[TUTORIAL] Taobao Dropshipping explained

Woodi said:

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:

Spoiler: Product Image you found

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.

Spoiler: Reverse image search photo

Reverse image search photo

To visit a taobao store from a product page, you need to click on this :

Spoiler: To visit a full store 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...

Spoiler: Full store

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

Spoiler: Add the seller to chat

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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Jay423 said:

Thank you for sharing. I've used Taobao a lot but never thought about using it with dropshipping. It seems like a great place to establish relationships with manufacturers if you don't mind communicating in Chinese.

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