How to Ship from China Fast and Use U.S.A Fulfillment Centers (Shopify Dropshipping Logistics)

alright, guys. so we're just gonna get straight into this one, because this is going to be all about logistiks. so we're gonna be covering how to ship from China, how to do it in the most efficient way, but also I'm gonna be covering the US fulfillment centers, 3pls, and how to actually buy in bulk, ship to us fulfillment center and make it cheaper than even using an agent shipping from China. but I'll also be covering agents shipping from China, because it is important when you want to ship international. so I'm going to be covering all of that in this video. I promise you, a lot of these strategies are probably not ones that you've used before, and it took a lot of testing and headache in order for me to figure this out, so I'm just gonna share with you guys. so let's get started. oh wait, wait, guys, there's a big announcement: the 48-hour sail for the 2.0 course is officially launching on the 26th, which is less than a week. this is very exciting. this is going to be the biggest sale and by far the best opportunity to get inside the program. this is actually gonna be three courses in one: everything about Google Ads, step-by-step a-to-z, everything about Facebook ads, and there's gonna be multiple live case studies. so literally everything is going to be step by step. it is absolutely packed, but I'm going to be covering that towards the end of this video, so let's get into it, alright, guys. so the first method is we're gonna be utilizing Aliexpress, but using VIP listings. this is how you can actually get cheaper prices than what's listed on Aliexpress and you can get faster shipping of around 7 to 15 days. so it's very powerful. but the best part is that there's no risk. you don't have to make any commitments, and you can literally do this with every product you test. so let me show you how I do it. so let's imagine we wanted to sell this Bluetooth speaker right here. we see that it's trending. especially consumer electronics in general do absolutely crazy over q4, but we look right now and we see that it's doing pretty well, so maybe we want to test products like this now. the strategy here is actually we need three different suppliers that sell this product. so we're going to go ahead and find three different suppliers and once we do, I want to look through and see what shipping options the suppliers already use. so for this one, for example, is already using a last-mile shipping or claiming that they ship from United States. now, whenever you see this, what's really happening is, yes, they're shipping from China, but they're using a premium service. so, whether that's Yun Express or SF Express, yeah, it ships from China, but then the last mile delivery carrier is either with FedEx or USPS, where your package actually looks like it came from somewhere in the United States. but what helps me that each supplier is actually by sending them this script. so this is the script and I'm just gonna leave it below, but each part of this covers a different problem that you might run into when you're testing off of Aliexpress or using a new supplier in general, for example, asking him for past tracking numbers. this really kind of just gives you the cheat sheet right away, like you could see, like, okay, what is their actual shipping time. but also, what this does is if they reply and they give you a detailed reply. that's another big checkmark for me, because now I see that they're interested and they're willing to kind of put in a little bit of work, which means you know when you're giving them orders and whatnot. maybe they'll have a high chance of being very diligent, okay. so this is the script that I use and so, based off of the replies, I'll usually have one or two suppliers that I like know. the second or third step- whatever step we're on right now- is now to go ahead and start sending orders. so we can't do the VIP listing just yet. we have to get to at least around seven orders per day and then, once we start creeping up to about ten orders per day, then we message them and now we bring up the VIP listing. so, first of all, what is a VIP listing and second of all, how do we do it? so first, a VIP listing is actually just this. it's a hidden listing that no one else knows except you and your supplier. the benefit of this is for a couple things. first, now you have a really close relationship with your supplier, where now they know every single order that you put on. this hidden listing is only between you and that supplier. the second thing is it's not going to increase the order count like publicly for everyone else to see if this is a good or bad product, which is very important now. the third thing is this is when you can now have upgraded shipping. so this is where you can approach your supplier and say: hey, look, if I hit twenty orders per day or 15 orders per day? can we do $5 instead of $6 per unit? and also, can you give me a quote for how much shipping would be if we Yeun express, if we used SF Express, if we used a packet? so you can get a quote on all those different shipping lines and they will tell you. and now it's all built into one listing and it's very simple to fulfill. in fact, what I like to do to fulfill all these orders is I actually like to use DSS. this is a very good automated system and it's one of the cheaper options out there. so this is a very important process and this is gonna make just drop shipping