Mar 24, 2009

DHgate review: facts about buying on the site

As an online B2B wholesale marketplace,DHgate has recently gained far-ranging attention from online buyers all over the world for the low prices of products sold. Buyers from other countries can buy goods at great prices from Chinese providers via the marketplace. The company was established early in 2004 and is now the most important account of PayPal in Asia.

If you want to buy merchandise from the platform or want to make clear some interrogation concerning the reliability to buy on the platform, here are some facts about DHgate for your reference:

DHgate review 1. Before purchasing: Why there are voices such as “DHgate spams” or “DHgate frauds”?

DHgate is quite similar to platforms such as eBay. The difference is that the providers on DHgate are all Chinese and the products sold on DHgate are comparatively lower than other websites. However recently some accusations such as “DHgate frauds” or “DHgate fakes” have been made against the company.

In point of fact, DHgate only acts as the third party in transaction and helps relieve a variety of possible difficulties purchasers confront during transaction. DHgate does NOT sell any merchandise itself.

They have a seller evaluation system, which is an essential reference for buyers, especially those new buyers who do business on the site for the first time. When purchasing an item from a seller, do check the seller’s credibility presented by feedback scores. It is dangerous to purchase items from sellers with not good records.

To clear off counterfeits, DHgate has set some regulations to restrict sellers’ sales behavior. And a committee is established for auditing the sellers’ behavior on the website. The company has banned many stores recently to sweep out counterfeit goods. There will be severe punishment given to those improper behaviors. In reality, there is a very high threshold (the seller should submit his license, identity and other credentials for evaluation) for an applicant to register as a seller. If the seller’s store is banned because of his wrong behaviors, the seller have a great trouble, and will have a great difficulty to re-register the site.

DHgate review 2. After buying the products: Just in case that the products I purchased are counterfeits…

Sellers on the site are required to give accurate description of the products they sell. However, sometimes, the merchandise are not exactly as described.

The marketplace has a safe payment service which is named as Escrow. It first hold the money the seller paid for an item and release it to the seller until the buyer has examined the items he received and confirmed that they are OK.

It also supports payment methods such as PayPal.

The website acts as the third party throughout the transaction process. There is customer service staff giving the members some guide. In the event that something wrong happens to the transaction, for example the items are not exactly as the seller had described, or delivery delay, etc., the buyer can open a dispute or come to customer service group for help. Some standard work-flows to process common disputes already exist. Usually, a buyer just need to follow the steps and solve the problems all by himself. If the dispute is tough to resolve, the purchaser can escalate the dispute to customer service group. They coordinate the relationship between sellers and buyers, gives specific suggestions, and makes unprepossessed arbitration based upon the real situation

Mar 10, 2009

Affiliate marketing commission reviewed

The flat rate commission has been applied for about 4 months now and it looks ok in terms of brining in new buyers to our site.

Some of our publishers did not seem to get used to the tiered structure we offer on Google Affiliate Network. We used to break the sales order amount into different levels and assign a certain percentage of commission to each level. On top of that, the commission paid to each level will be different based on the type of the buyer, i.e new buyer or old buyer. For example, for sales above $500, if it was placed by a new buyer, we give publishers 3%, if that's an old buyer, then it would be 1.5% . While such structure can provide experienced publishers with enough guide regarding on which field they should focus in order to drive the most revenues based on their own capabilities, some new recruits got largely confused in our partnership.

Now for the flat rate commission, which offers fixed 3% sales commission to all publisher and an extra $10 to those bringing new buyers, the image is clear for publishers and also makes us (as a merchant) easily develops a non-confusing customized offering to our hard-working publishers. This means that we can increase either the sales commission rate or the fixed amount given for generating publishers for some top-performing publishers. In additon, I must submit that the general enquires about our commission structure from publishers seem to have dropped, which allows us to pay more attentions to other key elements in our affiliate program.


Wei