Hey, guys.
It's me, Sarah, the video editor here at Wholesale Ted and in today's video, we're gonna be answering
a super common question that we get asked a lot here at Wholesale Ted.
Which is better, dropshipping with Aliexpress or private labeling and selling on the Amazon
FBA program?
Now, first off, if you don't know what these business models are, then I have some great
videos that you can watch.
To learn about Aliexpress dropshipping, I suggest you watch my free video, "How to Dropship
with Aliexpress."
To learn about private labeling with Amazon FBA, I suggest you watch my video, "Pick the
Best Items to Private Label on Amazon."
I'll have a link to both of those videos in the description below.
So yes, I am gonna answer which one of the models makes the most money.
But I'm also gonna compare them when it comes to other important points as well, such as
which is the cheapest for newbies to get started with and which one is the most passive?
So let's jump straight into it.
Which is the cheapest to get started?
To get started with dropshipping, you're going to need the following things: one, products
to sell; two, an online store; three, money for advertising.
All right, because of the fact that you're dropshipping, you don't need to purchase any
items in advance, because you only purchase items that customers have already bought from
you.
And usually, you'll be selling items that cost less than $10 to fulfill, so you would
need very little startup money.
Now, let's move on to starting an online store.
When it comes to this, you've got two options.
Firstly, you can start a Shopify store.
This is usually what I recommend to beginners because it's super easy to use.
Shopify costs just $29 a month, and they have a free app, Oberlo, which helps you automate
the dropshipping process.
And I have a great video tutorial which teaches you how to create a Shopify store, and I'll
have a link to that in the description below.
But of course, if $29 a month is too expensive, then you could start a WooCommerce store.
And I have a great tutorial which teaches you how to do this as well, and again, I'll
have a link to that in the description below.
And of course, you will need one final thing, money for advertising.
Just to be clear, this is optional.
You could be using a free traffic method like SEO or building up a Facebook fan page, but
I suspect that most of my subscribers here plan to be using paid traffic.
And if you do that, you'll be running short one-week ads for the products that you are
testing.
You run the ad and see if it's breaking even or making a small profit, and if it is, you
scale up from there.
Now yes, this costs money, but you can start with tiny ad budgets, as low as $3 a day.
This means it can cost as little as $21 to test a product.
And while you're testing the product, you will make sales, even from products that aren't'
breaking even.
You can then take that money and reinvest it until you find a winning product.
You can do this gradually even if you don't have that much money to get started.
That means then that if you've got, say, a weekly budget of $50, then you can test two
to three products a week.
Now, let's compare that with private labeling with Amazon FBA.
Immediately, you're going to need to order stock in inventory.
And the chances are, you're probably going to need at least 200 units.
Ideally, you'll be running a launch marketing campaign where you'll be giving away products
using coupon codes, and also using paid traffic to drive fast sales.
I've got a great video which goes into these launch marketing strategies.
It's called, "How to Launch Your First Amazon FBA Product," and again, I will have a link
to that in the description below.
Ultimately, you can be looking at easily a thousand dollars to get started with Amazon
FBA.
So I think that we have a clear winner in this case.
And the winner is dropshipping.
Right.
Now, dropshipping is on one point, and private labeling is on zero.
Can it catch up?
Which business model is the most passive?
Okay, when it comes to dropshipping, you're going to need to do a lot of things to keep
your business running.
Firstly, every day, you're going to need to check to see if you've made any sales.
Next, you're gonna have to actually fulfill those sales.
With apps like Oberlo, you can greatly streamline the process, but at the end of the day, you're
still going to need to fulfill the sales.
And when I say "fulfill the sale," I mean you're going to need to order the item from
the Aliexpress seller, and then get it shipped to your customer.
You're also going to need to be watching your email inbox and answering questions from customers.
Because of the fact that you've got long shipping times from China, you're definitely gonna
be receiving quite a few emails from people, so you need to be staying on top of your customer
support.
In addition, you're probably gonna be running ads on Facebook, so you need to be monitoring
those and adding new ones as well.
Now yes, once you've got an established store, you can certainly hire VAs to help you with
these tasks and to make it more passive.
And I have a free video about this, "How to Hire a Virtual Assistant," And again, I'll
have a link to it in the description below.
But until then, yes, this is a hands-on business model.
Now, let's turn to Amazon FBA.
