How to sell on AliExpress: the marketplace you cannot ignore in your multichannel strategy.

AliExpress in the world

AliExpress belongs to the Alibaba group. Alibaba.com is an eCommerce platform that launched in China in 1999. Unlike AliExpress, it is a B2B marketplace. Essentially, this means it is involved in sales between businesses as well as the purchase of large quantities of merchandise for redistribution. AliExpress however focuses on B2C; where the final purchase is made by the actual customer. AliExpress emerged in 2010 as the solution to cover not only wholesales but also the final buyer.

After 10 years of operating, it is fair to say that AliExpress is now one of the largest marketplaces in the world. Currently, AliExpress is active in over 220 countries and regions and is available in 18 languages. It has 38 payment channels and 51 different local currencies. If these figures are impressive, what’s even more impressive is the number of visits and customers. Today, AliExpress has more than 200 million monthly visits worldwide and has more than 150 million active shoppers every month. With these figures, it is clear why AliExpress has earned the nickname of The Chinese Amazon.

The “star event” of AliExpress is Single’s Day. And even this has no need to envy Amazon Prime Day or even Black Friday & Cyber Monday. On Single’s Day 2019, AliExpress registered sales of 38.4 billion dollars, which represented an increase of 20% compared to 2018’s event - it’s growing rapidly.

Benefits of selling your products in AliExpress

The figures mentioned above are reason enough to consider incorporating AliExpress into your multichannel strategy. However, there are many other advantages to selling your products on AliExpress:

• The commission charged per sale is one of the lowest in the market. Depending on the category, the commission varies from 5 to 8%


• The opening of the store is free. And there are no fixed expenses or monthly payments.


• From the same platform or interface, you can sell to all available countries.


• You will compete with other sellers, but not with AliExpress as it does not sell its own products.


• Fast and secure payment system. You will receive the payment of the order when the customer confirms the reception of the product.

How to start selling your products in AliExpress

If you are not yet selling on AliExpress, the first step is to register as a seller. By clicking here, you will find the steps to follow. It is important that you take into account the following points before registering:

• At the moment only companies or sellers from the following countries can register as a seller on AliExpress: China, Russia, Spain, Italy, France, and Turkey. It is important that you select the country correctly. Once you confirm your choice, you will not be able to modify it.


• Register with an email that does not match the email you use for your buyer account. It is important because in this email you will receive the verification code, as well as important notifications.

The request will be reviewed in a couple of days and if everything is correct, you will receive an email stating that you can start uploading your product catalog to AliExpress. And this is where a feed management tool like Channable can really make your life easier.

How to upload your products to AliExpress

There are multiple ways to upload your products to AliExpress. It can be done manually or through an excel file in the products section of AliExpress. This option may be sufficient if your catalog is very small and does not change much. However, the fastest and safest option, and therefore the most recommended, is to do the integration through an API. And Channable has developed an API connection with AliExpress so that you can integrate your product catalog with AliExpress very easily. In a later section, we will explain how you can do this.

However, before integrating your catalog you must take a couple of things into account:

• At the moment only companies or sellers from the following countries can register as a seller on AliExpress: China, Russia, Spain, Italy, France, and Turkey. It is important that you select the country correctly. Once you confirm your choice, you will not be able to modify it.


• If your products are categorized as "Special Category", you must send the corresponding special certificates.

Benefits of using Channable to integrate your catalog with AliExpress

As we have mentioned before, the most recommended method to upload product information to AliExpress is through an API connection like the one offered by Channable. Especially if you have many products in your catalog and the information is very dynamic i.e. changes frequently. But what are the other benefits of using Channable?

• The information of your products is updated automatically every day and it’s possible to update up to 24 times a day. This means that you will not have to make any manual changes to your products. And important values ​​such as stock or prices will be automatically modified in AliExpress as soon as a change is detected in your original catalog.


• You will be able to modify all the information of your products in a simple way. This means that in a couple of clicks you can change the titles, descriptions, and prices of your products in bulk.


• Order synchronization with AliExpress is also available. Thanks to the order connection, you can receive orders from AliExpress directly on your eCommerce platform. Also, the shipping information will be updated automatically. This order management is perfect to save time and money avoiding a very repetitive process. And that's not all. You can manage your orders centrally not only for AliExpress but also for Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces.


• Channable has connections with more than 2500 marketplaces, comparison sites, and affiliate networks. This means that you can not only create the listing for AliExpress, but also for other platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Google Shopping.

Create your listing in AliExpress with Channable´s API

Here you can find a summary of the steps you have to follow within the tool to configure the AliExpress API. You will need to have a Channable account. If you do not, you can set one up here):

1. Import your product catalog into Channable.


2. Select AliExpress within the tap of APIs. Here it is important to request your API Token to AliExpress in order to establish the connection.


3. Categorize all your products in minutes.


4. Use intelligent cause-effect rules to optimize the information in your catalog and adjust it to the specifications indicated by AliExpress.


5. Fill in the information requested by AliExpress for the attributes of the products. In Channable you only need to include the data in a simple table called attribute builder. For this, you can help yourself with the rules.


6. Check which products have been successfully sent to AliExpress and troubleshoot those with errors.

After these 6 simple steps, your catalog will be integrated with AliExpress, and you will be ready to start selling in the Asian giant!

If you have doubts about how we can help you to integrate your catalog in AliExpress or any other platform, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team are happy to help.