Have looked at that site a couple times and it's interesting.

I know of a guy that built a business on there. If you can find the right niche and market the product right and a lot of hard work you can become a millionaire. There are online tutorials that will guide how to do it.

I am about to start researching this for a semi-trailer parts niche.

If anyone has links to best practices, I would appreciate it.

/r/entrepreneur has had some really good posts on it over the years.

I've bought a few items, but Im far from an expert. A few things off the top of my head:

Contact lots of suppliers. Use only gold suppliers with transaction history. Watch closely for scams, if something is too good to be true it is. See if the suppliers have standalone webpages and see what else you can find out about them outside of Alibaba. Shipping sucks, you have your choice of overly complicated or insanely expensive (or both). Always get samples, and depending on the part consider hiring a 3rd party inspector for production orders. Many suppliers are middlemen, verify they are making your part in their own factory or else you are being overcharged.

About 6 or 7 years ago I bought 11K worth of parking garage sensors & monitoring system for a construction project. Found the company on Alibaba and contacted them directly for information and installation guides. The company was very helpful and had reputable projects all over Asia. We were worried for about 4 months if we had been taken for 11K because freight was shipped in a boat from China and took a long time from payment until we received the materials. Everything worked out well for us and the company & alibaba was easy to work with.

We had a great experience the one time and would recommend them. I'm sure they are like any other sales website where they vet the sellers but there can always be bad apples such as selling knock offs on Amazon, or ebay people who never send the item.

Just find the 1 product that you want to start with. I would recommend something that you can offer upsells or varaiations.

Take that product, find out how you want to brand it or make it special to you.

Go to AliExpress, find samples.

Talk to those same vendors on Alibaba and ask for free/low cost samples. Don't negotiate until you get product.

Highly recommend talking to them via Skype (Phone/Video chat). Build a relationship.

Once you find the product you like, negotiate.

Start with a small inventory

Figure out where you want the ship the product from. (In house or through a 3PL or even Amazon FBA)

Figure out how you want to sell it as far as shopping cart (own website, amazon, etsy, etc.)

Generate traffic to shopping cart

People will buy

Re-invest money to buy more product at lower costs and higher quantity

Build large e-mail list

Remarket next product to e-mail list

Repeat

If you have any questions, let me know! I ran an ecomm business years ago, and now have a marketing agency. I can help where needed!

ralex at innovatefast dot com