What is AliExpress, exactly?
Here’s a little primer on AliExpress if you’re unfamiliar. It’s a massive online store controlled by the Alibaba Group, a multibillion-dollar conglomerate that began as a B2B buying and selling platform. Its offerings now include business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer, cloud computing, and payment.
To give you an idea of how huge Alibaba is, at the 11/11 Singles’ Day event in 2021, they reported over $85 billion in sales.
Alibaba’s online consumer marketplace for overseas buyers is called AliExpress (while TaoBao is for domestic Chinese). It enables Chinese small enterprises to sell to customers all around the globe.
You can find almost anything there, exactly like Amazon. Unlike Amazon, though, AliExpress only has third-party vendors. AliExpress does not sell any products. It only serves as a marketplace. As a result, your experience will be highly variable depending on the seller.
What Makes AliExpress So Affordable?
If you look at some of the products on AliExpress, you’ll see that many of them have extremely low costs. What gives? There are a variety of reasons for this, all of which are frequent.
You’re a direct buyer.
For starters, you could be purchasing straight from a manufacturer, which lowers the cost of selling to you. China’s production costs are far lower than those of other countries. Intellectual property rules that are not strictly enforced may also have a role.
Because they’re made in China and you can buy them straight from the manufacturer, many gadgets (like this 4WD Arduino robot we created) offer excellent prices on AliExpress. As a result, you avoid paying a middleman’s retail markup.
It’s Fake
The second reason for an item’s very low price is because it’s either phony or came off the production line as a result of tight brand quality controls. AliExpress is no exception to China’s reputation as a center of counterfeit manufacture. The chances of discovering authentic branded goods on AliExpress are limited to none unless it’s a Chinese brand.
Tricks to List
Some merchants will use unethical listing techniques to compete against hundreds of other sellers offering the same goods for a similar price. The most popular method is to provide a little accessory as an optional buy that is less expensive than the primary item. The price of the accessory is displayed in the search results, not the price of the main product.
A $4.64 brick toy is shown in the illustration below. That’s not bad for a 541-piece construction set! However, if you click through, you’ll notice that the seller has added a “bag of 10 balls” for $4.64. The block toy is $56.93 in price. That’s a significant difference.
AliExpress has some great deals, but not all of the products are genuine, and prices are rarely as low as they appear. You can find everything from counterfeit electronics to apparel there.
When purchasing something from AliExpress, being able to distinguish between a legitimate offer, a dodgy listing, and an obvious ripoff is essential.
How long does it take for AliExpress to deliver?
On AliExpress, every item has an expected delivery time listed on the product page, which is usually between 20 and 60 days. In my experience, it’s also grossly wrong, so ignore it.
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