There was such a time when business community used to gather in country clubs or aristocratic restaurants/bars to exchange views and information for mutual benefits. Those sorts of clubs still do exist, which are strictly limited to members and memberships are hard to come by. But business world did changed a lot, especially when more and more industry started to have their cyber journey. In this new age we have new kinds of portals, the online portals where business community gathers for mutual benefits, by breaking down the aristocratic, national, international, and cultural barriers. Sounds world-shattering isn’t it :).

As you must know by now that, we are living in age which sometimes referred as crowdsourced or more popularly as “Web 2.0” era. There are lots of social community portals, where people mingle, find friends, mates for their social life. But business isn’t just about meeting people, which require a lot more, since common benefits are at stake. So obviously business needs to have its own portal or community, where sole purpose of people’s gathering is one common goal-“Doing Business”.

So let’s get on with it, here is my choice for this series:

Alibaba

Most probably the biggest and most visited B2B (Business to business) portal to date, started 1999. Managed and founded by “The Alibaba Group”, which is the largest e-commerce company in China not to mention globally recognize brand. The same group also the owner of “Yahoo China”.

No worries “Alibaba” has an English version :). The portal was specialized in business-to-business trades, especially for international buyers trying to get into contact with Chinese sellers, though now it turned into a total international business community. The Chinese-language chinese.alibaba.com focuses on business-to-business trades within China.

Alibaba is more like a marketplace (not exactly EBay sense,since we are talking about volume purchase & sales) rather than a community portal. You can find here from business leads to products and services, not to mention you can as well promote your own products/services and trade leads.

Alibaba also is well ground for seeking information for different tradeshows. The do offer a fancy little tool call “Trade Manager”, which is sort of online conferencing that allows better communication between buyers and sellers in real-time. For making the deals more secure Alibaba offer a certification/clearance called “Trustpass”, which provide transparency regarding the identity and legitimacy of your trading partners. Only members (sellers outside mainland China) that have completed an authentication and verification procedure conducted by a third-party credit agency are allowed to show that Trustpass in their profile. 

They have another special “certificate” thing especially for premium export-oriented suppliers from China. They call it Alibaba "Gold Suppliers", who have duly satisfied the payment requirements for "Gold Suppliers" membership.

Alibaba is not just a directory/listing of buyers and seller, it provide extensive information regarding trade laws, market place, labour, taxes etc., total business intelligence that you require. Apart from these you have a huge community generated articles to give you enough info/ideas, without even experiencing the odds.

Alibaba has been successful over the years to bring the Asian markets to the doorstep of western buyers. It’s a nice community to hangout if you looking for better trade especially Asian (Not necessarily only China) suppliers. Off course like every online community there are also crooks and frauds, but if you simply follow the guidelines laid by folks at Alibaba, you got nothing to worry about.

Useful Resources:
The first step to establishing your presence at internet is to choose a domain name and a web hosting company and making a website using web development tools. There are many companies which provide cheap, innovative and reliable domain name registration along with web hosting and business solutions. After getting your own domain you can start advertising your products and services over the internet. The question arises that how to buy web domain, it has got a simple answer “through web hosting companies”. Many companies are working with the dedicated servers so they can provide as much space as you want. They launched their entire setup on wireless routers so that while their clients work at home they can get all they want. People are very happy with this as they say that new technology has made wireless internet how much cheaper.