Any experience with Dropshipping + Print On Demand

Arnaldo

Active Member
@Direct Webstore Also for the mockups, do you do it yourself with photoshop or do the sellers do it for you based on you design? I once had a seller who propose to do the mockup, you just had to give him the design and he sent back the mockups to you.
 

Direct Webstore

Well-Known Member
How to you manage orders?
I have a customized checkout so customers can enter text/names etc and also a simple upload script for uploading photos. Instructions on what details, photos etc to provide are on each product page. At the moment I'm doing t-shirts, caps and coffee mugs.

So your supplier for POD are only Aliexpress sellers?
Right

Do you forward them the design for every order? Just curious about that.
Yes, the text and/or photos provided by the customer.

I mean you propose the design and let the customer add the details like "date of birth" "name" and so on at the checkhout page, right?
Right

Also for the mockups, do you do it yourself with photoshop
I do them myself ... with Paint.net and Microsoft Image Composer (An ancient program from the 90s ...lol)

It's not a perfect system (POD) and I'm still experimenting. I may end up using non Aliexpress sources in the future. :)
 
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Arnaldo

Active Member
Interesting. But the manual part isn't too scalable if orders increase drastically (I wish you so ;-)).

Price/margin wise Aliexpress sellers are even cheaper than big chinese POD companies like interest print.

Adding such feature in future updates might be very nice with custom checkout field + image upload and embed link to be posted on Aliexpress order comments for suppliers.

Having this all automated within Alidropship could be very powerful.

In fact, I plan to make a new suggestion post to the dev team, will do next week.

Cheers buddy.
 

Direct Webstore

Well-Known Member
But the manual part isn't too scalable if orders increase drastically (I wish you so ;-)).
I've got 3 unused licences ... so it's just an experiment being fueled purely by Social Rabbit at the moment.

Adding such feature in future updates might be very nice with custom checkout field + image upload and embed link to be posted on Aliexpress order comments for suppliers.
I don't know. Too many people are asking for this feature or that feature all the time and if they were all implemented, the plugins would turn into lumbering dinosaurs eventually. That's why I like Woo. You can add what you want without a load of bloat you don't want.
Remember I said I was going back to the Original before? That lasted a week and now I'm back to Woo again for this very reason.

You can customise the Woo checkout easily enough already ... but good luck with getting them to add that to to Original. They could make plugin for it, like Woo has. That may be more realistic. :)
 

Arnaldo

Active Member
I was referring to the woo version sorry. Honestly this time I'm too lazy (or busy) knowing woo so well that i don't even want to try anything else atm.

About the upload script: what could be interesting is finding a way to add docs/mockup attachments to each bought product/variations (hidden to customer ofc) that could be passed to supplier at checkout (without the need to edit the mockup everytime for every customer) ... So supplier has the psd mockup with original font used + customer notes to add up to it, so no more manual stuff from us except order.

But that's too specific to justify a custom alidropship development here. That's the best part of Printful, all is automated thanks to their plugin but their margins sucks, really.

Interest print is nice, great product choices, well sorted, but their mockup editor sucks big time, you can not do symetric patterns well, and all orders have to be done manually to...

So this Aliexpress POD Alternative seems interesting.

Same about Woo, I drastically reduced number of plugins to a minimum like you. Elementor + Litespeed cache helped a lot in this area. Also use only sucuri security plugins, wordfence takes far too much entries in the db. I keep it simple now. I'll also drop yoast for the same reason for AIO SEO. Still use GDLP?
 

Direct Webstore

Well-Known Member
Printful, all is automated thanks to their plugin but their margins sucks, really.
Sounds more like being an affiliate.

So this Aliexpress alternative seems interesting.
It's much simpler though. Mostly names (text) and photos (e.g, pet photos on coffee cups etc)

Also use only sucuri security plugins, wordfence takes far too much entries in the db.
I'll have to check that out. Did not realise.

Much better for e-commerce/products than Yoast. Yoast was made with blogs in mind, I think.

Still use GDLP?
Yes ... for 3 Yith plugins. (Custom order status, Custom checkout and Share for Discounts ... plus WooThemes Checkout Field Editor in the POD site)
 
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