Sign Up for a Taobao Account
UPDATED APRIL 2013
Registration Takes Less than a Minute
If you have ever signed up for anything online, the Taobao registration process will be very familiar. Before you start, you will need a Chinese mobile phone. You can also cross reference our guides with the official Taobao walkthrough for Asian customers who live outside of China. The processes are nearly the same.
Start by going to the Taobao registration page.
Step 1: Fill out your username / password / password again / CAPTCHA. Hit the orange button.
Step 2: Type in your Chinese mobile phone number. The link in the green box allows you to attach an email address to your account. You will still need to confirm with a Chinese mobile phone number. That checkbox (that you can’t uncheck) will automatically give you a limited Alipay account (which can add money and buy stuff, but not take money out).
Step 3: A box will pop up asking you to type the 6-digit number sent to your mobile phone.
Step 4: That’s a bingo! You are registered.
Next Step
But before you can start buying things, you will need to add money to your account. That means a trip to your local China Post Office to buy a Taobao Recharge Card.
I subscribed to Taobao some time ago, before your very useful site was available, my painstakingly translating the pages etc. I think though that I failed to keep the alipay box ticked. Now when I use the link on your site to open the page to recharge the account, it asks me to sign into alipay, ie doesn’t take me to the link. any suggestions on what I can do from here – how to set up linked alipay account?
thanks – great site by the way and look forward to buying something soon
Karen
Hi Karen,
Ask and ye shall receive! Check out our new guide to Registering for an Alipay Account
And let me know if that solves your problem.
~TFG
I think your website is fabulous – well done! I have been wanting to buy from TaoBao for ages, and now I feel like I can get an account and get started. Thanks so much!
Kylie
Rock on Kylie! Let us know how it goes.
I signed up for my account today. Thanks!
Rock on, David! Let us know how you do on your Taobao journey.
You know I have been diying to get an account,not to buy cheap stuff I can get here.I want writing brushes which good ones are hard to find and are very expensive. especially when I find out what they pay for them in china.The collections are very limited and most of the srtuff on the english web is absolute crap like those sets in the fan shaped case.They are everywhere yet on taobao no where to be found.Its Irinic when most electronics and stuff like that is similar to western prices. The greed makes me sick. When I see a brush on Taobao for 7 Yuan(about one dollar) and its like 50 dollars here.
Writing brushes!? That’s an interesting inquiry. Where are you writing from, A. Galipeau?
Where can i find information on how to set up an on-line store at Taobao? I live in both Italy and the US. Your site is fantastic (fantastico!!)
Hi me again. I am from USA can you buy stuff even if your not from CHINA.
Thank you. for the responds
Hi Oseas, there is good news for you. Buying from Taobao is even easier for people outside the US, since you don’t need to worry about signing up for an account. There are dudes that will help you take care of all that for a very small fee.
Check out this link: Buying on Taobao from Overseas
I just signed up today. Though I don’t read much Chinese it was pretty easy thanks to your site. FYI the layout for the signing up page – and the one that follow – is now different. Though they have pretty much the same information on it it might confuse a bit people who read zero Chinese.
Hey thanks for the heads up, aloha! We will get our goblins on the case right away.
If you see any more cobwebs in our tutorials, let us know!
Yes, I’m struggling with the new signup page.
Worked out:
The top seems to be email
Next username?
There seems to be a button to download an exe file??
Then don’t know besides the catchpa
Hello,
I just registered last week and everything was going well. But when I wanted to connect in my account 1st time, my password was rejected. After tried several times, I followed procedure to change password and still doesn’t work. Could you help me ?
Thanks!
Hi Karo, that sounds like one of those tricky browser incompatibility problems, I guess you were not using IE or windows system? IE is the only browser that Taobao supports well, maybe you can try to change your password again in IE, see if it works fine. please let us know if you still got problems. =)
Hello!
I was just wondering if there would be any way to revert this procedure and delete an account? I have stopped using taobao since I will be moving very soon. I have no money on the account and I therefore I would like to delete it.
By the way, this is a brilliant website!! It helped me a lot when I started an account and I am usre that it is helping everyone else.
Hi Jonas, I looked through the internet, looks like Taobao doesn’t provide much option for cancelling the account. Only accounts that never had any transaction behaviors (such as make an auction, transfer money, sell a product etc) can be cancelled, you can do it by leaving a message to Taobao staff through here. Choose the first option from the first drop-down list. However, if you did one of these, your account can’t be cancelled, I don’t understand why.
Hello!
Thank you for replying. I think that this is funny but i guess I will survive. I will just leave the account the way it is and move on. Thanks a lot for your help and thank you to everyone who made this web site possible!
