Alibaba.com to Offer Free Membership
Ebrun, 2/28/13
According to Ebrun.com, the international site for Chinese B2B e-commerce company Alibaba.com will start to offer free memberships to Chinese sellers as early as April 1, 2013. This news was revealed to the e-commerce news website by a seller who has been an Alibaba.com member for over ten years, and was subsequently confirmed by a manager at the company. Ebrun contacted the public relations department at Alibaba.com, which did not deny the rumor, but also could not provide any details on the matter.
In the short term, Chinese sellers with paid memberships will be integrated with non-paying members on the website, although the two groups will not receive the same services. For example, a search for information on non-paying members will initially not produce any results. In the future, non-paying members will gradually replace paying members. The revenue source for Alibaba.com's international site will no longer be primarily from membership fees, but will instead be based on a pay for performance (P4P) model.
Promoting free memberships will help Alibaba.com reduce its marketing costs, as more seller services become self-service in the future. In the last three years, an industry source stated, the company has been reducing its Chinese seller services personnel and transferring them to other positions internally.
Editor's note: The public relations department at Alibaba.com has stated that the company's international site will be offering new membership services at an unspecified time in the near future. Furthermore, the revenue source for the international site will no longer be primarily from membership fees, but will be based on a P4P model. Lastly, "Chinese sellers" services will not be free.
Keywords: business model B2B e-commerce Internet Alibaba.com P4P
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