As some of you know we are building a b2b marketplace, with B2C capabilities(Business 2 Consumer) online marketplace, we are doing this as we don’t see an adequate or cost effect Marketplace on the market. 
Please don’t tell me about Craigslist, it’s too frivolous and most professional businesses need better tools. Also, do you know why we have more pictures of women than men on our site? It’s because women do more shopping than men, and that is why they are also used more in online marketplace advertisements. The main reason we are doing this is to promote our small business community. Just to be self-serving as all businesses should be, we want to promote our trading business community and 
Barter system at ITEX.com. Why? We think there are significant advantages to joining a barter network, the main one being attracting new customers, and getting rid of perishable inventory such as time related products & services such as Hotel or rental vacancies, Lawyers having fixed employee cost, but not enough billable clients, etc. etc.
The biggest problem to promote our barter system @ ITEX is the lack of awareness of how Barter works. We all can immediately see the value, but how does it work today? A professional barter system is not just a swap meet, it’s a trading business community of professionals. But, most small business owners just don’t know the value of Barter, because they have not been made aware of how it can help them grow their businesses. Bartering has been around for a long time, but don’t make my word for it, even the ancient times of India:-), Ok, I just wanted to add a word about India, as I had this picture. 
There are actually fortune 500 companies, not just small businesses that barter for goods and services, and in the IT and NYC finance world, I have heard the term called soft dollars. The key is to not hide the transaction report the sales as sales and costs as costs, and pay the IRS it’s dues, keep The Uncle happy:-).
Enough about barter for the moment, let’s talk about our b2b and B2C marketplace, and the lack of features available in most online marketplaces today. 
Here are some of the features that are missing:
1. Missing a professional low-cost or free online marketplace, that attracts huge consumer based. You have eBay which charges huge fees, but it’s really an auction site and it works well for sellers but not buyers. Amazon is all about them, they charge even more, and Yahoo Stores has too many technical issues every Christmas season.
2. Most online marketplaces that are free, are not professional and don’t offer the tools and social business community tools that sellers and buyers really need.
3. Customization to represent the brand of the seller is missing, especially within the eBay stores or Amazon, they will charge you to set up a website or web store, but in their online marketplace, they are again all about them. Yahoo stores is much better in this category.
4. The ability to provide SEO and optimized content to promote the sellers stores is done in a limited fashion, almost by accident. The Yellow pages companies have started to go down this road, but they don’t have any significant value in the local SEO tools, all they have is the advertising dollars.
5. Online marketplaces are going towards allowing their client businesses advice, tips, and news letters, and some blogging tools. But a true collaborative social networking community is at the moment separate than the shopping. As we know shopping is a social activity, especially for women, any men want to debate this one? 
As you can see their is a lack of a professional businesses online marketplace. Our goal is to come from the business community tools perspective and provide the businesses not only the ability to have classifieds and online marketplace, but a large consumer base based on our SEO capabilities of each product and profile listing of each member. So to say this in a light manner, we will build the SEO in the store, so that the members will get more traffic than their own websites, why should Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay be the only ones. Our online marketplace and small business community will get results to help each and every entrepreneur.