very reliable and this is absolutely no risk to you. you don't have to buy anything up front still, but you're still able to leverage almost like you have an agent. okay, so this is how we can start testing and remember: the reason why I like this strategy is because I only do this when I'm getting about 10 to 20 orders per day, because after that then I go and I transition into an agent. so this is the next thing I want to cover now. getting an agent is very important. you don't want to scale on aliexpress, and you don't even really want to scale on other platforms that try to automate the process for you, such as a pro low or CJ drop shipping. you don't want to scale on those platforms. you want to have as little links in the chain and make sure that you're as close to the supplier as possible. now an agent is still going to act like a middleman, but now it's only you, the agent, and then direct to a supplier. so you will be getting a very good price and the agent will already have a very streamlined process for shipping. they have the warehouse, they have the logistiks kind of setup. however, it is very tough to just go and find one agent and be like: yep, this is it, because you always have to test and see how you like the agent, and that can be very tiresome. so I'm actually just going to give you guys the two agents that I do recommend. one is just very cost efficient and is Chinese native. the other one is not Chinese native and just has really good English and a better process in my opinion. but whether or not you guys want to use either or it doesn't matter, I'm gonna leave them in the private Facebook group and I'll just be sending out an email kind of giving a detailed structure on both of them, because the one that offers really good pricing I did scale to 250 K a month and it was fine, but you know there's there's pros and cons to both of them. so that's what I'm going to kind of do to answer that question, because they're really it's. it's not that easy to find a very liable agent. okay, all right. so here is the next thing that we're gonna be covering- and I know this was a very popular question. I want to cover three pls, or USA fulfillment centers. especially if you have a lot of your orders in the us, let's just say over 50%. you're gonna find this very useful and I've been able to save a ton of money and actually make a lot more as far as profit margin by only shipping from the US and getting all my stok in bulk in the US, and I've been able to do it with very low risk. so let me kind of read off the cons, though and benefits, and then I'll cover exactly: how do we buy in bulk, what is the process on Alibaba and how do we get that into the us warehouse and what.

Ecommerce Shipping and Fulfillment: A Complete Guide

if there's one thing that makes ecommerce well e-commerce, it's shipping. whether you're a small mom-and-pop e-com store or the behemoth itself, amazon, the shipping part of the equation is one of the most important pieces to have figured out. hey everyone, my name is dan. i'm a co-founder of unbound merino, an e-commerce business built right here on shopify. when we launched back in 2016, the first major challenge we had was the complexity that surrounded the shipping of our products. there are so many things to consider in order to have a sound shipping strategy- from costing to pricing, to product packaging, to shipping carriers, tracking and insurance. so sit back, grab your notepad, because today i'm going to share some pointers and considerations that i wish i knew when we were in the early stages of launching our business, and for more simple, actionable tips to grow your online business. make sure you subscribe to learn with shopify so you don't miss out on future releases. [Music]. the first thing you're going to want to consider with shipping, it's, quite obviously, the shipping rates the customer is going to pay, because the cost of shipping, from a customer's perspective, that can make or break the sale. as with everything, i always encourage entrepreneurs to get out of their own heads and into the customers think like them. it's simple advice, but it's important to consider their shopping experience from their perspective. so imagine you're a customer on your own website and you love what you see. you do some research, you read the product page, you bookmark the site and you keep coming back and you're finally ready to pull the trigger and make that purchase. the price of shipping is the final thing the customer has to agree to before hitting that order button. so what are you going to charge? they're going to pass the whole price of shipping onto the customer, so they pay the full amount themselves. or are you going to have a flat rate like 5 or 10, when the shipping cost to you is maybe 7, 10 or even thirty dollars? or you can offer free shipping and eat the cost yourself, or maybe you'll bake the shipping price into your product price. make no mistake about it: shipping rates are a strategic decision and you need to find the balance between keeping your sale profitable and the customer happy. and in the world of amazon prime, many customers have come to have incredibly high expectations around what they can expect as far as shipping goes, and you can take bezos for that one before you really know how to make the decision about what your customer shipping rates are going to be, you obviously have to figure out how much it costs you to ship, and to understand this, you need to know how