Earn with Tradekey Affiliate Program, Sky is the Limit!

After success in B2C industry, affiliate programs are gaining fame in B2B industry as well. Why shouldn’t it! After all it’s a mutual beneficial sales program. Affiliates get paid on every lead they generate.

I saw Tradekey affiliate program postings on some forums recently, looked like posted by the same person for the sake of promoting his/her program. As per my knowledge people in China are making handsome money by promoting these packages to manufacturers. These affiliates are mostly working on cold calling and door-to-door marketing, convincing SME (small & medium size enterprise) owners about the importance and power of B2B marketing through online B2B websites.

Anyways, the Affiliate model by Tradekey is as follows:

Earnings per click: $0.01

Limitation:

• The clicks should not be from banned websites like gambling, porn or hacking websites
• Should not have a script or any illegal form of clicks behind it
• There should be a decent sign up ratio of free members
• Cookie: 1 week

Earning per lead: $0.75

Limitation:

• The free member should verify his email
• Should be a person related to B2B Market and International trading
• Should post 1 Product
• Should log-in at least 5 times

Earnings per Affiliate referrals: $5

Limitation:

• The Affiliate should earn $10 before the first Affiliate is paid $5 in his account
• Revenue, benefits under consideration and process to be paid to Affiliates:
• Additional amount if the profile of the free member is completed by referral
• Additional amount if all five products are posted by referral
• Additional amount if 5 sell offers are posted by referral (Then if 10 are posted and so on and so forth)
• Additional amount if 5 buy offers are posted by referral (Then if 10 are posted and so on and so forth)
• Additional amount if Trade alerts are activated by referral

* I would be happy to see the comments from Tradekey affliate member to know their perspective.

Taobao Users Up 40% in 1 Month

Alibaba is targeting annual transaction volume of RMB 200 billion in 2009, reports chinanews.com.cn quoting Jack Ma. Alibaba's consumer-focused e-commerce platform Taobao has recorded 120 million registered users and averages 460,000 new registered users per day, said the chairman. The platform had 85 million registered users and daily transaction volume of RMB 300 million by December 16.

Alibaba Said "No" Raises for Presidents in 2009

Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma told staff in an internal email on Monday that senior management including vice presidents would not receive raises in 2009, reports Sina. However, the company has sufficient cash, and the majority of staff would receive pay increases and "pretty good" annual bonuses in 2009, said Ma. "We believe that company resources should flow towards the general staff in times of crisis, and a sense of urgency should be felt first among senior executives," Ma wrote.

Alibaba's Alipay Announces Ctrip Partnership

Online travel services provider Ctrip.com International, Ltd. (Nasdaq:CTRP) partnered with Alibaba Group's online payment tool Alipay on January 13, reports Sina. The companies will launch a joint promotion in mid-January. No further details were provided. Ctrip competitor eLong (Nasdaq:LONG) partnered with Alipay in September 2008.

Alibaba launched TransferExpress service

An interesting service has been launched by online B2B giant, Alibaba.com, to help dormant members add products to their Alibaba account. The service is known as TransferExpress.

Note Alibaba had made some agreement with Knowlesys, a leading provider of Web Data Integration solutions based in ShenZhen, China, for data mining facilities in August 2008.

Knowlesys is a leading provider of Web Data Integration solutions based in ShenZhen, China. Available in both on-premise and on-demand packages, Knowlesys Web Data Extraction products can help the user extract, aggregate, transform and syndicate unstructured data on the web from multiple web sources, including sites with complex JavaScript and AJAX. Using Knowlesys' software and services, the time on data collection can be reduced to days or hours rather than months or weeks. Knowlesys customers include small businesses and large corporate customers in the fortune 1000 for example the world's leading business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce companies.

Tradekey.com has finaly launched Trade Forums - Tradekey Community

Yesterday on Saturday 11-Jan-2009 Tradekey.com finally inaugurated Tradekey Community by placing a small link at the footer of the homepage. A brave move by the company I would say! You'll soon know as you read this short review why I am saying so ;). The inspiration seems to be have taken from the B2B industry giant Alibaba from one of its section on the website name Resources.

The community.tradekey.com is designed stylish enough which doesn't have any resemblance with its parent website design, the Tradekey.com.

Unlike Tradekey.com, the Community section is only launched in English language and is in beta mode right now. It is mainly focused on giving its members a chance to ask questions from Tradekey poeple and other trade experts. Also the community members can share their experiences with other Tradekey members by posting their comments as what they call "Topic". They have range of predefined Trade forums to group the related discussions. Like conventional forums, Moderators are there to remind participants about the do's and don'ts.

There is another section called Articles section. I have not tried posting any article yet but it is apparent from the "Add Article" link that they don't mind anyone posting his/her thoughts. A few articles about B2B industry and safe trading tips, written by themselves maybe, have been posted to fill the empty spaces.

The last section on Tradekey Community talks about Safe Trading Tips. Here also, Tradekey invites everyone to contribute articles on safe trading tips. Right now I can see three articles posted with an emphasis on strong password and product posting policy.

