Review of Thieve Dropshipping
Thieve is a user-submitted and voted AliExpress item. We moderate the content before it is posted and do some research on the products before we post them. It was founded by Tim Scullin and features the best direct-to-factory products. They also create tools to support a growing number of dropshippers, people who purchase direct from factory products for resale.
Thieve, an ecommerce product, provides a daily updated list of the top finds on AliExpress (the retail side of Internet wholesaler Alibaba). A group of creatives from around the globe hand select Thieve supply pro products, including photographers, designers, and bloggers. Wholesale manufacturers are able to sell dropshipping products directly to consumers around the globe at lower prices than what they would normally charge in-store due to the huge economies of scale and the savings made by the middleman.
How do you know what to sell with Thieve Supply
Find the best products, either tried and tested or new trends. Then list them on your Shopify store. This is an easy-to-use platform that allows you to create a web shop that accepts direct payments to your bank account.
You can find new trends on Twitter and Instagram, but there are many other places. Thieve.co is a great website to curate products. It is a group of shoppers who like to use Aliexpress, a Chinese dropshipper.
Aliexpress is full of junk so you might want to test the dropshipping product before selling it. Your business’s quality control is crucial.
How Thieve.co makes its money?
What I have gleaned so far is that Thieve supply pro actually acts as an affiliate marketing engine. They lure users with their thieving scheme (and implicit promise of free goods), and then present them with a carefully selected array of goods. These goods can be described as “featured”, as the users are attracted to inspect each item to determine if it is stealable. However, they are also being cleverly driven to verify ownership.
The user is more likely to make a purchase if they have taken the time to really think about the item than if they were just browsing the site. Thieve has big buttons that will take you to the site to purchase the selected item. They encourage the user to like the item by hand-selecting highly-rated items and providing information at a low cost.
Although I don’t know the exact details of the AliExpress affiliate program, we can perform some conservative math to determine how the business model works.
Let’s assume that the program pays 2% commission on an item. Amazon pays out some categories at less that 2% but most are higher and I’d wager they choose categories that pay higher rates. See Amazon affiliate schedule. To break even on a single item they’ve won, they must have it bought at least 50 times.
Although it may seem like a lot, even if we assume only 2% of users click through to the site (WordStream claims this is the avg AdWords clickthroughs), and that only 1.5% (12.5% overall) of these click-throughs actually purchase the item, then they only need to get 20k views (per item theft) to break even.
These are conservative conversion rates since users have already visited the site to purchase an item. The items they choose are likely of high quality and they are likely to find great deals. Thieve supply pro could break even at 10k views if the click-through rate is increased to even 4%.
Thieve promotes its Chrome extension as part the steal process. They could be making additional commissions without having to purchase items for the winners. This makes it a straight profit scheme.
This is where I feel that the long-term viability of a company such as this begins to fall apart for me. It is because 1) there is no way to scale up the prizes given to crew members and 2) there is no real value to using such a service.
It starts to fall because each additional member of a crew, which I believe is simply inviting a friend, increases their totalViews proportionally. With a crew of only 3, they have now increased their required views to break-even from 10k and 30k. Imagine a few more crews and how that might impact their ability to breakeven. They might be betting on the network effects of the invites so that each member invites another. Thieve dropshipping may then have a greater pool of people engaging with the platform, which could allow them to keep up the pace and make more profits.
While this is great, the success and viability of 1) depends on the success of 2) as well. If people aren’t actively using the platform, it doesn’t matter how many they have. The only way to ensure that they stay on the platform is to offer a service. Thieve dropshipping may have a great system for bubbling up featured items/great bargains, but there are many sites that do this well that aren’t limited to AliExpress (see Honey, SlickDeals).
In the current state of affairs, they will see a significant bump in their PH submission, but then they will begin to see dwindling number until their mechanisms are changed to offer more outlets, promotions, and/or ways to save money (as per Honey), so that users perceive more than a sweepstakes. They might be able convert some of the user surge into long-term users if they do it quickly and well. It is always helpful to have the ball in one’s court.
This is my view on how Thieve.co makes its money. My personal view on buying goods is that if it wasn’t obvious that you desired the dropshipping product until you actually saw it, then you don’t really need it. It doesn’t mean you should not buy it. However, it is a helpful way to determine its worth.
Review of Thieve Dropshipping Features
The price, image, and name of the product are identical to the one that was redirected.
Aliexpress redirects products to the same product.
Searches for keywords will show you the matches.
Each product category contains the correct products
The correct order of products is based on
Validations for input boxes
Based on each preference, test notifications
The page displaying errors is correct and the appropriate page is shown on errors
Each click is responsible for a specific action.
For different currencies, price conversions are accurate
Layout and Typography of the Content
Grammar and spelling
These terms of service and privacy policies are in effect
Performance and usability testing
Social media buttons redirect you to the correct pages
Benefits of Thieve Aliexpress
It’s the question that I am asked the most: How do I find great products? The secret is that no one knows. It is important to keep up with the latest trends and monitor new dropshipping products, as well as seek out inspiration from successful stores.
This can be replicated in your store. You can search the top sellers category on Aliexpress and the movers and shakers of Amazon to find the most popular products. I also recommend Thieve.co, which is my personal favorite and a group of Aliexpress shoppers who share their new products.
Sell The Trend provides a 7-day free trial to their premium website and over a million trending product options with custom targets, ads, and more.
A Facebook store is also available. You can find all the latest ads under “Info and Ads” on Facebook to view their most recent advertisements and get inspired.
You can also use platforms to share your winning dropshipping products. Intelligyence, a desktop platform that runs on Windows and Macs, is currently the most popular. It costs $19.95 per month.
You will need to create your own winning products. Dropshipping is hard work. If done right, it will bring you huge commissions.
Find a supplier on the platform you prefer to purchase your product. To ensure quality, delivery time and peace of mind, I recommend purchasing the product directly. These can be offset by business purchases.
Once you are satisfied, you can add the products into your Shopify shop. You should not copy and paste product descriptions. Your product description should be unique and you can sell it to your customers. You should ask them why they need it and why they should buy from you. It’s essential!
Thieve.co Alternatives
FindNiche is one the most popular Thieve alternatives. Both Thieve as well as FindNiche offer AliExpress product research to dropshippers. Their focus is however different. Thieve provides a carefully curated selection of products, which are selected by an international team of creatives. FindNiche, an alternative to Thieve, is more data-driven. It tends to analyze items using multiple data perspectives such as top countries, sales, and growth rates. This could make it more convincing.
Curated Dropshipping Product
Thieve claims that their community of creatives curates Supply products. They emphasize that hundreds are human-hand-selected products, including the product content. Although FindNiche is a good alternative to Thieve in dropshipping product analysis, it allows merchants to find product ideas on their own, which allows them to narrow down the possible products by using more specific filter criteria. FindNiche also updates 20 niche products based on their powerful algorithm every day.
Product Performance
You can find related information about each product in Thieve. This includes the AliExpress selling price, total orders and likes. There is also a link to the AliExpress details pages. FindNiche provides more information about product performance than the above, including data on orders growth rates, target countries, daily orders/wishlists changes, and other details such as sales price, shipping cost, and average order size.
Meaningful Filter Option
Both FindNiche and Thieve offer advanced filter criteria. However, FindNiche is more comprehensive and offers more options in terms of filter options. You can sort and filter products on Thieve with four options (trending, price, shipping from the United States), You will still find FindNiche in the beginning. There are five default filters to help you find related products. However, you can also create hundreds of filter combinations to get the product results that you desire.