your orders are going to be packaged, how much it weighs, the dimensions of the package and, of course, where it's going. now, because shopify has so many great apps to help with shipping this whole piece, it's quite easy. it just takes a bit of setup and you're off to the races. what you're going to want to do is find a shipping app that works for you. there are many, and many of them are good, but if you want a recommendation from us at unbound mourinho, we use desktop shipper. it's a good one. the way desktop shipper and many of these other apps on the market work is you input the box or packaging dimensions into the back end just once, and each product on your store will have its weight input into the system as well. once you have all this information loaded in the back end, the app you're using will calculate the shipping price automatikally when you select the packaging you're using to ship it, and combines it with the total weight of all the products that you put into that package. simply said, you don't need to weigh your package each time you're printing a shipping label. it's totally automated. you just select the box you're using and desktop shipper will print you a label. from one of the many carriers via usps, canada post, fedex, dhl or whatever they have great rates, you can take advantage of print the label yourself using a label printer stik. the label on the box. you're good to go. the thing to consider when it comes to shipping is, in theory. it seems more simple than it really is. and it is simple. but until you're actually shipping products, it's hard to know where the bottlenecks will be and how much it's going to cost you to get a label on that box. but there's only one way to start learning and that's to start shipping packages. you'll find efficiency as you go, but to help you get started, we have compiled the list of shipping calculators with e-commerce shipping rates for some of the largest and most popular shipping couriers. find those links in the description below this video so you can begin comparing pricing and options. so once you're set up and able to print shipping labels, it's time to revisit the shipping price question. you know how much it cost to ship a package in your own city, across the country and overseas. but how much do you charge the customer? this is a fun decision to make and an important one. remember. your customers will have high expectations of you when it comes to great shipping options at good prices and most of the time, they don't want to pay at all. hey, it's part of the game, and even though it can cost you a lot to ship a product your customer, they likely won't empathize with you. so what's your strategy going to be? can you offer free shipping by baking the shipping price into the product price? are your margins high, or is your cost of ship cheap enough that you can just eat the shipping cost yourself? or can you partially subsidize shipping so it's cheaper for the customer? maybe the shipping is free if your customer spends above a certain threshold. the reality is you want to offer shipping that is as fast and reliable as possible at as little a cost to your customers as possible. before finalizing your pricing, you should use a chart like this one to map out all the e-commerce costs associated with getting your product into your customers hands. like i said before, the only way to really start figuring it out is just to start shipping packages. get your packing materials together, set up a shipping station and just learn as you go. what i wish we did when we launched is do trial runs before we started shipping our actual product. if i could go back in time, i'd create fake packages that are similar size and a similar weight to what our real packages would look like and print real labels to test the whole process. i would have learned a lot about the steps and costs involved and would have been better set up to hit the ground running when it was time to ship real products. we made countless mistakes by not charging enough for our product to help cover the expensive shipping costs, not knowing how long packages take to ship overseas and not realizing how many great shipping apps were available on shopify. shopify truly makes it easy, but you gotta start to build your business's shipping practike. but there's one other option that many very successful shopify stores use very effectively, and that's using a third-party logistiks service or a 3pl. a 3pl is a place where you can store all of your inventory and when an order comes in, they will handle the entire shipping process for you. this sounds like a no-brainer, and for many shopify merchants it is, but there are pros and cons to letting another company take over the entire shipping fulfillment process for you. let's start with some of the pros. in some cases it could be even cheaper to use a 3pl. if the package you're shipping won't have multiple items in it, it likely would be cheaper to ship with the 3pl when you factor in the cost of having your own warehouse space, staff to handle shipments and the resources needed to deal with the trial and error of building your own fulfillment operation. but if you often ship packages with multiple items in the box, like we do, the pick and pack rates per order makes 3pls cost prohibitive. by pick and pack rate i mean the fee the 3pl charges.

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Dropship with USA Warehouse – Use USA Fulfillment Center (2-4 days fast Dropshipping!)

