 Hello everybody! Today we are here with Tami, who is a professional dropshipper from China. We will have today a very special interview and very, very, very interesting interview about how to find a good supplier and a good product from AliExpress when you dropship to eBay. Hey Tami, how are you? Good, how are you? I am fine, great to have you here today with us. I would like to ask you about yourself, tell us a bit about yourself. Hi guys, my name is Tami. I am 34 years old, I am married and I have a three-year-old kid. I am a mother. I have been dropshipping on eBay since 2012. Since then, it developed into other areas like Amazon and Etsy, Etsy came before Amazon actually. And then Shopify, last year I opened up my first Shopify store and right this last month I opened up my second Shopify store. Cool, so we all dropshipped for around seven years on eBay. That's correct. Nice. How did you get to the dropshipping? How did you start this business? This business, this idea of selling on eBay actually, I was living for a while in the United States. And this idea came to me one day in 2008. A friend of my cousins took some hair straighteners and started selling them on eBay and he made a really good profit on them. And I was going back and forth if I should do this or not and if it's something that I can do or how do I even start doing this? And in 2012, me and then Fiancé, now my husband, we were in a bad situation money-wise. I was working three jobs. He just started a new job and I was going to school. I was a medical science student. And I just decided one day that I'm going to do this. I'm going to start researching. I'm going to dive into this. So for about two months straight, I sat on my computer and did some research. And in the beginning, I started wholesaling. Dropshipping wasn't even not that I knew back then. It wasn't even an idea back then. It didn't really have a name. So I started wholesaling. I started ordering products from Chinese websites into my house. And also from eBay into my house and I started selling them on eBay or on Etsy. So that's how it started. It started the ball rolling. So you started first with American suppliers? No, actually from Chinese suppliers. I started from suppliers from I offer, if you ever heard about that. So you started immediately from Chinese dropshipping? Yes. My beginning was from Chinese dropshipping. The other way around from what most people are used to nowadays? Yeah, usually people start from American suppliers and then they go to the Chinese suppliers. Cool. By the way, I also started my dropshipping from Chinese suppliers from a deal extreme and a tiny deal. Oh, yeah. Those are good websites. Yeah. Okay. So in this interview I said we really focus on how we find a good supplier. So what is a good Chinese supplier for you in general? A good Chinese supplier is a reliable Chinese supplier. Someone that I can build business relationships with long term business relationships with. Not someone that can only provide me of a winning product, but several winning products. So you're searching usually for suppliers who has more than one product. They have multiple good products. But what also important for those things like communication, items, quality? Time quality is extremely important for me. I'm a perfectionist in everything that I do. That can be a downfall for a lot of people also for me because nothing can never be perfect. But searching out good suppliers is very important for me. Searching out good products is extremely important because when your customer receives the product and it's not good, it's reflected upon you and on your store. So you have to think about this from the beginning and provide a good quality product. I understand. Now if I want to start from scratch searching for a good supplier, I don't have any supplier for now. How can I start to do this process? How do you start to sell the suppliers? Let's say if you're going to Aliexpress, I can show you. I'm going to do a screen share with you. Initial process starts just one second. So do you see my screen? Yeah. So this is basically the front page of Aliexpress. I start my supplier research with everything just with the basics. Just elimination process. Let's say I'm going to go into consumer electronics and chargers for an example. When I come here, I have 230,000 different results. That's a lot. That can give someone a headache and it's not easy to start eliminating all of these products from the good ones and from the not so good ones. So basically the initial elimination process starts with checking this box here, four stars and up. And then you can basically go down here and see if there is other things that are more important for you. If free shipping is important for you, it's not always important for me because if I find a good product, I can calculate the shipping cost into the price and everything is workable. Everything is fixable. But if free shipping is important for you, you check the box for free shipping and now you're down to 4,000 and 8,000 and something products. You've eliminated around 90% of the products you had in your search results. Then you go to best match, orders, newest. My suggestion is go through orders to see which product has more orders. And then you start taking a look at the product itself. This one has around 7,000 orders, around, excuse me, 13,000 orders. That's a lot. And 7,000 feedbacks. This is a top brand store. And you can go into this product and start evaluating the supplier. What do you check when you're evaluating the supplier? What is important for you here? The first thing that I check for is how long has the store been open. It's crucial for me at least, and this is my recommendation, to stick with suppliers and stores that have been open for more than one year. This you have here four years, so it's good. Over here you've got the top brand mark. It's not that easy to receive this top brand mark on Aliexpress. So when you see the top brand mark, you lean into trusting the supplier that it's a reliable supplier, it's