Lesson 3 Project: Sourcing Reliable Suppliers and Products
Now that you've learned how to find reliable suppliers and identify good products for the dropshipping store, it's time to put this knowledge into action and get busy. For this project, we're going to create a supplier list of three suppliers with five products each. Each product will be evaluated with the help of AI analysis to determine its potential for success in your store.
Task 1: Find Suppliers and Products
First things first, lets find five products that you think would be good for your store. To get started, head over to AliExpress and use the search bar to search for the products you brainstormed in the previous lesson. For example, if you're interested in eco-friendly products, search for something like
"eco-friendly corfee mugs""bamboo toothbrushes."When you eventually find a product that seems to fit, the next step is to evaluate the supplier. Navigate through suppliers AliExpress store and write down in your document the suppliers feedback score and the general acceptance of the product from buyers. Include information about the products order count and number of sales.
Include the link of the product in the document, so you can get back to it later.
Task 2: Get Some AI Analysis
Once you have your products and suppliers listed, it's time to do some deeper analysis. For each of the five products you've chosen from each supplier, include the link to the product's page on AliExpress so you can check it out later. Now, we're going to use AI to help you analyze the product and decide if it's a good fit for our store.
To do this, head over to ChatGPT or any AI tool you want to use and ask it to analyze the product for you. A good prompt would be something like:
The AI analysis you receive should give you a good idea of whether or not the product is a good fit for your store. If it is, great! If not, that's okay too. We'll use this information to help us make a decision about whether or not to add the product to our store. Go ahead and paste down the AI analysis for each product in your document.
Task 3: Evaluate the Product's Demand
Now that you've chosen a product and received AI feedback by using Google Trends and AliExpress reviews to get an idea of how popular the product is. For example, if you're selling "eco-friendly water bottles," go to Google Trends and search for that term. If you see a consistent or increasing trend over the past year, that's a great sign that the product is in demand.
Checking the AliExpress reviews can also be a clear indicator of the demand of the product. But keep in mind if the product has only a few reviews, it may not yet be established enough to be confident in its popularity. If the reviews are mostly positive, and there are lots of them, then it's likely a good fit! It's good to go!
Task 4: Pricing Pricing Pricing!
Okay, we've found suppliers and products and we have a good idea of the suppliers we're going to go with... but what about pricing? As we learned in the lesson, a good rule of thumb is to go for a 30%-40% profit margin. Go ahead and calculate the range (the price at 30%-40% profit) for each product and include it in your document.
Now that you have the ranges, you can get a better idea of how practical it would actually be to sell the product... This can greatly help you decide if the product - and supplier - is a good fit for your store.
With this list, you will have a better idea moving forward of what products you want to add to your store when the time comes! Great work so far!