AliExpress provides online information publishing and transaction technology services. Sellers should pay an annual technical service fee (hereinafter referred to as the “annual fee”) for each store that is admitted according to the different business categories it is admitted into.
(1) Sellers should pay the annual fee in one lump sum after obtaining admission.
(2) The annual fee is settled on a monthly basis. If the seller has not been in operation for a full year and has not been closed due to any breach of contract or violation of regulations, AliExpress will deduct the annual fee based on the actual time of admission (calculated on a monthly basis, if it is less than a month, it will be calculated as a full month, and no fee will be charged in the month of withdrawal) and refund the annual fee for the period during which no service was provided.
(3) If the seller is punished for the following reasons, the full amount of the annual fee paid will not be refunded, and the annual fee for not providing technical services will be deducted as liquidated damages:
① The account is closed due to serious violation of the agreement, seller rules, etc. (such as selling counterfeit goods, speculating on reputation and sales, or seriously disrupting the order of the platform, etc.);
② The seller publishes products that do not belong to the business category under the business category to circumvent the category access policy of AliExpress. AliExpress will enforce account penalties in accordance with the rules such as seriously disrupting the order of the platform;
③ The seller falsifies the annual sales volume through cheating. AliExpress will enforce account penalties in accordance with the rules such as seriously disrupting the order of the platform.
(4) If there is a refundable annual fee, the annual fee will be refunded to the RMB withdrawal account that is bound to the store’s international Alipay in real time.
In addition, merchants operating on AliExpress need to pay a commission based on a certain percentage of their order sales (referred to as the “rate”).
AliExpress’s “Overview” of Relevant Rules
AliExpress ranks products on the platform according to a unified algorithm set by the system. The ranking of products on the search page includes many factors.
5.3.1 AliExpress Search Ranking Rules
Like eBay, AliExpress also uses search ranking rules. The main factors affecting AliExpress search rankings are the relevance of search terms to products and the quality of the products themselves. These include the following four points:
(1) Whether the search terms are relevant to the product description;
(2) Whether the search terms are relevant to the product category;
(3) The quality of the product itself;
(4) The quality of the seller’s service.