Once you find your product, manufacture it, ship it into the Amazon FBA warehouse, and
run your launch promotion, there isn't a lot more that you need to do.
The work for private labeling is upfront.
You do your research, you manufacture your products, you run your launch promotion, and
from then on out, it's quite hands-off.
Why?
Well, this is for two reasons.
One, Amazon handles fulfillment for you.
When it comes to dropshipping, it's up to you to watch for orders and then to fulfill
the order for your customer.
But when you sell using the FBA program, Amazon takes care of all of that for you.
They store the items in their warehouse.
And when a customer orders it from them, they go find it and then ship it out to them.
All the while, you do nothing.
Two, Amazon handles the marketing for you.
If you run a good launch promotion, then you should be sitting at the top of the Amazon
search results for the keywords that you were targeting.
And every day, people would be coming to Amazon, searching for your keywords, finding your
item, and then buying it, all the while, you don't have to do anything.
The most important thing that you need to be doing as an Amazon FBA seller is watching
your inventory levels and making sure that they are healthy.
But all that day-to-day, hands-on stuff, well, you can let Amazon do that for you.
So again, I think in this case here, we have a clear winner.
And the winner is Amazon private labeling.
Round 2 has ended with an absolute knockout, with Amazon private labeling knocking dropshipping
to the floor.
It's time for Round 3.
What makes the most money?
With dropshipping, you can sell and test a lot of products without having to wait to
manufacture inventory.
And if you find a winning product, it can earn you tens of thousands of dollars a month.
That means that if you get really efficient, and build your VA team, then you can legitimately
scale to over a million dollars in a single year.
Now, I, myself, have never personally scaled this big, but I've had several friends and
guests on this channel who have shared in their video collaborations how they did this.
My friend Aidan Booth did this, my friend Fred Lam did this, and my friend Adrian Morrison
did this.
Plus with dropshipping, you have the big advantage that people are coming to your personal store.
What this means is that you have power over what is happening to the customers since they
are coming to your site that you control.
Which means that you can add upsells to your products, which greatly increases the amount
of money that you make per order.
And you can have Facebook pixels to your website, so that you can catch the customers who are
more retargeting on Facebook.
And of course, you are collecting their email addresses for further remarketing.
Now let's turn around and look at private labeling with Amazon.
Now obviously, there's a lot of money to be made.
But let's be honest, scaling is not gonna be as fast.
You can't immediately sell products.
You need to manufacture them, private label them, and then ship them into the Amazon warehouse.
Plus, because you're selling them to Amazon's site and not your own, you don't have control
over what items Amazon upsells them on, because yes, Amazon most certainly upsells to customer
on more products, but they get to choose what the products are, and oftentimes, they're
not gonna be yours.
They're going to be your competitors.
Plus, you have strict limitations over how you're allowed to email your existing customers.
And obviously, you don't get to pixel them either.
So if you haven't already guessed, and the winner is dropshipping.
Amazon FBA private labeling is down.
Dropshipping has come back up and has taken the lead.
It's now 2-1.
Can Amazon come back?
Which business model has the least risk?
See, here's the thing with dropshipping.
The key is to test different products with ads, and see which ones connect and which
ones don't.
Now unfortunately, most products won't connect.
You're gonna have to test a lot of different products before you find winning ones.
The average that we've noticed to the industry is that you tend to test about 20 products
to find 1 winning item.
But that is just an average.
You might be super-duper lucky and find that your first item is a winner.
Or it might take you 50 products to find a winner.
There is no way to know.
Now, let's look at Amazon FBA.
If you're doing that right, you are not testing lots of different products to find a winning
item.
Instead, you have access to a huge bank of data so that you can immediately spot a winner.
Using Jungle Scout, you can see how many sales are being made for similar items every month.
And you can see if itemless [SP] things that are poorly optimized are still making sales.
And with that data, you can then go find an item that is making lots of sales even for
competitors which have product listings that are poorly optimized.
You can then private label, manufacture it, and then optimize your product listing so
that it's better than the competition's, and sell.
And if you claim your two-week Amazon launch strategy right, then you are following a proven
formula for rising to the top of the Amazon search engine results for the keywords that
you are targeting.
And then you will make organic sales.
With private labeling, there is no guess work.
Using data, you pick your wining product, and then using data, you launch your product
following a proven formula, and then you make your money.
So with this in mind, I think we once again have a clear winner.
