TUTORIAL: Import A Test Batch From China With Less Than £100

Hey, how's it going? It's Oli here. So today we're going to talk about how to import from China and validate a niche on Amazon for under a hundred pounds and how you can actually do this and get a really great result and actually see whether a product is worth selling or not. So in the last video I did last week, we did a niche Spotlight video and I analyzed the niche garden twine. So we established that it is a pretty good niche. And I talked about some bundling options that you could do to try and sell this product within the niche. Now, if you want to go watch the video, if you just go to my channel, it's the video before this one. I'll try and put a card to it in the top or a link somewhere. So this is the niche, right? As a quick refresh, you see lots of sellers making money and not too many sellers with lots of reviews. All right, so what would be our next step? Well, AliExpress is kind of like Alibaba, I think they're like basically the same company, but instead of getting connected with a manufacturer where, you know, it's a factory and they can create products for you using raw materials, plastics, wood, metal or whatever, AliExpress is a business to consumer website and it's basically where people go to do shopping and they order stuff and it comes from China and they'll just order like one dress or one pair of headphones or one pair of shoes or whatever. Kind of similar to buying from wish.com or something like that. But it's great for doing test batches because the minimum order quantity of every single product is always going to be one. So it's not going to be an issue. Suppliers are not going to be saying to you you need to order at least 500 units. So if I just type in garden twine into AliExpress, we'll see what kind of options we have in the search results. As you can see, there's lots of different products here. Some of them kind of similar to the stuff that you see on Amazon, which is good because that's kind of what we want. We want to sell something that's, you know, solves the same problem, right? You see they've got the green twine here and it's $2.28 per unit. And on Amazon, they're selling it for £7.99 for a pack of two, which is pretty much a similar stuff. So you've got options. I mean, you can have a look through the search results and really what we're trying to do when we're doing a test batch is we're trying to find a way to fill gaps in the marketplace. So when I analyze this niche, a lot of people were saying that the twine wasn't really very strong, it cut very easily and it wasn't thick enough. So if you can somehow find out the thickness of the twine that is being sold on Amazon, here we are, it says 2 millimeters on this listing. If we can get twine that's thicker than that, then immediately we'll be able to add value to the niche and do something better than what a lot of the sellers are doing. So if you can have a look on some of the listings on AliExpress and see if any of the twine is thicker than 2 millimeters, then already we know we've added a little bit of value, right? So as you can see, a lot of these are 2 millimeters. Maybe we could type in to the search bar maybe 3 millimeters and see if anything comes up like that. Here we are, here's a three millimeter garden twine. A little bit more expensive, but who knows, could be good. Let's have a look. So that's an idea. Alright, that comes with two roles. Now, one thing to remember right when you're doing a test batch is do not ever try to make profit. In fact, you should expect to make a loss when you do a test batch because it's just the way that the numbers are going to be. I mean, you're always going to be ordering a small quantity, therefore you're not going to be ordering bulk and you're not going to be able to save money in that respect. You're going to have to pay for express shipping from China to the uk, which is always going to be expensive and you're going to have to charge probably the same or cheaper as the other sellers on Amazon within your niche, depending on how good your bundle is or whatever. So aim to make a bit of a loss on your test batch and that's fine. We just want to see if the thing actually sells not. So if you see the price here is like $9, and that's kind of more expensive than some of the the products that are selling on Amazon. Like actually that's okay because when we buy say 300 units of this from a seller on Alibaba, we know we can get it super cheap for like a dollar each or something like that. And so don't worry too much about the prices. So once you find A couple suppliers on AliExpress that look pretty good. So first thing you have to do is set up an account. So if you just go to account on the top right and then click Join, you can set up the account. It's pretty simple. You just enter your email password, click Create Account and they might ask for a few more details. Super quick, super easy. And then what you can do is you can start messaging suppliers. Before you buy anything, shoot the supplier a message and just ask them a few questions about the product. Like for example, could I get a discount If I bought 50 of these or 100 of these from you? Could you ship these to me with express shipping within 5 days and give them your address and they can do those calculations for you and get you a quote. You'll find that the standard AliExpress shipping is very, very cheap, but it also takes very, very long. And that's only for one piece. I mean, as the quantity goes up, the shipping starts to go up too. Now when you ask for Express Shipping and ask to get the products within five days, the price is going to be even higher. But it's a test batch, you're not looking to make profit, so it's okay. So message a few suppliers, get some quotes for larger quantities, see if they can give you a discount, see if they can give you express shipping for say a boxerlys. And once you've got a ton of quotes from suppliers, then the idea is you see who's the cheapest, who has the best quality stock, who has the best communication, who's willing to work with you and choose the supplier, who just looks like they've got the highest chance of being the most helpful basically. And remember, we want to add value. In the previous video last week I was talking about creating a bundle which where you have maybe like a garden accessories set with twine, with some kind of secateurs, some pegs and some other little bits to help manage a garden. So you can check out AliExpress and see if they have any of the other things that you might need. So for example, garden pegs could be something else you could search for. And there's obviously loads of different pegs they have available as well. I think one of the ones we saw on Google was wooden garden pegs. So you can type that in, see if they have anything. And what you'll find sometimes is that the type of suppliers and the type of products that you want might not actually be available on AliExpress. You might find that you look around and they have some stuff and they have some good suppliers, but especially when you want to order slightly higher quantities, AliExpress kind of does have his limits. So another thing you can do is you can go over to dhgate. This is another place where you can go to source low quantities of stock from China to do test batches. And this is like kind of halfway between AliExpress, which is business to consumer, and Alibaba, which, which is buying from manufacturers. In fact, Dhgate, they're quite often wholesalers, they expect you to buy 50 units, 100 units, 200 units. They're not always factories who create the stuff. Quite often they