great to have you back again. we have a new episode. i'm very excited to inform you with some new news. i'm gonna get to that in a second. my name is simon, i'm from hyper sku and we're helping global online sellers with their shipping and china- and not just china anymore. now we can also ship from the usa. so that's for us. it's super exciting news and i want to share with all of you. but i want to first of all explain to you why is this an advantage for you? because it is. if you think about it, you're buying products in bulk, and if you buy build, you can get a better price. right, if you buy more, you get a better price. then if you ship in bulk, then the cost per item is also less, so you save money on the shipping. and third and last of all is that your consumers will get their parcels faster. these are very common sense examples. i'm sure that you already have thought about these advantages yourself as well, because i think you're smart enough to figure that out, but there are a few things that i want to share with you today that maybe you haven't considered, that i would like to explain on what is other advantages of using a usa warehouse. first of all, china is basically the supplier of the world, supply of the world. everything is available and a lot of new designs are available. working with a chinese supplier versus a us supplier will give you advantages on what is available. you get new products, new designs, new features that are available for you to start selling in the usa and therefore you can compete with us suppliers. then product cost: normally it is still cheaper to buy a product from china, even if you add the shipping cost versus a us supplier. then the customization: there is just more available on customization, more flexibility, normally lower moq to be able to get a design or get your brand, our logo, on the product. that is something that's getting more and more important because you want to build your brand. that's what most online sellers are doing and that brand is also not just only for the usa. your brand can be a global brand. have you ever thought about that? building your own global brand, no longer just selling in the usa, but even global, and still have having the advantages of a usa warehouse in combination with the china warehouse? that's quite awesome, right? because you basically buy and build and one part of the book is going to the usa- fast delivery and all the advantages that it has to offer- and part of it will stay in china and you use the china warehouse to ship out to the rest of the world, whether you're shipping to australia or the uk or canada or maybe even other parts of the of the world. it will be an advantage to make this combination, because you can buy bigger quantity at a better price and ship out from multiple warehouses. that's a huge advantage because then you can have a global image, your will, you will have a global brand. that's super exciting and we're super excited to actually help you achieve this goal. then. i think it's important because everyone- your consumers- will complain when it comes to the origin- ah, this product is coming from china, it's taking too long, i don't like the design. or they check the tracking number and see it's coming from china. when you have a usa warehouse, the tracking is no longer an issue because it will show the origin is the usa. that will be an advantage for you to also make it look like a global brand. so basically, we have explained the advantages for your business on making use of a usa warehouse. what i didn't really explain clearly enough, i think is when it comes to your shipping time. when you're using a warehouse from usa, it normally takes two to four days to the consumer. when you use chinese for supply, maybe seven to ten days, maximum two weeks. that's at least what we're offering, but there are times in a year where that's just not possible. i think if you have been drop shipping for some time now- at least half a year- you will know that peak seasons are going to be an issue when it comes to delivery time. peak season involves black friday, christmas, but also chinese new year can create a lot of issues for your consumers. on the supply, i heard a lot of dropshippers. they stopped their ads during q4, not because they didn't want to sell. it's because there was simply no supply or too slow supply. when you're in peak season it sometimes can take. it can take up to seven days or more for local delivery only. i'm not toking about china, but if you have a local order from usa warehouse to use a customer when you're shipping them from china, it will be more than two weeks. so the advantage for you will be there in q4 and actually q1 as well, when you- if you consider chinese new year, that's a big advantage that you have to consider when it comes to continue making use of the peak season and the benefits of the peak season. of course, it comes with a a risk, because you're buying the product in advance and you're paying for the shipping. to make use of this solution, we want to advise you a few things. if you want to make use of this, we suggest that you have already selling hundreds of products of this kind of sku before you start toking up. it simply makes more sense and cost efficiently. communication, timing, everything just makes more sense to do that when you have a winning product. that's super important that you have that. the other thing is your cash flow. you will have to have a positive cash flow to be able to consider this option, because you will have to wait the several weeks sometimes to be able before you get your first sale. so it's important to consider your cash flow and start planning. what stok would i need? what stok would i need to start selling and to start actually benefiting from this option? that's important when it comes to your benefits. it's just not it's only it's a holiday season, it's definitely customer loyalty. if your customer is happy, they will promote you, they will like you. they will make a comment. then you can continue to build your brand. so the question you might have is how, how to start? how can i get started? because i want to use, make use of the usa warehouse. basically, you have to contact our team. you have to say: this is the product that i want, this is the quantity i want, and i want to make use of the usa warehouse. we will create a build order for you. you will explain the cost, the delivery options you have, either by air or by c- and then you're getting. we will prepare to order. you pay for the order, the order will be purchased, will be shipped to overseas warehouse and once the stok is in the usa warehouse, it's all yours and ready to sell. if you have any other further question, which you probably will have, don't hesitate to contact us. go to the chat, go to our social media- i think we're everywhere by now: youtube, instagram, facebook, tiktok. just look us up there, leave a message or just comment below on this youtube video and i hope to see you on the next one. you.