a good supplier. Over here you have the positive feedback. It's 98.5%, which is really good. And over here you have a breakdown of how this feedback is built. The item is described, communications, shipping speed. And this is all from all the feedbacks that this store has gotten, not just for this product, but for the entire store. So what is the minimum number of feedbacks? What is the minimum percentage which you are working with? The minimum percentage, I try not to go under 96%. Sometimes I will go to 95%, but again, when you evaluate the supplier, there's no such thing as a perfect supplier. And if the product is hot enough and the seller is selling them in a good price, then I will go to 95%, but not lower than 95%. I tend to stay around 96%. So actually what is important for you is the general, is the full things, not only the specific feedbacks or something like this, you check the many parameters. Yes, actually the specific feedbacks on the product itself, it's very important for me. Over here we see that we have around 7000 feedbacks and the feedback score is 4.9%. We don't see, oh there are 40 feedbacks, there are one star. Mainly what I'm going to do is check the lower ratings more than the higher ratings, because the higher ratings are, we all know what we're going to read on the higher ratings, but what is most important for me is to check if there is a problem reported about the supplier's behavior. If the item was shipped on time, received on time, was the item damaged or not, an overall feedback about the product. When you take a look at the negative feedback and stay longer on the negative feedback, it gives you a better idea about the supplier and the product you're evaluating. Cool, so you are checking both the supplier and also the specific product? Of course, yes. But the first parameter is the supplier, so you're first finding the supplier and after that you're going to go over his product? It can go both ways actually. I can source out a hot item or a hot niche and according to that, look for suppliers or I can find a good supplier and find his best selling items and you can always, like if you have a product here that is sold, this is in my opinion an oversaturated product, but when you see around 13,000 orders from one product, you know that it's a product that it's going to sell no matter what. You just have to be an individual somehow to differentiate yourself from the other sellers. Nice, it's very important. I see that this product has many variations. Would you upload all of these variations or only the specific one? I will upload all of them and I always recommend if you have the possibility to work with variation listings on eBay, work with variation listings on eBay because eBay promotes variation listings more than single item listings. It just shows that it's a professionally done listing. Yeah, because it shows like you spend more time on this listing than the other. Cool, do you use any tools to find the good suppliers or the good products? Yes, one of the tools that I use to further assess my suppliers is actually a Chrome extension called AliTools. This is here over here. And as you can see, it can give you a lot of insight into also price wise. You can see price fluctuations over time. Over here you see this is from November 2nd. This was this price. Over here on November 11th, the price jumped down. So when you're trying to cut deals with the suppliers, this gives you a really good indication of what the supplier can offer you and what is your margin of deal making with the supplier. Sometimes you'll even get better deals than what you see shown here on AliTools but still it gives you a ballpark of what you can get from your supplier. So you would request from the supplier the lower price, right? You're just contacting the supplier and requesting the other price? I always contact my suppliers because I love building trust levels with my suppliers. I'm new to them. They're new to me. And how you build trust levels and long term business relationships is actually communicating with one another. And communication with AliExpress suppliers or Chinese suppliers in general, it's crucial because not all of them have good English skills. Sometimes they don't answer you on time. If you ask a question and it takes the supplier two or three days to reply back to you, then you see that that supplier is not very serious with this business and you just don't have to waste your time with a supplier that doesn't take you seriously and doesn't take his business seriously. You just move on to a different supplier. Also, when you build a rapport with a supplier, you can get better deals from the supplier and when you have deals with the suppliers, prices don't change for you and AliExpress prices can change like any other websites and when you have deals with your suppliers, you don't have to worry about price fluctuations. So you would check first the English and the response time of the suppliers? Yes. Okay, cool. After you communicate with your suppliers, you continue the communication on AliExpress or you are using other tools like WeChat or something like this? I always take my suppliers off of the AliExpress message board because first of all, AliExpress monitors everything and just like any other website and you're less free to communicate with your supplier. Also, the comfort level of not being always on the AliExpress message board, take them off of the AliExpress message board. It's more comfortable and it helps build trust levels with the supplier. So which communication application do you use? I use a lot of WeChat. WeChat is the WhatsApp alternative for China. There is some issues with WhatsApp and not all suppliers have WhatsApp. I use Skype a lot, but mostly we check WhatsApp and Skype. Yes. Cool. Just for the people, WhatsApp is blocked action in China. Chinese people need to do some tricks to get the WhatsApp working there. This is why most Chinese suppliers will work with WeChat. Actually WeChat is everything in China. Yes. Does the niche