$800/week Etsy + AliExpress/Alibaba

Syzpe

Registered Member
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
81
Reaction score
111
For the past little while I've been doing this method and since I figured out a new twist to scale it up I figured I'd release the basic method - it's been earning me on average about $800/week in Etsy. After all my costs about half of that is profit.

Step 1:

Create an Etsy account and start a shop - you should name it some like [XXXX]Boutique, or FairTrade[XXXX] try and play up the one off novelty factor because girls love that. Here is a sample shop I've created for the purpose of this tutorial:

iURWOcG


Step 2:

Go to AliExpress and type in things like "Africa" or "bead bracelet" "fair trade" and sort by price. Look for items that don't look like total crap. A great example is these:

O9C5SMy


The earings look fairly fancy and could easily be something that is sold in a nice boutique. They have a high quality image where they are nicely displayed and they only cost $1.29 a pair! Download that picture and return to etsy!

Step 3:

Add the items into your shop and set your base price to something roughly $30 - $39 dollars and then set shipping to $10 US, $25 rest of the world. Even if your item is super cheap to ship people charge so much for shipping on Etsy that it isn't a problem. This price range works for most trinkets and still keeps you competitive, however you may want to research what the rest of the market is selling these objects for.

When listing it consider saying it is "hand crafted" "rare" or "vintage". Play up the materials it is made out of. If in doubt you can get creative with your wording. The earrings are "silver leaf earrings" as they are silver in color but actually not made of silver.

UeeJZvy


When a user places an order ship the item from AliExpress to you. (If this is your first time getting that particular item consider taking high quality photos of the object so you can re-list it on Etsy with new unique pictures). Repackage the object and ship it to the customer. Your RoI on an item is massive and the shipping is covered so you can usually ship it express which will help get positive feedback.

Step 4
Now it's time to promote. To start I would use Pinterest (pinterest bots work great), as well as Facebook groups interested in fashion or fair trade products. Once you get 1-2 sales I'd start spending on Facebook advertisements which I found to be rather effective. Things like Reddit/Stumbleupon may work as well, I've never really tried organic traffic on this method since paid traffic was quick and working great. My average CPS was around $5 - $7 per customer and my average profit per item is over $20. On an average week right now I am selling 18 - 23 products across all my listings. A few tweaks I've made in my newest test store are starting to increase this average so play around and get creative.

Tips
-If an object isn't selling try dropping the price by 10% and relisting, experiment a bit to find out where the right price mark is.
-Get familiar with Etsy SEO - (This link is a good one http://www.workyourart.com/guide/etsy-seo/)
-Blog posts of "Ten great fair trade items on Etsy" or Pinterest posts are a great way to drive traffic. On Etsy affluent females age 17-40 are your primary market.
-It costs $0.20 per item you list and $0.20 every time you relist it, so be careful in your selections only pick high quality.
-That being said numbers are important this is a game of quantity to beat the searches one you make $200+ a week hire a virtual assistant to start bulk adding goods while you promote
-Try and keep a theme to your shop, new theme should be a new shop. You can send out emails to your previous buyers or even invite them to a Facebook page and promote new items in the same niche to them. About 12% of my sales come from repeat buyer advertising
-Consider Facebook advertising the margins on these products are really high so you have a great CPA. The BHW service by Abradabra is great (http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...s-visitors-app-installs-cents-via-facebo.html)
-If you have the money to invest buy your product in bulk to cut down on shipping costs, and buy it in advanced to cut down on shipping times to your customers.
-Throw in a business card with your shipment that has your store name and links to a Facebook page and your store.

Beyond that I'm afraid we've tapped out my knowledge so far of Etsy, I am sure there are people who are far better at organic traffic and at Etsy selling than I am. So experiment with their concepts and see how you can bring it to Etsy to earn on these high margin items.
 
From 1.29$ to 38.11$ ?

