This is what we got though TradeHolding.com Contact Us form:
“hi
my situation is EMERGENCY
i need $5000 for …
please fastly help me and transfer to my acc no’BANK **** IRAN-TEHRAN
swift:*********
acc no:*******
acc holder: *************
benef: ***************
thankyou
**************”
At least they added a “thankyou”….
I hate MySpace. Probably because I never had the time to use it… or I am too old. 
+ The content created by the vast majority of members is so ugly.
As the owner of a software company, we were also involved in creating a niche social networking site. It was a great experiene, however, I was not involved in the project directly. So, I knew we were working on the site but haven’t checked the website too many times. But… the guys from the company definitely did a great job. This was about 1 - 1.5 year ago and at that time I never thought about building something similar as a publisher. But things are changing quite fast on the internet and although we are not the first on the market, I believe we could have success with a specialized business networking site. Yes, I know there is already a Xing.com but I believe there is still growth potential and if you change a few things, you can actually have a great product. And, if it happens to be mainly free and mainly supported by advertising, this might be even better. We all know that Markus is making a fortune from his free dating website, so the AdSense supported business model might be a good one. My only concern is that I would depend too much on google….
Some related sites I use about 1-2 times a month:
I am still collecting the ideas on what to include on the site, features, complexity of the forms, software & design, etc. But, sooner or later it will be launched. I already have a killer domain name for it but let this be my secret for now.
According to Jakob Nielsen, “Many business-to-business (B2B) sites are stuck in the 1990s in their attitude toward the user experience. Most B2B sites emphasize internally focused design, fail to answer customers’ main questions or concerns, and block prospects’ paths as they search for companies to place on their shortlists. These sites haven’t realized that the Web has reversed the company-customer relationship. Most online interactions are demand-driven: you either give people what they want or watch as they abandon your site for the competition’s.
The result of poor design on B2B sites? In our user testing, B2B sites earned a mere 58% success rate (measured as the percentage of time users accomplished their tasks on a site). In contrast, mainstream websites have a substantially higher success rate of 66%.
Considering that there’s immensely more money at stake for B2B than for business-to-consumer (B2C), it’s astounding that B2B sites offer a much worse user experience.”
But, what exactly is a B2B Website? A B2B website is a website of a company that mainly deal with other businesses and not with the end users or the final consumer. Most of the time, it is only a company presentation website and no direct e-commerce is involved (like ordering directly through the website and paying with a card).
Yes, some of the B2B websites are poor in content and sometimes the presented information is not enough to generate a business contact. So, if you are running a B2B website, it is advised to get in details and lead your visitor to the desired task. This can be an “additional info request”, an “order” (prices and volume discounts are a must here), a “survey”, etc.
Reference:
I read at The Paradigm Shift (Hardware Sensitive Business models) that ebay use about 17,000 servers and macth.com use about 1,000 servers. Quite impressive, I wonder how many server admins are needed to manage that many servers. How are these and what exactly is monitorized? How often to they change HDs, memories, network cards, routers, etc.? How often do they upgrade the software? These are all questions that need to be asked before you plan to make a site that has the chances to become … the next internet boom.
Handling large amount of data requires optimal indexes and powerful servers, a lot of RAM especially. This is quite true with our B2B Network, TradeHolding.com as well. We only have about 125,000 members but although our databases are quite optimized, we constantly work on changing slow queries and rebuild indexes, tables where needed. We store a lot of information that help us better understand our members’ needs and requirements and the generated reports are sometimes slow.
But, we are definitely on the right way…
There are many organizations offering so called “trust seals”. Just some of them:
According to Comodo: “TrustLogo™ removes a major barrier to successful e-commerce: the lack of the ability to verify the trust between a website and its visitors.
Powered by the Internet’s only real-time Identity Assurance infrastructure (Comodo operated ID Authority), TrustLogo delivers trust, confidence and peace of mind to your customers.
TrustLogo helps achieve what is currently unavailable - an e-commerce environment in which website visitors are assured they are dealing with legitimate organisatations.”
So, basically when visiting a website and looking to work with the company managing that website (maybe even ordering and paying a product or service), the visitor have the ability to confirm that “you are a trustworthy professional, committed to conducting business over the internet the right way”.
From all the trust teal websites, I like the most Comodo’s TrustLogo, their seal / logo confirms for the visitors the identity of the company / individual without having to actually leave the website. So, if I’ll ever use on my sites a trust seal I will use Comodo’s TrustLogo.
I would be interested to read your comments about trust seal. Do you use a trust seal on your website(s)? If yes, from the time you started to use it, did it increase your sales? Do you have more confidence in a website using a trust seal?
