Users will be offered a “Website” for users to show their company information and promote their products. You could list the information of your product or services on your website. Premium users can create a customized layout for the site to attract visitors. Put in mind that a product will take up to a day to approve before it is going to be listed.

The batch upload function is a user-friendly function for sellers to upload multiple products at a time using the Excel from provided by Alibaba.com. All you have to do is select the product category, fill in and upload the batch upload from and product photos.

Other than searching for product keywords directly, you could also look up for buyers or sellers through the buying/ selling leads. The lead is an ad-posting function for users to search for their targeted services, or make a trading request.

You can pay for a premium account to add additional features to your account and raise your ranking on the search list. There are currently two kinds of premium memberships: Gold Suppliers and Trust Pass. Gold suppliers are premium memberships for traders of mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, where Trust Pass is for other countries over the world. Gold Suppliers enjoy more user functions and a higher priority in the search engines, of course in return the membership fee is higher.

It was recently announced that Alibaba will discontinue Trust Pass membership starting from July to avoid discrimination between local and international users. Current Trust Pass memberships will be offered a free upgrade to Gold Suppliers membership for a year. So it might not be a bad idea for international traders to get an Trust Pass now for a free upgrade before the deadline!

Alibaba.com is a site with numerous traders and business opportunities. However, there are black sheep in every flock. Beware of scammers! Avoid trading with suspicious traders even if they are premium members. Here’s a forum post with some tips of how to avoid scammers. The official website provies a good community for discussions in different issues. Feel free to visit there and ask any questions before you make any decisions.

]]> http://blog.mavista.com/2009/06/22/alibaba/feed/ 6 http://blog.mavista.com/2009/06/19/bttradespace/ http://blog.mavista.com/2009/06/19/bttradespace/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:07:19 +0000 Alan http://blog.mavista.com/?p=25

My first task is to setup an account at BT Tradespace, a young and rapid growing business networking service dedicated to small and medium businesses, provided by the BT group.

Everything is just like your regular social networking website, you can create your personal profile for yourself and your company, join communities, but most importantly, you can create your own 「Tradespace」. It’s a platform for you to promote your business by putting up your product information. The site supports Paypal, so you could actually sell your product through your space, there will be 5% transaction fee if you have successfully make a trade.

I specially like the uploading feature of this platform. Other than posting pictures and texts, The site allows users to upload up to 10 podcasts and 10 video files to promote their products or services for free users. I think this is an excellent way to show show your future clients what they are going to get from you. There is also a simple blog function for users to report and share the recent activities of your company.

You could share information, leave messages, ask questions and expertise with members in the communities you joined, You might actually obtain some valuable business and industry tips from other entrepreneurs. You can post the companies you like to your profile and a establish a link with the company of your friends, or you might want to rank and review other businesses.

If you want to share more multimedias to promote your products, you could subscribe to their service to upgrade your account. Premium users can enjoy a lower transaction cost (3%) and free calls from costumers of UK and abroad for selected countries.

I believe for now BT Tradespace is a more preferable communicating platform for British businesses, since most companies registered there are British businesses. However, the number of international users seems to be gradually increasing. I hope someday the site could grow into a worldwide platform for businesses to exchange ideas and communicate.

As an intern, I’ve been guided and asked to promote my company’s product, a CMS web design tool . Aside from making phone calls, marketing can also be done through the world wide web. At the beginning I thought it’s going to be tough since this is my first time doing any online marketing, but in fact it isn’t. I found some of the things I am doing is very familiar: Register an account at a community, posting decorative messages to attract visitors’ attention…Hey, Isn’t that just what an average teenager will do over the internet everyday?

Of course I did learn tons of new things . I’ll try to share my findings and leave a record of useful tidbits that I have came across during my experience here. I hope you will like it.