Lesson Details:
February 15, 2020
Video Transcription: Now it's time to learn more about Alibaba if you plan on importing products internationally and going through the wholesaling route Alibaba by far is the best database that you can use it's completely through sorry it's completely free and it has tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of wholesalers that you can get in contact with so when you're looking for wholesalers on Alibaba there's a few things you want to look for and first of all you want to look for creditable suppliers in other words is there a supplier that you can trust you also want to look at the price per unit what is each unit cost you and that way you can come up with your profit margin if you know the true cost for each item you're behind and then there's the minimum order or the mo q and mo q stands for minimum order quantity and it's the least amount you have to order in order to do business with a wholesaler so let's say that a wholesaler has an mo Q of 50 what they're saying is you have to order at least 50 of their products otherwise they're not going to do business with you you also want to know how much does it cost for a product sample and that's because before you place a large order with a wholesaler you always want to order a sample first and that will make sure that you know the product that you're getting before you invest a lot of money and you also want to ask them can they ship to your location wherever it is that you live at and lastly it's very important that you make sure that they're willing to take on the shipping responsibilities.
So if you're importing from China or internationally you have no idea what shipping companies to use in that country and you don't want to have to deal with customs and tariffs so you want to make sure that the wholesaler is going to do that for you and if you ask them they will tell you whether or not they do that and it may cost extra but it's definitely worth it because it will save you a ton of time and hassle so here's some general Alibaba tips it's completely free to make an account and once you create an account you can send as many messages as you like so don't worry about sending too many messages you're not committing anything if just a message asking for more information and you are really looking for a fit so you're looking for a business that is gonna make money off you and you're gonna make money selling their product so if you find the right supplier at Alibaba it is a win-win situation and like I mentioned in the previous slides you always want to order a sample first and that's extremely important and I know you might not want to spend that money for a sample upfront but it can save you a lot of money before you place that big order and I actually have made this mistake where I placed the big order for $350 without ordering a sample first and the product was not the one in the picture and I couldn't sell it so I just had to throw it away so that was very frustrating and it would have been avoided if I had ordered a sample first so now let's take a look at Ali Baba's website so to get there you simply type in Alibaba in the top bar and this is it so you have two options here one is if you don't have an idea of the type of product you want to import you can browse through the categories and the second is if you know what you want to you're looking for you can search for it.
So let's say we're looking for men's rings and the first thing you want to do right off the bat is check the gold supplier check on site check and check assess appliers and this really just helps us make sure we're dealing with credible suppliers so that doesn't mean that all these suppliers are really great necessarily but it does mean that they have been checked for quality and they meet certain criteria now you have another option which is a new one which is trade assurance and the idea is suppliers that have been certified with trade assurance have order quality and timely shipment so that's a great option to check but the problem is since it's so Neal not that many suppliers have this certification so as you can see here right now there's five thousand products listed when we click on trade assurance we know we're getting even higher quality suppliers but there's only 117 products available so what I'd recommend is you check this off look through these suppliers and you don't find a product or supplier that's a good fit for you then you can uncheck trade assurance and you're still dealing with good suppliers most likely but for this example let's just click that and then you can scroll down see if you find something that looks like a good fit for you now it's really interesting to notice we typed in men's rings put most of the products here actually aren't men's rings and the reason I think that is it's just because of this trade assurance thing so if we uncheck that we get much more specific results so this looks like an interesting ring and it's showing the price as a dollar in twenty cents to ten dollars per ring which is very seems very crazy but we can find out more by clicking on it and that's because a lot of times these prices are actually not very accurate and even the minimum order quantity the best way to get accurate information is to contact the supplier directly and most often they'll give you a price list where you can see exactly how much to pay for any of their products and don't be scared away by that hundred pieces minimum order because like I said it's actually in most cases a lot lower than 100 and the only way to find that information is to contact the supplier directly but keep in mind is completely free to request more information so you can send as many of those messages out as you'd like so let's say you don't have an idea of what type of products you want to sell and that's where the categories come in handy so this is a great wage is just explore different types of products so one area that I go to a lot is the gift sports and toys and you can either click on this or get even more specific and let's say bamboo crafts and here you can just look for interesting products that you might want to import and although the prices and always accurate it gives you an idea of what you can expect to pay so this is just a great way for you to explore Alibaba and find profitable products and like I said there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of suppliers which also means tens to hundreds of thousands of different products so you'll never run out of products that you can find here it's a great way to find niche products.
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