Come on… I know you are reading me, don’t just read, be active.
Yes, if you did not know this so far, I am writing it clearly: the internet is gobal.
Our main office is in Romania, Eastern Europe, but we run a few region specific B2B portals like Brazil B2B Marketplace or Middle East B2B Portal. We are getting more and more recognition through these regional portals, local and regional media is started to be interested is us and our work.
Today, we got a serious partnership proposal from a well know publishing company from Middle East. They are interested to partner and work together with us and … will see what will happen. And, I have to tell you that this is not the first similar proposal we got from well known Middle East Companies. So, it looks like it doesn’t matter too much where you are located or have your main offices if you do your job.
Yes, of course, similar requests will certainly lead us sooner or later to establish a local presence in a specific region, but the above scenario confirms that this is certainly not a must… yet.
I will try to keep you posted about what are our members and visitors searching on various TradeHolding.com B2B Network partner sites. We store these details every month and if you read my blog, you will get a better picture of what is popular.
Some quick stats:
And now, let’s see the top of the searches:
cement: 1112
sugar: 972
steel: 700
vegetable: 657
mobile phones cellular phone cellulars: 621
granite: 585
IRON ORE: 581
copper: 551
coffee coffe cofee: 547
meat: 545
GOLD: 543
handicraft: 537
fish: 525
stone: 523
tea: 518
urea: 514
shoes: 510
bearings: 486
food: 484
tyre: 466
furniture: 442
rubber: 440
nuts: 433
Jewelry: 431
hardware: 426
wood: 418
battery: 417
HMS: 406
parts: 403
vegetables: 400
clothing: 396
mp3: 395
auto parts automotive automobile: 393
charcoal: 390
mobile phones: 385
fruits: 384
gold dust: 376
second hand: 373
tram: 372
honey: 372
cable: 370
wine: 369
apparel: 368
leather: 365
laptop: 364
marble: 363
coffee: 359
Jewelry stone gold: 355
textile fabrics apparel knitted fabrics texture: 355
alcohol: 353
cosmetics: 351
spare parts: 346
light: 346
cosmetic: 345
ipod: 344
cocoa: 344
construction: 339
bag: 339
CRUDE OIL: 338
paper: 337
footwear: 333
live animals: 332
plastic: 332
nike: 331
shoe: 328
tubes: 324
soap: 322
auto spare parts: 321
DVD: 321
salt: 319
coal: 316
textile: 311
fat oil: 310
bitumen: 309
eggs: 307
tobacco: 307
software: 307
electronic electronics: 304
spare: 302
lamp: 302
air jordan shoes online trade: 294
accesories: 294
LDPE: 293
advertising: 291
timber: 291
spices: 290
iron: 290
motorcycle: 290
cement chemical chemicals: 289
wire mesh: 289
art: 288
engine: 288
fruit: 287
yarn: 284
beverages: 283
glass: 283
HDPE: 282
computers: 282
aluminium composite panel: 282
What can we see on this list? Commodities like cement, sugar, steel, gold, copper, granite and iron ore are on the top positions. This confirms, that our network is a popular place for industrial products.
Consumer products like mobile phones, handicraft, shoes, textiles are also wanted, based on our experience these products are mainly searched by smaller importers.
I will try to follow in time how this list changes from month to month. I will keep you posted.
It looks like Alibaba and Jack Ma are determined to beat eBay, at least in China.
Alibaba’s new acquisition unit has targeted classifieds as its first area of investment, causing new competitive concerns for eBay. Alibaba.com has entered into an agreement for a strategic investment in Koubei.com, one of China’s largest classified listing and community websites with over two million registered users. Alibaba’s C2C online-auction site TaoBao has posed a major competitive threat to eBay Eachnet since its launch in 2003. Alibaba is extending the competitive playing field with its Koubei investment, as eBay operates its Kijiji.com classifieds sites in thirty-two cities in China.
So, it looks like after the massive investment that come from Yahoo ($1 billion), they have started to invest in more and more sectors.
Alibaba consists of Alibaba International (alibaba.com), a B2B marketplace for global trade; Alibaba China (alibaba.com.cn), the largest online small- and medium-sized enterprise community in China; Taobao (taobao.com); AliPay, China’s leading online payment service; and Yahoo China (yahoo.com.cn), a leading search engine and portal, acquired from Yahoo Inc. in October 2005.
Considering that eBay has / had plans to sell its China division (? http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m09/i26/s00), it looks like in China a local player can compete better in China than a multinational company. At least a local player as big as Alibaba…