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How To Use Dsers To Fulfill Orders - Shopify Dropshippng

what is going on, guys? Trey here and I'm back with another video providing you guys Drop Shipping knowledge. now, before we get started. we all know Q4 is getting around the corner. we're just days away before the quarter fourth season, and quarter four is the most profitable season for your drive shipping store, and one of the most important things you need to have is a great supplier fulfilling all your orders that you will be detaining during a quarter Four Season, and so in this video, I'll be toking about how to exactly fulfill a live order in the dsters app. guys, now, I did do another video about how to fulfill and navigate ndsers, but I'm going to be showing you guys a live example in this video. so make sure you guys stay tuned and watch the rest of the video before we get started. as you guys know, we put out these calls each and every single week regarding you guys Dropship and knowledge. so if you want to, guys going to go ahead and learn more DMS- the word due to at either underscore AC Hampton or at Supreme underscore Ecom on Instagram. now let's go and actually get into this video about how to fill an order through the azure's app. now, right here, you have just got your first order, congratulations. now you're wondering how do I actually fulfill these orders? well, step number one is actually go to the orders tab in your Shopify store right here. then you want to go and actually double check to see if your customer's information is correct and then they actually have provided you the payments. now make sure also as well, if there's any fraudulent activity going on. Shopify will notify you that there's been some fraud activities going on and they'll let you know that the risk is medium or high and what actions you need to take. for the next thing, then: make sure that order is correct. but right here I want to go ahead and scroll down, look to the right, see the shipping address, make sure it's correct information with the customer. and also, too as well, see right here it says: make sure the customer has actually got a confirmation email from ordering your product right here, and it should be sent, as you guys see right here. so now I have checked on the Shopify, now I want to go ahead and go to this app section right here and go to de-essers right here and click into it. now let's go and actually get into this app right here at dfsers. first things first. you're going to go and actually scroll down to where it says open orders. next, right here, you want to go and actually see a waiting order. then you scroll down. there has been no shipping method attached to this yet, so you have to actually go ahead and select the shipping method. so I'm going to go ahead and scroll down right here and click on shipping method. now, next one: there's gonna be a standard, there's trippy times, they're gonna be another shipping method from the seller and there's also going to be DHL. now you want to go and actually make sure you're selecting the free shipping option for your product right here, and I go ahead and click on confirm. now I actually have a shipping method attached to this partikular product. now the next thing, you want to actually go ahead and click on Save, because you don't want to lose any progress from this. so I click on Save and I click on order. now the next thing is you want to go ahead and make sure this is the correct order, make sure it's this correct product and the correct price, right. so now I have that and I click on confirm now why the order is being in place. next I'm going to go and actually go to a winning payment to the right tab, because you do have to pay for your product, guys. your constant Goods is from your supplier, so you have to go ahead and pay for your product. so then, what I want to go ahead and do: make sure this is the correct order, because if you have multiple orders it can get confusing. so make sure you're working with the correct order you have just received. so, right here, I have this order number, I click on this little check marks and I click on make payments. before I make a payment, you want to go to make sure you're logged into an AliExpress account. you can use the same exact email you have created when you made your Shopify store for your AliExpress accounts. but I already been logged in, as you guys see right here. so then, right here is paying a waiting payment. then I have to go and actually click on pay now and then total is 16.60. I go and actually hit the pay. I have option to go and add a card or I can have the option to go ahead and hit PayPal. if you have a PayPal account, which is highly suggested to your Shopify store, make sure you have the same exact PayPal account connected to your store to your express link so you can make sure you have the funds taken out or in into there. so then I have PayPal. I then click on PayPal and I go ahead and confirm the transaction of that order. so after I've made the payment, the next step is actually it will go to de-esser's avoiding shipment. so everything we have done and fulfilling that order is completed and you do not have to do anything else. now I definitely highly recommend that you're keeping up to date with some supporters, because we all know the quarter Four Season does get hectik. there's a lot of products and there's a lot of shipment and some things might get lost. this is why it's very important to make sure you have good communication with your supplier going forward, so make sure that your customers are happy and receiving their product on time as well. after you have made the payment right here, it will be going to the waiting shipment. once you actually have received this away any shipment, you actually have live tracking status of your product so you can go and provide real updates to your customer. so there hasn't any questions upon where their order is. this is a section you'll go and actually provide them with details once that has actually been shipped out, then it's going to go and actually say a way to fulfillment, which