And the winner is Amazon private labeling.
Oh, dropshipping got taken back clearly by Amazon private labeling.
It's now even on 2-2.
Who's gonna win Round 5?
Which is best for free traffic?
For long-time subscribers here at Wholesale Ted, you know that I have a soft spot when
it comes to free traffic.
Why?
Because usually, when you're getting free traffic, you're getting it from search engines.
And I personally love manipulating search engines.
Some people like to spend their time skiing.
Some people like to cook.
Me, I like to spend my time manipulating search engines.
So what is a search engine?
Well, the best example of a search engine is Google.
You go to Google, you type in the name of an item that you're looking for, and then
Google will give you a list of pages that it thinks best matches what you are searching
for.
Now if you want to use search engines to get free traffic to your Aliexpress drop shipping
store, you absolutely can.
And it's something that I taught in my free video, "How to Dropship from Aliexpress with
no Startup Money."
In that video, I highlight a store that's currently successfully doing that, World of
Harry.
World of Harry has invested heavily into ranking their store for search terms in Google.
For example, if you come to Google and type in "Ron Weasley Magic Wand," if you scroll
down, you'll find that their store is listed on the first page of results.
Because the store is ranking for keywords like that, it means that they are getting
free sales from people coming to Google, typing in an item, and then finding their store.
But here is the thing about ranking for keywords in Google.
It is slow.
It can take weeks, even months, for Google to move your website up the search results.
If the keywords that [inaudible 00:11:30] your competition, you're going to need to
spend your time or your money into something that is called backlinks.
Optimizing your SEO metadata is just not enough.
Explaining backlinks to my viewers here that don't know what they are is far too complicated
for this video, but let me just say that they are a huge, huge pain.
So even though you can get free traffic to an Aliexpress dropshipping store, it isn't
something that I would recommend.
Now, let's compare this to private labeling on Amazon.
Well, honestly, there is no comparison.
Private labeling rocks when it comes to free traffic.
You see, when you sell at Amazon, you have access to another search engine, and that
is the search engine on Amazon's site.
In fact, on Amazon, roughly 90% of sales come from organic traffic and just 10% of sales
come from the paid ads that you can purchase on Amazon's site.
So if you are doing the private label business right, then it will be built upon the idea
of creating a product listing which sits at the top of Amazon search results.
So let's say you did your research and you discovered that for some reason, there was
a huge opportunity to sell aluminum water bottles on Amazon.
Your goal would be to create your listing so that when people type aluminum water bottle
into the Amazon search engine, your product appears on the first page of results.
And luckily, unlike the Google search engine, manipulating the Amazon search engine is really
easy and really fast.
It's something that I talk about in my video that I referenced earlier, "How to Launch
Your First Product on Amazon."
And the winner is Amazon private labeling.
Ooh-ooh, it's a complete knockout.
Dropshipping is down and Amazon private labeling is a hit.
The score is now 3-2.
Can dropshipping pull it back?
Which is best for paid traffic?
Okay, so the winner for this one is pretty obvious, to be honest, so I'm gonna keep it
short.
With Aliexpress dropshipping, you get to take full advantage of paid traffic.
You can test lots of products and find super winning items, and importantly, you can get
those ads running up within days if you wanted to.
Why?
Well, because you don't have to wait a month to manufacture products and then ship them
into the Amazon FBA warehouse.
Now, with Amazon, it's very different.
Of course, if you've got a successful product listing, then it is a fantastic idea to run
paid traffic to it.
But that's it.
You've got one product.
And if you want to run more, then you're gonna need to have to go, find a new product, manufacture
it, ship it into the Amazon FBA warehouse, and then you get to run ads for it.
So if you like working with paid ads and traffic, then there is no contest.
And the winner is clearly dropshipping.
That's it, folks.
It looks like we have a tie.
Who would have guessed that there's no right or wrong choice here?
You need to pick the right business model that suits you.
Comment below and let me know which business model that you prefer.
Thanks for watching this video.
If you liked it, I'd appreciate it if you gave it a thumbs up.
And if you want more fun videos like this, subscribe to us here at Wholesale Ted.
And if you would like to start your own online store but you don't know how, then you should
be sure to download our free eBook, "How to Make $10,000 a Month Online With Dropshipping."
You'll find a link on how to download this incredible, life-changing eBook in the video
description below.
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