important for you? Is there any niches which you will not work with them? The niche is not that important for me as long as it's a good niche and you have enough products and the supplier has enough products. You can sell. Let's say this supplier, how many products does he have? Let's see. Products. He has 771 items. Most of these are, well, this is something that I will actually avoid. This is batteries. I wouldn't suggest working with batteries because shipping-wise it can be complicated. But with niches, I don't stick into a certain niche. I don't involve emotion into this. I mean, whatever sells, sells. But I would try to avoid niche. I would try to avoid products like prohibited items on eBay like weapons, firearms. I myself don't do sex toys. A lot of people do. But yeah, those are the things I wouldn't also use. I wouldn't also sell any breakable items that are going to be shipped from long-term shipping like glass or, let's say, TV screens. Things that are breakable and can be damaged during shipping. Those are things that I would usually recommend to avoid. But there are ways to also work with suppliers that sell those items. If it's a supplier that has been working with those items for a very long time and he knows how to package those items really good and you don't see any prior indication of problem with those items, then you can work with those items also. Amazing. So, there is any maximum price which you will not work after this price? No. No? Okay. The limit. I have items for $2,000 or $3,000. From AliExpress. From AliExpress. Cool. Amazing. By the way, for people who don't know, you can block keywords like batteries or things like this in the settings page. So, this can help you to avoid these situations which Temi said. I saw on the previous page, by the way, here also, if someone wants to upload the products, all the products of the supplier, you can use the extension in the bottom. I have it. It's very helpful. Yeah. I saw that you are using the extension to see if the product has an ePacket. Yes. Can you explain about this a bit? What is ePacket and why do you use it? Yes. ePacket is a form of shipping from China to around 30 countries around the world, if I'm not mistaken. It's a fast shipping form that provides you end-to-end tracking information. And it's something that you have to take into consideration when you're working with eBay because if you do provide a tracking number, but sometimes the tracking number when you work with Chinese suppliers, they only provide tracking information up until the item leaves China, but it doesn't provide tracking information in the destination country. So, when you work with ePacket, you don't have that issue because you have end-to-end tracking information. Cool. Do you work only with ePacket or you can also work with other shipping methods? I don't work solely with ePacket because other shipping methods can provide the same results of end-to-end tracking numbers, like China Post registered airmail. They might take a bit longer delivery-wise because ePacket is the fastest nowadays, but I don't confine myself only into ePacket, but I do recommend if you have the option to choose ePacket over other shipping methods. Cool. I also prefer ePacket this way. In Autodesk, we always take the ePacket price in the price calculation automatically. So, if you see the ePacket, you don't need to add the price. It will be calculated automatically. Thank you because, after this, the questions will come to our support. So, I prefer to say it here. You're troubleshooting. Yeah. Amazing. Do you mentor people, your teaching people for all the things you know in Aliexpress? Yes, actually, I do mentor people. I don't take on too many students at a time. I try to take on like five or six students per month because, time-wise, I do so many things. But I do try to mentor. I do business consulting and I do a lot of strategic consulting. Cool. So, actually, your main focus is the dropshipping, but sometimes you're just taking a few people to hand them. Yes. Amazing. Do you have any additional tips about choosing suppliers, about uploads? Do you work with manual uploads or do you work with bulk uploads? I do a lot of bulk because when I find a good supplier and I've checked out a store and I've checked out his product and I see that about 90% of what he's giving on his store is something that I would like to list. I just go into a software and I bulk list everything. It takes me like 10 minutes. Okay, cool. So, okay, nice. Do you have anything that you want to add, maybe? Also, okay. Great. So, actually, your main focus is first, define the supplier. After that, you're checking his products to have a good reviews. You don't work with suppliers who has less than 95% of the feedbacks. And you prefer E-Pocket if it exists and you work with both bulk and manual uploads, but usually you work with bulk uploads. Of course, it's so much easier. Right. And when you upload with bulk, you upload it with all the variations of the product? Of course. I mean, variations, like I mentioned, it's highly sought out and not a lot of sellers, not a lot of stores use bulk variation listings on eBay. So, first of all, in the eyes of the potential buyer, you're different. You stand out. Your listing looks much better. And in the eyes of eBay also, you get promoted more because you are more professional in the eyes of eBay. Because it takes so much time and effort to build a variation listing that you're considered to be more professional. Cool. Very good. So, how people can contact you? Actually, I think we will just put your details here under the video. We also did a very, very, very interesting article with Tammy in our blog. So we can read this also under this video. And actually, thank you very much for all this information. It was very, very, very interesting. And I'm sure that it will help to manipulate that. My pleasure. And I had a lot of fun writing the article. I also had a lot of fun to work with you on this. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.