Have you ever heard of the international trade site Alibaba.com? Well if you haven’t you should. And here is why:
Alibaba.com is the World’s largest marketplace for international trade. This is the place where buyer meets the seller online. This way sellers can promote their businesses online.
Alibaba.com itself does not offer any products – it is an online business platform where to post information and find potential business partners.
Two sides: Sellers and Buyers.
Buyers or importers browse for seller’s products and then make inquiries. This is not like eBay where a specific product is sold for a definite price. Here you can find a product picture and description and if you like it, you can start to negotiate price, quantities, quality, looks and other specifics of the product.
Sellers or exporters post their company information and list of offered products (specification, delivery terms and description).
To become a Seller or Buyer you must sign up for your free account, but to obtain all features of this site you must sign up for the Gold membership. The Gold Supplier membership is said to get 22x more inquiries and better return-on-investment, but I strongly recommend to start with the free account though you may post fewer products.
Who is the target audience?
Well, this site is mainly made for Chinese exporters and those who want to import from China. Of course there are other sellers from whole world, but almost 70% of the sites users are Chinese exporters. Anyways this site is a good place to find business partners and to see what the international competition has to offer.
To better understand what the site has to offer visit Alibaba.com and search for some products, you will see the results – the products themselves and the countries which offer them.
I hope you got the general idea of Alibaba.com.
