Do many of you guys buy electronic components from Aliexpress or similar?

Hi everyone, there are new part search engines popping up in google all the time and a few well established great ones. I've put together my own one over the last few months and wanted to share it to get some feedback. It's early so a bit rough but any feedback is welcome.

Buy Parts

I'm also toying with a search aggregator for fleamarkets and electronic component search engines. Do you think there is a need for a site that will search places like aliexpress, ebay for electronic components and then return the results in one page? I'm a bit unsure if i'd be wasting my time but they seem very popular with makers and hackers.

Christopher, by a strange coincidence I'd signed up to AliExpress not 30 minutes prior to seeing your post.  It was for some spares for a shaver I have.  Turns out they don't use PayPal so I won't use them.  If they don't use PayPal, they don't want my business.I think your site is great in that it brings together the datasheet, some basic data and a buying link all in one place.As a trial I put in 2N3055, a nice beefy transistor that I'm very fond of.I got 6 results, 3 of which listed prices, but when you click the Buy Online button you get a list of sites you can buy from.  You click on some of those sites, they in turn seem to be other sites that are doing what you are trying to do, ie list lots of suppliers.  Other sites on your list take you to yet another search box where you can specify some parameters and then yet again select from the various supply sites.  And the prices listed on your site don't correspond to what the final suppliers are offering. So it's a bit confusing as it is.  It seems that your site is listing variants of the same part, but sometimes these are just packaging variations which would not be of interest to a maker or hobbyist just wanting one or two parts.If you're aiming at the maker market then I think you should stick to sites which can cater for that, ie buying only a couple of parts.  Although they tend to be more expensive, houses like Newark and Mouser and Digi-key should be in there.  Finally, I am in Australia and I have my favourite supply houses and am used to trawling through a few of them to find what I want at the best price.  They include some of the bigger international ones like Element 14 (=Farnell/Newark), RS, etc., some Aussie country wide sites like Jaycar and Altronics,  as well as some smaller places like Rockby and US sites like Futurlec which are happy to send to Australia,  and of course Ebay.  So a site like yours which gave me instant prices from all these places would be great.  But then there are places like Led Sales which specialise in LEDs and I wouldn't look there for 2N3055's.  And different places have different shipping costs which will also influence my decision on where to buy.Duplicating my knowledge of what I am likely to get where is a daunting task...I have given it some thought but my web programming skills are obviously not as good as yours!  What I would aim for is to be able to put in my own list of supply houses (in your case, maybe from a list, and maybe with the facility to enter URLs yourself) and do one search that looks for a part from all of them (maybe with restrictions as for Led Sales above).  That way you can exclude places you wouldn't deal with (in my case AliExpress as above) and avoid getting results that you'd never use..  But I have no idea how easy it would be to do this.....Hope I have given you some food for thought here, and please take any criticism as constructive, I think you have the makings of a great idea here.

Hi David,Thanks for taking the time to reply. It is indeed a shame
that aliexpress doesn't allow paypal but that will probably never
happen. PayPal was initially created for eBay and then bought by them
(not sure if independent now). Saying that I know many, many people who
buy from Aliexpress and think it's great. You generally get items at a
tiny fraction of the cost elsewhere with free shipping.My
current ordering on the new site is a bit tiresome but I wanted to get
something online and then iterate. Interestingly some of the points you
raise are resolved in the new release coming shortly. There are lots of
great sites for ordering from authorized distributors but nothing really
good for pulling data from independents. I have been working on a few
solutions. The real hurdle is that the data from them is not generally
available in an api. So you have to do some heavy crawling. When hitting
more than one site the process is too slow for the user.
I'm
close to getting a demo online of the updated concept. I'll drop you a
message when i do to see what you think. If feasible I'll try to include
some Australian distributors too I do like the idea of a user being able to add their own into the search. I'll see how feasible that is too.
Thanks again,Chris

Thanks Chris, would appreciate a look at the updated site (you can send me a private msg by clicking on my name in a post to get my profile, then click Contact in the menu).I appreciate that some of the things I'd like might be in the too hard basket or be in the domain of diminishing returns......  But good luck with it.

You can see on AliExpress, the minuscule number of orders received by some suppliers over a period of years. Some clearly state (0)  ZERO.
I have had a great deal to do with Dick Smith Altronics Jaycar and Ellistronics. The amount of components bought by hobbyists would fill an Oroton mesh clutch purse.  

We do have a side project for searching aliexpress, ebay, and other hobbyist sites. It's used by a small number of people but we are wondering if there is maybe a wider audience for it.
https://www.yodisty.com/

I am always buy part from Aliexpress.And your parts search engine is good.