page in your browser for quick and easy access. It will take you to the Dropshipping Center whenever you need it.
What tools does the AliExpress Dropshipping Center contain?
The AliExpress Center has two main tools to help you to start selling:
- Product search tool (“Find Products to sell”).
- AliExpress Product Analysis tool.
Product search tool (“Find Products to sell”)
The AliExpress Dropshipping Center offers three ways for merchants to find new products:
- Search Hot Selling products.
- Search by image.
- Search Sponsored Products.
Let’s analyze how to use these features in more detail.
#1. Search Hot Selling products
As the name implies, this feature allows you to find trending products in AliExpress. You can search for items by typing their names.
If you’re not sure what you’re looking for yet, you can also browse hot selling products by category. It’s a great way to discover your dropshipping niche, too.
For example, let’s say you’re thinking of dropshipping clothes.
If you’re into an active lifestyle, you can choose Sports & Entertainment. You’ll see that it has more subcategories, such as Camping & Hiking, which can also be narrowed down to Hiking Clothing. You may also come across related subcategories, such as Camp Sleeping Gear, and realize that this is what you want to sell! Let’s imagine this is the case.
After clicking on Camp Sleeping Gear, you get to see all the hot selling products in this niche.
You can sort the search results according to these parameters:
- Price: the cost of the product.
- DS Price: a special price for dropshippers who have reached a certain level. For example, when you reach the C level, you get a 2% discount.
- Orders: orders from consumers.
- DS Orders: the number of dropshipper requests.
- Rating.
- Sales Performance.
- Actions: you can click through to analyze the product you’re interested in. This button will take you to the second tool of the AliExpress Dropshipping Center – Product Analysis. This is what you see when you click on it:
We talk more about this feature later in this article.
To narrow down your search results, refer to the options on the top of the dashboard:
You can filter products by:
- country;
- “ship from” and “ship to”;
- delivery time;
- price.
You can also choose to only look through products that have an Exclusive DS Price. These are exclusively discounted products that AliExpress sellers provide.
There’s also an option to filter the products which offer ePacket or Free Shipping. Plus, you can also only view products that have videos.
#2. Search by image
The second feature in the “Find products to sell” section lets you look for products by uploading an image.
Here’s a cool trick how you can source trending products at a lower price with this feature.
Let’s first go to Amazon Best Sellers to see what’s trending among shoppers.
To give you an example, we checked what’s trending in the Amazon Best Sellers’ Health & Beauty category. We found this cool jade roller sold together with another trendy beauty item – the gua sha tool.
Since you can’t save images directly from Amazon to your computer, we simply took a screenshot of the main product image.
We then uploaded the screenshot to the Search by Image tab in the AliExpress Dropshipping Center and this is what we saw:
The AliExpress Dropshipping Center gave us tons of results for the same product at much lower prices than on Amazon!
This means we’ve found a trending item in a specific niche that you can source from AliExpress for a small price and sell with a markup on your store.
You can also use the AliExpress image search whenever you see something cool on your competitor’s store and wonder for how much you could get that item for your store.
It’s a pretty neat feature that can save you a lot of time!
#3. Search Sponsored Products
This is the third product research feature that the AliExpress Dropshipping Center offers. In this section, you can see sponsored products from the AliExpress suppliers.
Each store gets up to three cards with their products that you can click on. You can also see the store’s rating, based on customer reviews. Use this opportunity to find new AliExpress suppliers that are motivated to do their job well!
If you want to, you can also sort the sponsored products according to their category:
You have the same dropdown as you saw in the Hot Selling products section. So, if you’re looking for product ideas, you can use this feature for inspiration, too.
AliExpress Product Analysis tool
This is the second tool that you can find on the AliExpress Dropshipping Center. There are two ways how you can use the Product Analysis tool:
- You can access it when you want to analyze a product from a Hot Selling Products list:
- You can also click straight on the Product Analysis tab in your dashboard:
You’ll see this window:
When you see a product you like on AliExpress, you can simply copy and paste its URL into the “Product URL” section.
Here’s what you can do with this tool:
Check the Sales Volume of the product
The Sales Volume is an index ranging between 0 and 100. The higher the number, the more sales suppliers make for their products.
A graph will show you the Sales Volume over a period of time. You’ll be able to tell how popular the product is and make a data-based decision if you should go for selling it. This way, you can be sure that you base your business decisions on the actual buyers’ behavior rather than vague assumptions.
PRO TIP: make sure to check the Sales Volume data from more than one supplier. It’s very common for many different suppliers to be selling the same product. Thus, to have an accurate view of a particular product’s popularity, you need to compare the data from multiple suppliers.
Check the Logistics Reliability
You can also find out how reliable the logistics of the supplier is. In other words, you can see how likely it is that the product you’re interested in selling will be delivered on time.
This is an important metric to take into account.
No matter how great the product is, if your supplier is not reliable, your disappointed customers may hurt your store’s image by leaving negative reviews on your social media. So, make sure to check the Logistics Reliability to find suppliers that are trustworthy and deliver their products on time!
How to use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center for your store
Now that you know everything about the AliExpress Dropshipping Center tools let’s make sure you have a vision on how to use them to increase your sales.
