How can a novice enter the cross-border e-commerce industry? What should a novice do?

More and more friends are preparing to switch to the cross-border e-commerce industry. Although they have a lot of experience in domestic e-commerce before, they have no experience in cross-border e-commerce at all. So they want to know how a newbie in cross-border e-commerce can enter the industry?

If you want to start from scratch, it is recommended that you choose a platform with low threshold and great development potential.

1. Amazon: Many people may not know who the name "brother-in-law" is, but those who do cross-border e-commerce must be familiar with him. He refers to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. It is he who became the world's richest man thanks to Amazon. Amazon is the world's largest e-commerce platform. According to the "2018 World's Top 500 Brands" compiled by the World Brand Lab, Amazon ranks first.

2. AliExpress: Alibaba's position in the domestic e-commerce market is almost unshakable. There is basically no comparison with JD.com. Since Amazon can be spread all over the world, AliExpress naturally shoulders such a mission. With the strong financial and technical strength of Alibaba, AliExpress, which was established 8 years ago, has grown into one of the most active cross-border export e-commerce platforms in the world. Because it is a product of Alibaba, its younger brothers - Taobao sellers are indispensable. Because there are many Taobao sellers and 1688 wholesalers and distributors, the overall tone of the platform is relatively low, and many sellers call it the international version of Taobao.

3. eBay: I believe that many people have not heard of eBay. In fact, eBay entered China very early, but Taobao took over and had to close its website in China at the end of 2006. Although it lost the Chinese market, eBay is still very powerful in its mature European and American markets. You need to provide a lot of information to open a store on eBay, such as bank transaction records and invoices. And although it is free to open a store, each product on the shelf is charged separately. In addition, eBay is very good to buyers, which needs to be paid attention to. Many stores on the platform have been closed due to complaints from buyers.

What should cross-border e-commerce novices do?

It is strongly recommended for beginners to do no-source business. Why?

First, there is no source of goods, and there is no need to stock up on goods, so the capital investment is relatively small. Newbies don’t know much about operations at the beginning, and don’t know how to select products. If a wave of operations fail, they may suffer huge losses due to the overstocking.

The second thing is that you don’t need to pack and ship the goods by yourself. You can spend two to three dollars to find an agent to help you with shipping, packing and veneer. This reduces a lot of work and allows for better store operation, which is very suitable for friends who want to start a side business.

The third is that the products on some source websites can be shipped within 24/48/72 hours, which basically meets Shopee's delivery time requirements.

The fourth is to select products and put them on the shelves by yourself, so that you can purchase more goods and increase the styles of products in your own store. Then, if Shopee has no source of goods, how can it drop ship? In the early stage of opening a store, drop shipping is done through source websites, which is also the lowest-cost method. Generally, you have to go through this stage.

If you can do very well through the supply website, you will be more likely to invest more money and energy to build a team to do the supply chain.

If you are doing drop shipping on 1688 in China, you need to send it to the transit warehouse. After that, Shopee will send it to Southeast Asia. Please note that you cannot place an order directly to the transit warehouse.

Because the official website does not support the labeling service, but don't worry, there are currently special services that provide packaging and labeling services, which are also what we call freight forwarders. They are generally concentrated near Shopee's transit warehouses. After receiving the goods, they will help the seller pack and label.

Then it is sent to the transit warehouse and scanned on the same day. For those who currently have no source of goods, Taobao mostly offers free shipping, which can save money. The price of 1688 is relatively low, but many orders have unit prices and there will be shipping costs. When selecting products, you must make sure to include the shipping costs when looking at the pricing. This is a pitfall for novices in the early stages.

For novices, they will definitely encounter various problems, so they must calm down and deal with them carefully. Another very important point is to find more experts of the same kind to communicate and learn more about cross-border e-commerce.

Recommended reading:

Is it suitable to do cross-border e-commerce at the age of 50? What are the daily operations?

What are the new skills for opening a cross-border e-commerce store? What should you pay attention to?

Can one person do Shopee cross-border e-commerce? How to do it?