Hi everyone!

Soooooooo… my friends have been asking me for ages to teach them how to shop on Taobao. I’m no expert, but with the amount I spend on Taobao each month, I am pretty certain I singlehandedly funded Alibaba’s IPO 😒 Just about everything I own is manufactured in China – my clothes, my shoes, my accessories, my self-esteem… You get the idea 😍

So let’s get down to it 😀 I broke it down into a few steps in case you want to skip the basic parts ~

Steps:
1) Signing up for a Taobao Account ❤
2) Searching for Items 💙
3) Choosing Your Items 💛
4) Payment & Shipping via Ezbuy 💚

Links:
– For a compilation of Taobao Search Terms: HERE!
– For a $10 voucher/ sign up for Ezbuy: HERE!

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1) Signing up for a Taobao Account

You can skip straight to Step 2 if you just need help navigating the site and finding items 👍

Click on Register. Next to it is Login, so use that to login after you register.

Click on English and voila!

tb2

2) Searching for Items

So here is the trickiest part. The best items can only be found in Chinese, I’ve only entered English search terms under dire circumstances when Google translate has failed me. The key is to find something similar to start with!

For example, if I want to search for this off-shoulder choker crop top that’s really trendy right now:

a) Use Search Terms

You have to piece together a description of what you are looking for so:

Off-Shoulder = 露肩一字
Crop Top = 露脐短款上衣

To find these search terms, you can either use Google translate or draw upon your vast reserves of O Level Chinese knowledge. Alternatively, you can refer to my compilation of Taobao search terms HERE! I’ll constantly update it as we go along.

Then you will end up with a lot of similar looking items in the search page results like this:

The circled item is the closest to what I am looking for, and when I scroll down, I can find a few similar items already!

Simply open them in another tab BUT KEEP THE SEARCH RESULTS because the trick is to…

b) Use the Magic “找相似” Button

This is the beauty of Taobao 😍 you can find the item with the best quality and the cheapest price using this button! It means “Look for Similar Items” so you can browse for similar items, with varying designs, colours, textures etc.

Try to pick the items with greater Sales Volume or 销量 (in grey words next to the price of the item), they tend to have more reviews and are more reliable 👍

When you hover over the item you want, 2 orange buttons will appear over the product image.
The red star is what you click ❣

After clicking on “Look for Similar Items”, you will see this page.
Click on the red star to sort by PRICE ✨ well that’s what I always do cos’ I am a broke ass.

So I always open a few tabs so that I can compare all the items (cos’ the cheapest might not be of the best quality), which is in the next section: 3) Choosing Your Items.

But another way you can search for your items is…

c) Use Taobao App to upload photos to search!

Ever saw something on Instagram/ Pinterest and wished you had the cheaper, China-manufactured version of it? No? Just me? Ok then… 😐

The Taobao app has this amazing function to SEARCH BY IMAGE 🤓🤓🤓

The first image is the main page once you open the app, then just click the camera button next to the search box and you will go into the camera mode.

You can upload photos, screenshots or just snap your friend’s outfit and annoy the shit out of them 😜
I went nuts for a while after I discovered it. The desktop version used to have the same function but I can’t seem to find it anymore ☹ so I just use the app and dump the items in my cart, because I prefer shopping on a bigger screen hehe 😇

3) Choosing Your Items

So once you have the item you want, how can you determine if it is the cheapest alternative around, of decent quality and that the seller will not attempt to sew pig intestines into the lining?

Check out the shop’s ratings?

I don’t usually look at the crowns, but more of the 3 numbers below. They rank the item’s description, service and logistics out of 5, so generally 4.6 and above is safe.

Most importantly, I make my decision on the PHOTO REVIEWS. Scroll down and click on this tab:

And you will see all the reviews so sort them by clicking on the 图片 tab:

So once you see all the photo reviews, you can click on the photos to expand and see!

I trust photo reviews more because I can actually see the quality/ colour of the product in real, unedited photos and also, how it looks like on people that are about my size. However, if there aren’t any photo reviews (could be a relatively newly listed product), I will take a chance and buy it anyway if the store has 4.7 ratings and above! ☺

4) Payment and Shipping via Ezbuy

I know Taobao has direct shipping now AND I have tried it before but I still prefer using Ezbuy as an agent to ship from Taobao. Their fees are cheaper than shipping direct and they check your items for you to make sure sellers didn’t send the wrong item or are trying to cheat you 😍

I’ll write another article comparing Taobao direct shipping and Ezbuy! You can sign up for Ezbuy easily by clicking HERE and you will get $10 off your first Taobao order as a welcome gift! 🎆

If you are based in USA, I haven’t tried any agents BUT you can try www.chinaebuys.com, found it when I Googled “US Taobao agent”. Do let me know in the comments if you have tried any US agent before!

So once you have decided which item you want, COPY THE LINK and paste it in the Ezbuy search box:

Click on the Search icon and you will end up at
this page, where you can see the price in SGD, select your option and add to your Ezbuy cart:

Then just go ahead to check out and make payment! Ezbuy is in English as well, so it’s really easy to navigate. I usually wait for their Free Agent Fee promotions to make my purchases, so it’s even cheaper 😇

I realised this post comes just in time for China’s Singles’ Day (11 Nov i.e. 11/11) Sales, which is the overpopulated version of US’s Black Friday. Basically nearly everything on Taobao will be ON SALE (like it wasn’t already dirt cheap) and Ezbuy has a ton of promotions like Free Agent Fee, Free Shipping and discount vouchers ^.^ So load up your shopping cart before this Friday!

Don’t forget to get your $10 shopping credit for Taobao by clicking HERE!

I hope this post has been informative and helpful! Do leave comments if you need any help 💕 I’ll be uploading posts with my Taobao loots soon, because showing my loots off to my uninterested boyfriend just isn’t that satisfying anymore 😐

Happy shopping cuties!

Love,

Sally