Great method but wouldn't recommend to make the price that high :)
 
From 1.29$ to 38.11$ ?

Great method but wouldn't recommend to make the price that high :)

Go ahead and check Etsy for Silver earnings. That price is fairly reasonable for a design like this:

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=silve..._kncPiO5gAXi4eKZmBFAnF1hVEYYF88kWCRoCYeDw_wcB

Plus the aim is to start selling high and lower the price as time goes on if you need too, but you do want to make sure you are selling at the highest margin possible. Plenty top sellers are priced way higher for simple earrings:

lr3PV2Z

(bonus points for the bad photoshop)

The point is that Etsy is a site filled with affluent females who overpay for products and you can bulk buy them on AliExpress and flip them. It works great.
 
Why Etsy and not eBay? There doesn't seem to be much happening on etsy.
 
Last edited:
As of November 2013 (most recent stats I could find) they were doing $147 million a month in Sales. There is plenty happening on Etsy. You could go list these items on Ebay, but on Etsy people are used to homemade/handmade goods and often pay a much higher amount for it.

https://blog.etsy.com/news/2013/etsy-statistics-november-2013-weather-report/

Ah right so theres only a certain type of item that sells on there? It's because i searched 'bike pump' and got pretty much nothing.
 
Ah right so theres only a certain type of item that sells on there? It's because i searched 'bike pump' and got pretty much nothing.

Yeah its craft goods, jewelry and clothes.
 
That's a nice method but for example if you live outside USA when you buy from aliexpress and for example the item is from China or USA to ship to Europe it will take so much time. I guess your method only works for USA related ...or I'm wrong?
 
That's a nice method but for example if you live outside USA when you buy from aliexpress and for example the item is from China or USA to ship to Europe it will take so much time. I guess your method only works for USA related ...or I'm wrong?

Shipping from China to Europe should be faster than shipping China to US. Plus people on Etsy are used to large turn around times. Just increase your working time to 3-4 weeks from date of purchase on Etsy so that people know it will take a bit. You can tell them it is because the item is made to order.
 
How long have you been doing this? You mentioned etsy seo, and I've been using something like this to help me get more exposure/sales.
 
How long have you been doing this? You mentioned etsy seo, and I've been using something like this to help me get more exposure/sales.

Good call on the exposure technique!

I've been doing this for about 3 months now, but only started scaling up over the last month and a half
 
You are going to get slammed hard on bad feedback on Etsy. I have done tens of thousands of dollars of sales on Etsy and the biggest hurdle over there is getting that product to them as fast as possible. They will kill your accounts with negative feedback.

When buyers purchase on Etsy they want it fast (like you are Amazon).... they start getting pissed if it isn't there in a few days.... so the whole idea of getting it shipped from a 3rd world country, waiting weeks, getting it, repackaging and then reshipping isn't going to fly very well on Etsy.
 
You are going to get slammed hard on bad feedback on Etsy. I have done tens of thousands of dollars of sales on Etsy and the biggest hurdle over there is getting that product to them as fast as possible. They will kill your accounts with negative feedback.

When buyers purchase on Etsy they want it fast (like you are Amazon).... they start getting pissed if it isn't there in a few days.... so the whole idea of getting it shipped from a 3rd world country, waiting weeks, getting it, repackaging and then reshipping isn't going to fly very well on Etsy.

I bulk buy in advanced and ship directly - the suggestion of reshipping is just for those without startup capital.
 
Awesome method!

However:

db428ab1cd6562cc2aceefc4ef9f51c2.png

Do you just say that you made it yourself in this section?
 

Attachments

  • 15269db80a585f835f40b6d310a26fef.png
    15269db80a585f835f40b6d310a26fef.png
    6.6 KB · Views: 384
Wow, I may have to actually look into this one more. It seems like you may actually have something. With a few tweaks, it might be a goldmine!
 
Good method. Funny because I was thinking of doing something like this recently.
 
Back
Top