Overseas social e-commerce sellers refer to a group of cross-border e-commerce sellers who specialize in obtaining traffic and bringing goods through social platforms. For example, the recently popular Shopify+Facebook model is a typical social e-commerce model. This model has changed the past way of attracting traffic through search engines and turned the main traffic channel into social platforms led by Facebook.
The products sold by overseas social e-commerce sellers are usually not ordinary products. Most of them are “novel and unique” products that can greatly stimulate people’s desire to buy. For example, the “fidget spinner” that became popular overseas a few years ago is a typical “novel and unique” product. In addition, the delivery model of overseas social e-commerce sellers is also relatively novel. It is not a model of packing and sending postal parcels one by one, nor is it an overseas warehouse model similar to Amazon’s fulfillment service (FBA). Instead, it is mainly based on the drop-shipping model and cash on delivery (COD) model.
The drop-shipping model means that after the seller places an order, assuming that the consumer is from the United States, the seller directly buys the same product on a cross-border e-commerce platform (such as AliExpress), writes the consumer’s address, and then lets the AliExpress seller complete the final delivery process. The seller does not need to touch the product throughout the process, nor does he need a logistics supply chain system. The product prices on the Japanese sellers’ websites are usually 3 to 5 times the price of the same product on the AliExpress platform, which takes advantage of this information gap. Because overseas social e-commerce sellers need to purchase on the AliExpress platform, the AliExpress platform has also specially established a drop-shipping system that is seamlessly connected with Shopify, which is convenient for these social e-commerce sellers.
In the early stages of my country’s e-commerce development, COD The model was once popular for a while, but with the popularity of mobile payment, it is now used less and less in China. At present, the main target of overseas COD is Southeast Asia, where the infrastructure is not well developed and smartphones are not popular enough.
Social e-commerce sellers are those who are already familiar with using overseas traffic. This group has ready-made free traffic and channels that can quickly obtain low-cost high-quality traffic, and has super strong product selection capabilities. Therefore, this model seems simple, but the threshold is actually very high. Novice sellers or platform sellers should not try it easily. If the company has limited ability to use overseas traffic, it is extremely difficult to operate the social e-commerce model.
In summary, for many novice sellers of cross-border e-commerce, the independent station e-commerce model and the social e-commerce model are difficult to operate and have a low success rate. It is easy for novice sellers to fail when they choose to do independent station e-commerce or social e-commerce at the beginning. Novice sellers can first understand these two models, but don’t try them rashly. From my many years of experience in cross-border e-commerce, cross-border e-commerce platforms led by Amazon are one of the best choices for novice sellers.