means once it's fulfilled, that means the customer has actually received the product. once the customer has them received their product, the next as it will say fulfilled. so that lets you know exactly not only have you gotten paid out, but then also too, as well, the partikular customers have received the product. now there might be some issues going on with some products, sometimes doing a few four qualities or shipment, and actually the answers will let you know exactly if it's been canceled or it has been a failed order. it'll let you know the customer's payment did not go through or essentially there's something going on with the shipping tracking. to let the customers know what is going on, the answers are going to provide you all the information with live updates as well. not only that: if any customer is asking for a refund or they're canceling orders, it will go and actually be presented in the answers tab right here about having a canceled order. not only that: if your customer is asking for an invoice, you want to actually go back to Shopify right here and then you want to go and actually hit more actions and then go and actually hit view order status so you can go ahead and give actually real updates and an invoice for your customers if they're asking for exactly. hey, I have not received confirmation of my order or it has not been sent to my email. you can also go ahead and actually provide them, emit a screenshot of the invoice and send to the email, or you can actually go ahead and go back to Shopify and scroll down and also resend the email that was actually sent to that partikular email so they can actually have another order confirmation just to make sure. now you also want to go ahead and just double check with the customer that they have actually received the information when you actually send the updated invoice to them right here and there. it does say now notification since, but you have to go and confirm with the customer so they are happy and you're getting great reviews for your partikular store. not only that,

Dropshipping vs Fulfillment | ShipHero

hello, welcome to another ship hero video. today we're going to cover the pros and cons of doing shipping yourself or using an outsourced service. so let's start with drop shipping. this is the one that we see a lot of right. so the first pro with drop shipping is: it's really easy to get up and running. with drop shipping, you don't really don't have to do anything. there are plenty of services out there where you can find products that are available to dropship. do a bit of marketing, create your own spin on it, list it. you can list it on ebay, you can create your own store and then any sales that you get for items that need to ship, they're just being drop shipped, so really easy to get up and running. another pro: it's minimal risk. so you're not having to go out and design product. you're not investing in inventory or product that you're shipping to a warehouse. you simply are just using one of the drop ship services and are drop shipping what you sell. so minimal risk, all right. so let's get into the cons of drop shipping. so the first big con is: you don't have control, so you are not in control of the shipping. you're not in control of how it shipped, the timing of what it shipped. so if you're trying to build a long-term brand with long-term value with your customers, you may have a problem with the amount or lack of control that you have around the items that are being shipped to your customers. this can result in late shipments, things not being shipped correctly, simply not having your branding. so that's a big part. another big con with drop shipping is the limited ability for you to generate revenue. so you're not going to make any money on shipping. you're not going to be making any money on value added services. you're simply taking a product, putting some markup on it and it's being drop shipped. drop shipping is relatively expensive compared to the getting the product yourself, sourcing it, doing the fulfillment yourself or using another service. obviously it's minimal risk and it's easy, but the downside is it's expensive. all right. so next up on our list is managing your own warehouse. so the number one pro on the list is you have full control so you can figure out your suppliers. you can replenish, purchase, inventory, import that, bring that into your warehouse. you are controlling everything. so that gives you a lot of ability to control how your brand is received and also all those levers that you have as far as revenue, how much you're spending on shipping, the optimization of how much you're spending on storage and fulfillment. you have full control of that. another big pro for managing your own warehouse- and a lot of brands do this for this reason- is you are controlling your brand experience. so you have a first-time customer or a repeat customer. you can treat those orders very differently. you can come out with different ways of promoting your products. you can come up with campaigns or sales and that can be translated into the warehouse itself. so say, if you have a campaign for buy one, get one free, your warehouse team will be able to work with that and you can ship those orders out. you have full control. that builds your brand. and then the final uh big pro- and again another big reason why a lot of e-commerce companies manage their own warehouse- um, you can fine-tune the shipping, use different shipping carriers. you can use shipping services such as shippo, connect those to your wms, say, if you're using shapiro wms for that- and you're able to rate, quote and find the cheapest label for every order that you ship out. so the ultimate goal would be that you're definitely not losing money on shipping and ultimately you're getting to a point where you're breaking even or just making a little bit on the shipping. so that's extra revenue, especially if you're doing volume. so now we're going to get into the cons of running your own warehouse. so the first obvious con is: it's a very different side of the business. do you have a warehouse, some kind of footprint