Zoltan’s Business News & Blog

There are hundreds of fake adverts, trade leads, companies on the internet, mainly selling iPods, electronics, computer related product on various sites including B2B sites. Or, mainly on B2B sites. Unfortunately, many of these offers are fake and their only intent is to steal your money. The question is how to differentiate real offers from fake ones?

There are a few steps you need to take before dealing with these “sellers”.

1. Check the country of the offer. If it is Nigeria or Indonesia, the chances of being a fake offer is really high. We delete and remove from our B2B network, tens of similar accounts / adverts every week.
2. Check the e-mail address of the seller. If the e-mail address is a popular freemail account (hotmail.com, yahoo.com, yahoo.co.uk, etc.), this is another sign of a fake offer. Come on, you are selling high tech products and do not have your own domain name? This is just insane… If you are selling agricultural products I might understand that you are not a “techie guy” and don’t know how to get your own domain name, but if you are selling computers…
3. If there is a website listed check the website. Is the contact information listed? Full postal address, phone number (not a mobile phone number, this can belong to a prepaid card and once they scammed you, noone will respond anymore at that number, I guarantee you….), e-mail address, etc.
4. Use a whois tool (http://www.dnsstuff.com/) to check when was the domain name registered. If in the near past… this is another sign of a possible scam, fake offer. If you see a very well designed & complex website on a new domain name, most probably, the scammer simply register a new domain name every time he is caught and duplicate his / her old site just by changing the domain name and a few more details.
5. Always check references and search on your search engine for the specific company name, contact name you are dealing with. Try to use keywords like: “company name fraud”, “company name scam”, “contact name fraud”, “contact name scam”. Most of the time, previous victims create specific pages, post on other sites about their bad experience mentioning in detail how they got scammed.
6. Ask for a registration number of the seller company and make sure you actually google this number and see what is coming up.
7. Try to use an escrow service, even if you have to pay the fees. If buyer does not accept an escrow transfer, this is another clear sign of fraud. Some popular escrow services you can use: Escrow.com, Escrow-Europa.com.
8. If a product is too cheap… for example 40-50% cheaper than on other places, don’t buy it. Search for the same product and if you do not find at least 3-4 other companies selling the product at the same price (+/- 1-5%), most probably the offer is a fake one. Come on, how come that only one supplier has the product at that damn good price? Something fishy here… most definitely.

These are the steps I would definitely take before dealing with any new business partner. There are probably thousands of persons who were scammed and frauded, make sure you do not become the next victim.

If you have any more advices, I am asking you to continue this list by posting below your comments.

Just checked with iWebTool Page Rank Prediction, our newly launched business links directory: TradeHolding.org.

Right now, TradeHolding.org PR is still 0, but for a new domain name, this is not news at all.

By using this tool, we can actually measure how good or bad is what we do on Link Building. Webmasters should periodically check the PageRank Prediction to get an idea of the effectiveness of their link building.

It looks like we are doing our job quite well because, PR Prediction shows that we’ll have a PR4 on next google update. I am satisfied with this.

It looks like the Chinese are not satisfied with their oversaturated exports. They try to focus on imports as well. Just read on People’s Daily Online that “The 50-year-old Chinese Export Commodities Fair, which used to be the only international showcase for Chinese products, changed its name to the Chinese Import and Export Commodities Fair on Sunday evening.”

“The fair will also become a major platform for imports into China to achieve an equilibrium with exports,” said Zhang Yansheng, director of the Institute for International Economic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission.

The export-oriented economic policy since the 1980s has resulted in huge trade surpluses and foreign exchange reserve.

The question is: how will Chinese accept the imported goods?

According to the World Factbook, in 2005 China imports were: $631.8 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.) and exports were $752.2 billion f.o.b. (2005 est.).

 Links:

• The Canton Fair
• Trade Shows in China

So, you are having / promoting an import export business. You manufacture / buy different products and sell them to other companies. How do you get / reach the customers?

Getting quality targeted traffic to your business website from search engines if you are acting as a worldwide seller is almost impossible. Why? Because specialized B2B Portals and Marketplaces are mainly ranked for keywords like: “product sellers”, “product manufacturers”, “product distributors”, “product wholesalers”, “product importers”. Don’t believe me? Just use your favorite search engine and try it. How many individual company website do you find on the first page? I will tell you. Definitely not more than 25-30% on the first page. The rest of the links are mainly B2B websites, marketplaces, portals, etc.

My suggestion is: take the time and list your company, trade leads and products to the Top B2B Portals / Marketplaces and make sure you rank high enough for your specific products / search terms. The Top B2B Portals list tens of thousands of websites, so simply being listed will not give you the expected benefits. You need to be ranked on top positions with a keyword rich presentation of your products and trade leads.

Your Product Name or Trade Lead subject is the most important thing, don’t just use subjects like: “My Sell Offer” or “My Product”, or “My Catalog”, this will tell nothing about what you are selling! Our experience shows that a keyword rich product name or trade lead subject is determinant on whether the prospective client will read or not what you sell.

Summarized, 3 important points:

• if you manage an import-export business do not plan to be listed on top positions on search engines, focus on international B2B websites
• ranking higher on top B2B marketplaces is your best bet for import-export marketing
• keyword rich product names and trade lead subjects are a must to make the prospective clients read what you have to offer.

It looks like Link Building is becoming the key factor for a successful Search Engine Marketing. The more websites link to you, the higher your chances of being found and indexed by search engines.

Some, must read articles and comments if you prepare a Link Building Campaign:

Link Building Guide

Link Bait

5 Facts on Link Building

As a company or company website owner, your best bet is to gradually build links to your website (1-2 incoming links every day from business directories will do the job if you have a new website), but do not expect miracles in one week! Link Building is a long process and could take months before you see the effects.

Personal & Corporate Blogging become extremely popular. I am not a writer, but I decided to create my first blog. I do not know how good or bad will this be, time will tell.