Alibaba is one of the most important Chinese e-commerce websites and deals with the wholesale selling of products.
Alibaba is part of Alibaba Group, also known as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, a Chinese multinational dedicated to online commerce.
Founded in 1999 by entrepreneur Jack Ma Yun, over the years Alibaba has established itself as one of the most important e-commerce sites in the world.
In 2011, it was included by Forbes magazine in the Global 2000, which is the list of the 2000 most important companies in the world; in 2012, Alibaba Group alone handled a volume of business greater than that of eBay and Amazon combined.
How to sell on Alibaba
Selling on Alibaba is something accessible to anyone. As already mentioned, it’s important to remember that Alibaba is a wholesale selling site, therefore primarily aimed at B2B (business to business).
Let's now look at the necessary steps to sell through this website:
- Account Registration: in this phase, basic profile information will be requested, such as email address, account owner's name, online store name, and what type of store is intended. The choice here is between seller, buyer, or an account that is both;
- Building Your Profile: once the foundation has been laid with the previous step, it's time to refine the account. The information required during this stage varies and is almost all related to the company. It is advisable for it to be as precise and clear as possible. What kind of products are intended to be sold (or bought, depending on the initial choice), where the physical store is located, its production and export capacity, and finally the target market, meaning who you want to reach out to;
- Insert the products: at this point, finally, it is time to stock the store with the products we have decided to sell. Here too, greater care is advisable. Along with the product, it is good to include images and accurate descriptions. At this stage, most of the work will be done and you can start selling.
Naturally, as in many other contexts of online trading and web marketing, good communication is key to success. Clarity and simplicity always pay off.
Choosing between free membership and paid membership
We have seen how in a few steps one can start selling on Alibaba. Everything summarized so far can easily be carried out with the basic and free version of the account. However, what we have not yet seen is the difference between a free account and the paid memberships offered by Alibaba.
Let's take a look:
Free membership
By signing up for this type of free account, you will have access to the basic features of the platform, which include the store description and the insertion of a number of products ranging from a minimum of 5 to a maximum of 50;
Gold membership
The Gold Membership on Alibaba, which can also be found under the name Gold Supplier, is a paid subscription to the site that provides more comprehensive tools for promoting one's products.
Once this status is achieved (which occurs after an internal verification check by the site), sellers can display the corresponding Gold Member badge, which certifies a higher standard of reliability.
Within this type of contract, it is possible to choose from several different options:
- Basic package
- Standard package
- Premium package
Each of these is well illustrated in the related section of Alibaba's internal blog.
Verified membership
There is also Verified Membership, which is the account type with the highest value. To reach this level, the company profile, its production capacity, its production processes, and its products must be inspected and evaluated by third-party institutions that can guarantee their reliability to Alibaba.
Clearly an account that enjoys this status achieves the maximum benefits available from the site, as can be seen on the Membership Suppliers page.
How Alibaba group is structured
As already mentioned, Alibaba is one of the most imposing e-commerce sites in the world, and it's part of the Alibaba Group. Within this group, there are other platforms, sites, and portals. Among these, for example, you can find:
- Aliexpress is very similar to Alibaba, but it deals with retail rather than wholesale sales;
- Alipay is a Chinese online payment platform launched in 2004. Conceptually it is very similar to other entities like Paypal or Applepay;
- Taobao https://world.taobao.com/ is the largest Chinese online shopping site and the tenth largest in the world. It could be easily described as China's Ebay, with a constantly growing user traffic that has already exceeded 500,000 registrations (data from 2017). It particularly favors the
As we have seen, Jack Ma's empire is truly extensive. The opportunity to sell on Alibaba is available to everyone, whether one chooses to do so with the tools of a simple account or decides to invest in more resources.
Alibaba and amazon compared
At this point, it might be useful to start understanding the differences between Alibaba and its most important competitor, namely Amazon.
Let's try to figure out which of the two is more advantageous and convenient for that company, corporation, or simply for that seller who intends to use one of these giants to sell their product.
Selling with amazon
Amazon primarily uses a direct selling model to its consumers (B2C), providing and shipping almost exclusively new products. All merchandise is stored in its vast warehouses.
This does not exclude the possibility that Amazon may collaborate with other merchants and their products. The mechanism that governs the collaboration between a seller and Amazon is based on various types of fees, which in turn depend on the kind of relationship established between the two parties.
The options are either to sell through Amazon or to sell to Amazon.
Generally, however, the costs of fees or various forms of subscription and/or affiliation tend to be slightly higher compared to those of Alibaba.
One of the major advantages that can be obtained from a partnership with Amazon is certainly that of visibility and trust that this giant enjoys among consumers and in the markets where it operates.
Selling with Alibaba
The Chinese e-commerce giant is quite different from its American counterpart. Positioning itself as an intermediary, it more closely resembles the Ebay model ( C2C). Indeed, Alibaba is simply an intermediary between sellers and consumers.
As for the costs that a seller must bear to be able to use the spaces provided by Alibaba, the situation... depends.
If you choose to sell on the Alibaba website, the commissions can vary on a scale from 1% to 5%, which is still more convenient than the 12%-15% of similar European marketplaces.
On Taobao, however, there are neither fees nor commissions. But we're talking about a site where mostly small merchants operate.
However, Taobao offers the optional possibility to pay for greater visibility compared to other sellers. In simple terms, products of those who invest in this system are displayed first on search pages.
Alibaba is undoubtedly more cost-effective, and although it may be perceived as less trustworthy than Amazon in the collective imagination, it strives greatly to keep up. Just consider Alipay, which not only serves as a reference payment portal in China but also offers a good level of protection to its customers.
Is it more cost-effective to sell on Alibaba or amazon?
Alibaba is an excellent e-commerce platform for accessing commercial outlets throughout China and much of the rest of the East. However, this does not exclude the rest of the world.
While using Alibaba involves very low costs, one must still take into account factors such as very long shipping times.
In contrast, Amazon has a warehouse infrastructure and shipping network that make it possible to deliver goods in a very short time.
Sometimes even in just one day, if you are subscribed to the Amazon Prime program. However, its operations are strongly limited to Europe and the United States.
The answer to this question cannot be clear-cut, as it mainly depends on the type of product you intend to sell and to whom you plan to sell it.
Boost your sales business with Framework360
Framework360 is the most innovative and comprehensive Italian platform you can find when it comes to digital marketing.
With it, you can enhance your sales business, in a way that is simple and effective.
Firstly, you will be able to register your own environment and thus create your personal online space, which you can configure and manage independently; and through the platform, you will also have the opportunity to install a dedicated plugin for integration with Alibaba. This will allow you to import onto the platform, in your environment, all the information and services related to this marketplace.
We also suggest you to take advantage of another plugin, among the many from Framework360, specifically for e-commerce. With it, you can create, configure and manage an e-commerce section on your website. This way, you will have at your disposal your own independent online sales site, free from any ties, conditions, and fees related to large e-commerce marketplaces, like Alibaba itself.
Therefore, it is always better to have a base of an autonomous sales site that can consequently be enriched, in our case, through a membership with Alibaba by importing our product catalog via CSV.
All this and more to enhance your online business with Framework360
You can do it too, you just need a lot of commitment and an excellent marketing and sales platform.