have like bulk quantities of stock and they can sell it to you. So this is really good if you just want say 50 units of something. So if we type in garden twine on dhgate, maybe we'll get some different results. Let's have a look. So, yeah, so as you can see, have different colored ones here and they have a minimum order of four pieces. So they have a slightly higher minimum order than AliExpress, but obviously it's still manageable. And what you'll find is as you order more, they actually give you a bit of a discount. So this is in Swedish krona. Let me see if I can change it to USD. There we go. So yeah, one lot of four rolls is $20, two lots becomes $18 63. I guess that's per lot and cheaper and it gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So yeah, you can let them know how many lots you want and you'll get a quote. And you can also again message the supplier as well and talk to them directly. So if you just go to this button here, hit message. Obviously you need to create an account first, same process as AliExpress. Then you can send them a message and ask them again, what if I bought 100 rolls from you? Could you arrange express shipping for me? Etc, Etc, etc. So that's what we're trying to do. Contact as many suppliers as possible from both of these sites. Get quotes for the amount that you want to buy. I usually recommend 50 sets. So if you're doing a bundle that has 1, 2, 3 pieces inside, then 50 sets of the bundle. So then you need to get 50 pieces of garden twine, right? Or a hundred. If it's fifty sets of two, then you know, fifty sets of pegs, fifty sets of sacateurs, if that's what you're doing inside the bundle. And that way we can see, you know, if they have a decent chance to sell on Amazon. And usually when you place these orders, I mean it's going to take maybe up to a week for the express shipping delivery to arrive with you. And the great thing about this is if you use a company like for example, dhl, which is usually one of the biggest companies that Chinese suppliers use, they'll do everything for you. So they'll pick up the product from the supplier or the supplier will drop it off at the local drop off point. DHL will ship the products from the Chinese supplier all the way to your country. So to the UK or wherever. They'll take it through customs and then DHL will send you an invoice with the import fees and then you'll pay DHL the import fees and then they'll release it and forward it onto you. So when you're ordering these low quantities, it comes really quickly in like seven days. And it's just like so simple. You really don't have to put too much energy into worrying about the import. DHL handles everything, but again, it is a little bit expensive but super, super, super convenient. And then what you can do is list the products on Amazon. And the key with getting a test batch to work successfully is, is to get the marketing absolutely spot on. So what we really need when you create your listing is to make every single part of the listing really, really well optimized. That's the key. If you really want to test a product and see whether it's going to sell properly or not, you need to have an amazing, amazing listing. So one of the best listings on Amazon, which I always use when I want to give an example to my clients, is bamboo toothbrushes. So this company sell bamboo toothbrushes and you know, their number one bestseller in their niche basically. And they've got a bundle which is exactly what I recommend you guys do. And they don't even have a plus content on their listing, which is where you get brand registered and you have all the extra pictures and videos. They don't have any of that stuff. They just have a normal listing, which is what you guys will have. And yet they're number one best seller. So you should just basically copy what they've done with their listing. And you know, it all starts with the pictures. Obviously their pictures are extremely clear, shows off the whole bundle that you get on the main image. So when you see this picture in the search results when the customer's looking, they see, oh well, with this product I get absolutely everything in a set. The other pictures also show off more details and benefits about the product. They've Got great text on all the pictures to illustrate all of the benefits and talk about their, you know, their company's mission and things like that, which is relevant to the product. Lifestyle photos where they show you the product in use, someone actually using the product and just more info about the other products they have as well. You can see they haven't just taken like a couple of pictures and just kind of slapped them on the listing. Like they really put a lot of effort into making the pictures look amazing. So that's where you should start. Also create a really good title with lots of information. You can put up to 200 characters in the title, so that's obviously important. Bullet points, again, lots of info. You can add more than five bullet points now. You can add tons. So just put as many as you can. Add as much information as possible in there. Focusing mainly again on benefits. And same with description. Make the description incredible. And then once you've got a really good listing, you can turn on a bit of advertising, right? A bit of pay per click advertising, just as these guys are doing. And as you can see, their product comes up as a sponsored ad here, right at the top of page one. Even if you just type in bamboo toothbrushes there, the ad will probably come up for that keyword. Here we go. This is one of their ads. So your product could be one of these adverts that come up when somebody types in garden twine or garden accessories set. Your product will come up straight here. As soon as you send your test batch into Amazon, you could do this whole process in like 14 days. Most of my clients do that exact thing. They have their listing ready, they run their advertising and spend a little bit, you know, maybe five pounds a day on advertising. And again, not worrying about profit, you're going to go into the red with this stuff. But what most of my clients do is they'll send the stock into Amazon and pretty much as soon as it goes live, because the listings already done, they got their advertising turned on, the sales start to come in, right? You can play around with the price, maybe start a little bit low, and then gradually increase it. And then within a few weeks you'll be able to see that your product is definitely going to sell. And one of the best things about this whole process of doing a test batch is not just making some sales, but it's getting the confidence that, yes, this product will sell. Yes, you can make money doing this stuff. And yes, if you just add a little bit of value to your niche and just try and be a little bit better than the competition, then your product will sell really well. So if you were to go and order say 500 units, then that would sell as well. Alright. So I hope this has given you a little bit of inspiration as to how you can get started with very, very small amount of money and do a test batch on Amazon and validate a niche. Go out there, find a niche, go order some stock from AliExpress, from Dhgate, send it into Amazon, create an amazing listing and get it to sell. You can do this whole thing within a couple of weeks. Get your Amazon business moving. So hope this has been useful. If you want more videos like this, hit subscribe. I actually release a video like this every Thursday, so keep an eye out. And yeah, really look forward to seeing you in the comments section. So hit subscribe. Can't wait to see you in the next video.