You’re welcome Jonas, we wish you had a great time in China and welcome you to come back any time!! =D
The registration site looks a little different on the Mac. I’d be happy to email TFG some screenshots. Basically, for Taobao, you can only use Webkit-based browsers (i.e. Safari or anything else). You need to download and install a plugin. I don’t know how dangerous this plugin is. I installed it and my registration screen looked similar to what was shown in this field guide. I assume you have my email. Thanks for the site!
I’ve been trying to register for an account for the past two days, hoping that the next day it wil work but I’m running across the same issue. It jkeeps bringing me back to the sign up page after I have input all necessary info, it leaves a red x next to the security code. I think it means that I didn’t type it in correctly, I make sure it’s right every single time, but it won’t let me pass!! what to do? HELP!
Hi Helen, try to do this in IE explore on a windows based computer, with the security plug-in installed. This is a very typical problem of the crappy security plug-in Alipay has….
I’ve registered on Tao Bao but haven’t received the e-mail back giving me the the confirmation and I have checked my junk-mail box- Any suggestions?
Hi Carrie, It’s possible that your email server blocked the confirmation email or it’s simply lost on the way of transaction when your server is busy. If you haven’t cleaned up your cookie in your PC yet, you can re-do the registration again still using the same email. This will let Taobao send you an confirmation email again. If it’s your server that’s blocking registration mail from Taobao, you’ll have to try register again using another email address…
Currently the link on this page does not work for registering. It actually takes you to a page where you do not have to input your cell phone number and any try registering will fail with the misleading “wrong captcha” given as reason. If instead you follow the 免费注册 link（top left on the taobao homepage) you will be presented with the option of snail-mail or cell phone registration.
Help! I tried signing up and I’m using IE explorer, everything went well until I tried to activate my account using ”
http://member1.taobao.com/member/register_confirm.jhtml?u=f3f7f4310bfd5aa15a6e4a3d328076fe&a=6ooRVWko&i=null&y=null&r=null&src=null&st=null&tu=null&rdn=” the activation link that was emailed to me but I keep getting
对不起，激活失败。 !! what to do?
I heard it’s usually caused by a delay on taobao server. Maybe try again after 24 hours? If it still won’t work, you’ll have to call Taobao service hotline 0571-88157858 to help… Please let us know how it goes. Wish you good luck! =)
I’m on a Mac and tried to get around the plugin issue by trying Alex’s suggested link: http://member1.taobao.com/member/newbie.htm. It DID let me sign up, without any of the problem with the CAPTCHA like I’d been getting over and over again with the “Taobao registration page” link at the top of this post. The confirmation email showed up (in my spam folder of course) minutes later.
[...] before you can go chat with the dealers on the Wang Wang, click on the circle to get yourself registered (this guide got me all started, Very [...]
I HAVE TO GO TO A POST OFFICEEEE?!?!??!?! Thats a real pain in the butt….
Just tried to register with Safari on Mac. First sign-up screen does not ask for email, only username and password. Next screen wants a China phone number. Things appear to have changed. I don’t use a mobile in China. Does anyone know if one can register nowadays without a mobile number?
[...] Sign up for a Taobao Account [...]
Taobao didn’t ask me for an email when registering. Like “R”, Taobao asked me for a chinese cell phone. It was ok for as I have one.
The cellphone is use to receive a password which is used as a confirmation code (instead of receiving an email and confirming by clicking on a link)
Next stop for me: the post office! Hope it will be OK !!
Please could you tell me if I have to pay with Alipay and go to the post office or is it possible to use a Chinese debit card?
After registering with email, another window open asking for a Chinese mobile number. I’ve tried every combination possible of our various mobile phone numbers but keep on receiving an error message saying that the mobile phone does not exist. Any suggestion? I am using Google Chrome on a Mac.
[...] new to Taobao, check this fantastic website, www.TaobaoFieldGuide.com, for a step-by-step guide to how to sign up a Taobao account, pay special attention to step 2 for easily signing up an Alipay account. This site contains lots [...]
[...] if you want to try selling through Taobao (which is C2C) here is a simple, English translation of a step-by-step guide to do [...]
I followed this procedure yet still was not able to access the limited alipay account. It wanted me to enter my username and password but would not accept my password. Therefore I was unable to recharge with the money I put in at China Post.
Does this method work for you?
http://taobaofieldguide.com/advanced-tactics/registering-for-an-alipay-account
Your style is very unique in comparison to other folks I’ve read stuff from. Many thanks for posting when you’ve
got the opportunity, Guess I will just bookmark this blog.
I will help to create an online taobao, Sim card costs $ 20 and the registration service partner you $ 30. Only $ 50. We accept payment in PayPal. And you will have access to your personal account and taobao alipay. In other words, a complete profile! So you get the same bonus program vangvang for quick communication with vendors. Please send me an email: nils.neon @ gmail.com
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