for the warehouse? you have staff, you need processes and tiknology and all of that stuff. so another big con for running your own warehouse is the upfront investment. so again, real estate, people, equipment racking, purchasing, inventory, bringing that into the warehouse- all of these things require, in some cases, long-term commitment and in other cases, or most cases, money up front. and the final pro for running your own warehouse is it takes time. you're going to need to continue to invest and optimize and take what you learn and get it better. now most e-commerce companies that we work with, for obvious reasons on our sas side, are running their own warehouses and they are really good at it. they're able to take really good tiknology um, apply that with really good processes and their warehouses are shipping massive volumes every day and they do a fantastik job. they have lots of happy customers and they're able to generate good revenue from that, but it takes time and it takes skill. we can help, but you also need good people in your warehouse, so it just takes a bit more time than just say clicking on something and reselling it, all right. so next on our list is amazon fba. this is a service that's been around for a while. let's go through the pros and cons. so the big pro, and probably the reason why most merchants or businesses use amazon fba, is simply because you get access to the amazon marketplace. next pro for amazon fba is it's pretty much being the easiest way to outsource your shipping outside of using a free pr, which we'll cover in a minute, all right. so the first con for using amazon fba is it's expensive. so amazon keeps putting up the fees. they charge for everything and it's expensive to get inventory in. it's expensive when you sell a product. it's expensive if you want to pull the inventory out or if you need to replenish. yeah, fba is is a very expensive way to go about fulfillment. the other big con for amazon fba is amazon. so amazon likes to use the data that they have in their marketplace to optimize for amazon. they're not really the friend of the merchant. they are optimizing for amazon and for consumers or customers going on amazon to purchase. they're not really optimizing for merchants, so something to keep in mind. all right. next on our list is outsourcing your shipping to a 3pl. so a big pro with using 3pls is you are building a relationship with an independent company. 3pl's only focus would be to take your product and ship it, so you can build a direct relationship with that 3pl and they can do very specific things, which we'll get into in a second. the other big pro with using a 3pl is you have lots of options. there are literally thousands of 3pls out there. each one of them. there's lots of variants in terms of service, so you could have a 3pl, for example, that prints t-shirts, get off, a free pl that does other kinds of manufacturing or finishing of products, and there are even free pls out there that will help you with your website and seo and all of that stuff. so there's a huge variety of services that three plus provide and if you're looking for a specific set of services, you could find one that works for you really well. all right, and the final pro for uh working with a 3pl is they can be very specific to your needs. so say if you want specific branded, packaging it in a specific way, you want it cycle counting every month, you can find the right for epl. that will help you do that. all right. so cons, what are the cons for using uh a 3pl? so the first con is: so you have a lot of options. there are a lot of great 3pls and if you want to find a great 3pl, i'm linking above um, we have the shapiro marketplace. these are all free pr's that use shiphero. they all have uh reviews. you can see what they do, what they don't do. but the challenge is actually making sure you find a good 3pl, as as much as there are awesome 3pls out there, there are also a lot of not so great ones. another con for uh working with a 3pl is you need volume. so 3pls really can't make money if you're not ship.

How To Automatically Fulfill Orders With DSers and AliExpress | Shopify Dropshipping

hey guys, Dean, here in today's Drop Shipping video we're going to be going over how you can Mass fulfill orders with Shopify using the DS's plugin. this is the main Plugin or add-on for Shopify that most people use to fulfill their orders automatikally, or at least to automate them, rather than doing them manually. because everyone knows that you don't want to hire a virtual assistant to actually fulfill orders on Shopify because it's going to be another minus into your profits- right, hiring another support agent, which may also be useful for certain other things. but we can do the orders automatikally through a plugin and save ourselves some money and some time. so let's jump into the Shopify dashboard and I'll show you exactly how to do it. so here we are in my personal Shopify store dashboard. I'm going to show you how to set up DS's. now one thing to note before we get started is I do actually have a full video on how you can get started Shopify Drop Shipping. it's a full free course. it shows you from setting up your Shopify account to actually getting your website online, building out the store and getting the basics actually set up, and also in that video I do a little bit more of a deep dive into this plug in the DSs plugin, so the DSs app. I go a little bit deeper into it. I'll show you the other features, which is unrelated to the mass order for filling which I'm going to show in this video. so if you do want to learn a little bit more about what this Plugin or this app can do, do click on that video link in the description down below. but I'll kind of gloss over the other features in this video too. but we're mainly going to be covering order fulfillment. so with that out the way, let's jump into the main section of this video. so if you want to go down to apps here on the left hand side on our dashboard, and it will show you the apps which I already have installed, right, and, as you can see, I have a few different apps. so Ali reviews, which