1. Find new products to sell for FREE
AliExpress Dropshipping Center is free to use. This is great if you’re just starting your dropshipping business and don’t want to spend too much on it until you start making a solid profit. Take advantage of this tool and find new products easily!
2. Understand the trends
In the Hot Selling section, you can find products that are trending now on AliExpress. You can use this feature to check what’s selling in your niche. And if you’re not sure about your direction yet, you can also go category by category to generate ideas and see what suits you the best.
3. Find trusted suppliers
No matter how great the product is, if the supplier doesn’t deliver on time, you’ll be having a lot of troubles with your customer service. Use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to check the suppliers’ ratings to see if they’ll make good business partners. The ratings are based on customer reviews, so you can be sure they’re accurate.
4. Do product analysis
Once you find the products you like, you can use the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to analyze them. For example, you can check the sales volume of different products to choose the best one for your store. You’ll have to analyze the products one by one, but you can make print screens of the data and copy-paste them in your product research plan for easy comparison.
5. Find products by pictures
Saw a cool product while scrolling on your Facebook feed or anywhere else on the web? Save its image or make a print screen and upload it to the Search by Image section. AliExpress Dropshipping Center will use its AI to analyze the image and find the corresponding product (or multiple products) in its database for you to sell!
6. Analyze your competitors
Been wondering how much your competitors may be making? Or how to get the items they’re selling? Use the Search by Image feature as described in the tip before. Write down the price of the products you’re interested in and calculate their approximate profit margin. See if you can outperform your competition with the same products by offering a lower price or upping your marketing game.
Add apps to the AliExpress Dropshipping Center
Finally, don’t forget to check out the last tab in the AliExpress Dropshipping Center - Apps.
There are three apps available:
- DSers
- ANTDIY
- Topdser
All three apps can help you do pretty much the same things:
- import products from AliExpress to your store;
- help with order fulfillment;
- and more.
Pick the app you like the most and automate your dropshipping business!
Does dropshipping from AliExpress work?
Yes, it does. AliExpress and dropshipping go together like peanut butter and jam!
Dropshipping from AliExpress is a profitable business model that many aspiring entrepreneurs use to make money online. With more and more merchants opening their dropshipping stores, the competition is bigger than before. However, this only means you have to up your game, not to quit it.
Why dropshipping from AliExpress works
- It’s very easy to start
It’s almost effortless to start dropshipping with AliExpress. You don’t have to pay upfront to start using the platform, so you can start testing out products to figure out your niche right away.
- You can source products at low prices
Vendors on AliExpress are sourcing their products from Chinese manufacturers. For this reason, you can find products on AliExpress at a much lower price than on other marketplaces like Amazon or eBay. Find cheap products with a high margin potential and sell them at US prices and make a big profit.
Once you’ve found the right products to sell, work on differentiating your store in your niche. Invest in a product photoshoot, write original product descriptions, and find a branding angle that will work on impulse buyers.
FAQ
What is the AliExpress Dropshipping Center?
It’s a tool that AliExpress created to help merchants find winning products more efficiently. You can analyze trending products in different categories and find trusted suppliers with a few clicks.
Can I dropship from AliExpress?
Yes, anyone can dropship from AliExpress, and it’s a very straightforward process. You simply need to set up your account, and you can start looking for suppliers! There’s no upfront fee, which means you can test out different products at ease.
Is the AliExpress Dropshipping Center free?
Yes, the AliExpress Dropshipping Center is free. You don’t have to pay a penny even if you use another platform for dropshipping!
How to activate the Dropshipping Center on Aliexpress?
You can unlock the Dropshipping Center on AliExpress in a few simple steps:
- Log in to your AliExpress account.
- Go to this link: https://home.aliexpress.com/dropshipper/ds_center.htm
- Accept the terms and conditions.
- Enter your name.
That’s it! You’ll see a window saying that the AliExpress Dropshipping Center is activated – you can start using it right away.
How do I access AliExpress dropshipping center?
Once you activate the AliExpress Dropshipping Center, you’ll have a new tab under your profile. However, if it doesn’t appear for some reason, you can get to the AliExpress Dropshipping Center by clicking here. Bookmark this page in your browser for quick and easy access.
How do I start a dropshipping business on AliExpress?
There are three main steps you need to take to join a dropshipping program on AliExpress:
- Choose a product niche for your business. Ideally, it should relate to your hobbies or interests so you can create great content.
- Find winning products using the AliExpress Dropshipping Center
- Make a list of questions to ask suppliers.
- Choose the best suppliers and make arrangements with them.
- Set up your online store (we recommend using Shopify).
- Promote your store with automated Facebook ads to get your first customers.
BONUS: a list of trending products in 2021
We’ve got a little gift to you to help you get the most from the AliExpress Dropshipping Center!
In our blog post, we’ve gathered a list of 21 best-selling products online in 2021. We’ve explained why these items are hot and gave marketing tips tailored specifically for each product. Also, check this dropshipping marketing guide for more tips!
So, take a look at our list, write down the products that fit your desired dropshipping niche, and go straight to the AliExpress Dropshipping Center to find the best suppliers for your store.
2022 is looking great if you’re using AliExpress for dropshipping – don’t miss your chance to build a profitable business!
