Jopeyes
Supreme Member
- Aug 23, 2016
- 1,369
- 542
Ever ran across that Chinese marketplace "Taobao" but had no idea how to use it? I will explain to you how I found success in dropshipping with this giant Chinese marketplace.
Why use Taobao over Aliexpress?
Taobao isn't as easy as Aliexpress for dropshipping, but their giant marketplace is great, and there is a lot of products on Taobao that can not be found anywhere on the Internet. The prices are relatively cheap, but not necessarily cheaper than Aliexpress, it may be for some products though. There are many products on taobao that are absoluetly unique and that aren't sold on aliexpress, Ebay, amazon or anywhere except from China, which is why Taobao is great for dropshipping.
How to find Products on Taobao?
Finding products on taobao isn't the easiest thing to do since the whole site is in Chinese, even with google chrome's translator, it's hard to understand.
Let's say you find this product photo on the Internet and you'd want to dropship it:
A simple search on taobao like "Dog supreme" will often not find you anything, so this is where you use the Reverse Image search option of Taobao.
How to use Reverse Image Search On Taobao
Using Reverse Image search is very simple, all you got to do is click on the small camera icon in the search bar as seen here:
In this case, when searching up this photo, you come up with 2 different product pages for the product, which is 2 different stores.
Reverse image search photo
To visit a taobao store from a product page, you need to click on this :
You now got yourself a great store which you can dropship all these products from, one that is exclusive and not saturated because this product is not on aliexpress...
How to Contact the store Owner?
To get in contact with the store owner, you will need to download Aliwangwang, the Taobao chat. To add them on aliwangwang, you need to click on any of these 2 blue Icons:
This is the link to download Aliwangwang (taobao chat) https://alimarket.taobao.com/markets/qnww/portal-group/ww/index
After click on this you will be redirected to the chat, a lot of sellers do not speak any english and they don't know what dropshipping is. You need to build a relationship with the seller, even though he doesn't speaker english at all. All (most) of the sellers are very friendly (Once, a seller invited me to China to live with him, and he didn't speak english). Obviously, translator is a must, if he doesn't speak english he might type in Chinese and you'll need to translate what he says. After establishing a relationship with the seller, I highly recommend adding him on Wechat. Wechat is the only "Social media" in China and everyone use it, I believe Wechat web version also have a translator implemented(or you can implement one somehow). Adding him on wechat will make things easier. From there you will need to convince the seller about the opportunities in dropshipping and the amount of sales you can bring to him... From there you will need to convince him to do business with you, you might need to explain that you need to use E-Packet shipping, surprisingly, a lot of these guys don't know E-packet
Alternative to dealing with the seller directly
An alternative to dealing with the seller directly is using a China Middleman like Superbuy. They act as a middleman, they buy the product from the seller and ships it for a fee. (http://superbuy.com/)
I do not recommend using a middleman because their shipping is usually much higher than what you would pay dealing directly with the seller, but it is a safer method.
Good luck on your Taobao dropshipping journey!
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