For every posting members are rewarded some points. This is how the TradeKey Community Points System works:

• Join TradeKey Community and then log-in for the first time:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 100 Points


• Post a new topic / survey:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 10 Points


• Ask a question (Select points the Best Answer should get)
  
  
  
  • Award: 10 - 50 Points


• Choose the Best Answer to your question:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 3 Points


• Answer a question / topic:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 2 Points


• Your answer selected as the Best Answer:
  
  
  
  • Earn: Points recommended by the questioner


• Vote for the Best Answer:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 2 Points


• Your post recommended by a Moderator:
  
  
  
  • Earn: 50 Points


• Your Post deleted as a Spam:
  
  
  
  • Lose: -100 Points


• Your Post deleted by a Moderator:
  
  
  
  • Lose: -30 Points

The points redemption policy is yet to be announced. But what should be the points redemption policy? Maybe a Hardley Davidson for every 100,000 points, LOLz, just kidding...

The good as well as the bad part of Tradekey Community I found is that they have tried to isolate the forum section from their parent website. If any members wants to take part in the community he/she has to create a seperate "nick". Which shouldn't resemble Tradekey user name. Also there is no link between user profile on Tradekey and Tradekey Community. It can add to the badges of a Tradekey member profile if he/she can display his/her Tradekey Community Points. Just a thought.

A brave move by Tradekey. Unlike the competitors' will Tradekey allow the negative criticisms posted on Tradekey Community? Can we discuss all the fraud & scam cases we get to know on other forums? Are they willing to clarify the reason why fraudulant members are still trading? Let's see how Tradekey deals with it.

Taobao Holiday Sales Double to RMB 400M per Day

Alibaba Group's consumer-focused e-commerce site Taobao.com saw daily transaction volume rise 100% year-on-year to reach RMB 400 million between December 27, 2008 and January 2, 2009, reports Yangcheng Evening News citing company statistics. Taobao figures show Guangdong transaction volume also doubled to exceed RMB 200 million in December, second only to Shanghai. Spring festival food purchases came in around RMB 1.5 billion over the past month, with average New Year¡¯s product prices, including food and non-food items, down 40% year-on-year.

Chinese sports brand Li Ning (2331.HK) books online sales that beat all of its offline locations, said one Taobao executive. Nearly 10,000 companies have opened stores on Taobao¡¯s business-to-consumer platform, according to the report.

Over 50 million online suppliers bring more jobs in China

IDC China, an internationally renowned market research company, released a white paper on China's e-commerce service sector recently.

The paper pointed out that, despite the impact of the financial crisis, China's e-commerce service sector, represented by businesses such as Alibaba.com, will continue to perform a high-speed growth in the next five years and will create a large number of employment opportunities.

According to IDC's estimates, the overall e-commerce transaction volume in 2008 totaled 1.951 trillion yuan, of which B2B (Business to Business) e-commerce volume maintained a growth rate of around 20%. In 2008, B2C (Business to Customer) and C2C (Customer to Customer) e-commerce transaction volumes maintained a growth rate of around 30%.

This trend was in sharp contrast to a sluggish macroeconomic environment and depressed market confidence. According to IDC's forecasts, China's total e-commerce transaction volume will reach 2.51 trillion yuan in 2009 and 3.22 trillion in 2010. This means maintaining a high-speed annual growth rate of 28%, making e-commerce the most impressive highlight of the Chinese economy in the next two years.

The white paper pointed out that, third party e-commerce platforms have effectively boosted the e-commerce development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Among a number of SMEs surveyed, 25.04% indicated that for every one yuan they invested in top e-commerce platforms, they received an average return of 234 yuan in transaction volume.

Humor: Tradekey is about to launch Tradekey Forums

Tradekey, one of the fastest growing B2B directory in China is about to launch trade related forums on its portal with a name Tradekey Community. The service is expected to be similar to the one launched by Alibaba last year with a name as Alibaba Resources.

China Yahoo Abandons Non-Core Business

According to JLM Pacific Epoch Yahoo China has told them on Monday that it has abandoned its "real domain name" service 3721.com. Yesterday, a Sina report said the site was already inaccessible. Former Alibaba Group and China Yahoo vice president Jasmine Shen said in early December that China Yahoo planned to shrink its business and focus on daily life information site koubei.com, which it merged with on June 1.

Yahoo (Nasdaq:YHOO) acquired 3721.com, established by Qihoo president Zhou Hongyi, with $120 million in November 2003; the site was taken over by China Yahoo in 2005. The real domain name service redirects users who enter keywords in the address bar of a PC with 3721 software to a specific company site.

Taobao to Invest RMB 1.36 Bln in Taobao City

Chinese B2C and C2C e-commerce platform Taobao has announced that its Taobao City project has begun construction in Hangzhou. Over the next 5 years, Taobao plans to invest RMB 1.36 bln to construct the Taobao City, which will act as a hub for its e-commerce business including R&D, customer service, website operation, sales, technical support, training and other services.

Funding for the project comes from part of the RMB 5 bln that Taobao received from parent company Alibaba for strategic development over the next 5 years.