is obviously for uh reviews, importing for our products, automatikally product reviews and open new product reviews. they all do the same thing. I was just experimenting with them to see which one was the best. that is also in the same video where I go over which one you should install. and then also the Esters, right. I could just type in DS's in here and it'd open up the Shopify store and it'll automatikally take us to the app. okay, so here's our DS's app, right? so this is what happens when you first just installed the assets. so you need to link your AliExpress. so you click the button down below and it takes you to AliExpress, and then you just go ahead, you sign in, you press authorize and you make the connection between the two. now, as far as I'm aware, DS's is actually made by the same company as AliExpress, or at least they're in some kind of partnership. so there's nothing wrong with linking your account here, guys. it's totally fine, it's safe and recommended. so that's how to set up the basics, right, and you can also click on recommended apps and it'll show you some other apps to install too. I will probably go over a lot of these other apps in other videos. if there's any apps on Shopify that you don't know how to use or you're not sure if they're worth installing, do tell me about those in the comments too. I do want to do some more videos on Shopify apps. maybe we'll cover spocket or oberlo, something like that. that should be interesting to take a deep dive into. and, of course, on the Shopify app store, you can click that to find more apps too, which do very similar things. right on the Shopify app store we could just type in order for fill, see if anything else comes up, and you can see there's other order fulfillment apps here too, a lot of things which do a very similar thing. we have Auto DS, which I think is very similar to DS's. the reason why we're using DS's is it hooks directly into the AliExpress API, the AliExpress website and service, which in simple terms, means this directly linked to your AliExpress account and we can automatikally do tasks through our AliExpress account straight to the Shopify plugin, because it has that bridge between the two networks. right here we are in DS's. so DSS is an interesting plugin. so DSS has a lot of different features and, like I said before, I'm just going to go over what the plugin actually does and what you can do with this app, and then we'll get on to order fulfillment. I will time stamp the video so if you already know about DS's, you can jump to the main part of the video to fulfill orders. but let's just go over it first of all. so on DS, it's a very powerful app. you can do a lot of different stuff. so, for an example, we can go through the find suppliers section, which is partikularly good, so we can go over the high profit selection which tries to give you some products which may have high margins that you can potentially sell. obviously, not all these products are going to be any good. you'll have to sift through them. this is also another one of those methods to find winning products. you can also use DS's and then they have a few different categories, right. so they have winning products in Brazil, which is interesting. we have winning products in USA and also winning products in the EU or Europe as a whole, so there's some pretty cool products we can go through here. if you've got quite a bit of time, if you don't actually know what to sell yet, you could use this app for some inspiration, which is what I like about diastas, and this is just a Premium Selection section of the actual app and it allows you to browse through some categories, right, so it's just showing you certain categories inside the AliExpress platform and we can go through, have a deep dive into the different niches and sectors of business and see if we want to sell something. so obviously something like jewelry accessories would be a pretty popular one to go through. I'd really recommend that one. that's a strong and powerful category, and then, obviously, Beauty and health is too. so you can see those two key categories they put in the very front of this list, because we all know that these products tend to be some of the best sellers, and I'm sure you could find some hidden winning products in here which not everyone has found. so I would recommend not skipping over this point. if you want to try and find some pretty cool products, maybe you want to Market on tiktok, for example. but, like I said before, this is literally just the AliExpress website. look, you can just go through all the categories. you can browse the fully access platform. you can even make a search here to search for what you want. so I could just type in Halloween, for an example, since it's October, and it will actually pull all those products from AliExpress. but you have to make sure that you selecting the right category, for an example, now it will pull up all the Halloween stuff, or at least for that search term, which is pretty cool. then we can go to supplier Optimizer. so this feature is currently in maintenance, so you can't really use this, but basically what this is is you can find the same product by using the AliExpress import URL link. so just to kind of give you an Insight of what that is. if you don't understand, if I was to go find a product on AliExpress now, I'm just going to type in acne patch because that's one of the most widely sold products. so I'm just going to go on this generic one that literally everyone has drop shipped. I could just cut this link at the top and then paste in here and press search. what this ideally would do is it would pull the same product from many different other services and we could use that to drop ship instead. so you can see, we can import these straight to our store. we can click on them and they'll open up other AliExpress links too. so this lets us explore similar products and then we can compare the shipping times and the margins that we can get from selling each one and making comparison. so this is pretty cool. it shows the rating, the number of sales. we can sort them by the ship.