Good day to everyone!

My name is Charl Nel and I have joined as a Service Provider a few days ago. Decided for the 1st time ever to take part in a forum……so please excuse me if I get carried away!

Just like most of you, I have only recently (September 2006) started my own business. Been sitting on the idea (not even a new one!) for 2 years, but never actually went through with it until I realized the following: I am 32 years old, been in the manufacturing industry for 12 years and have been retrenched twice and have nothing to show for it. 1st time, not even a clue, 2nd time, I was instructed by overseas principles to retrench staff locally, about 70 people. Once I did that, I received my own letter of retrenchment!!

Okay, enough useless information! So basically, I have started Galaxy Trading, a new South African & International B2B Marketplace (Import / Export Portal) & Business Directory. What am I selling? Exposure for SA companies locally and internationally. There are many similar sites out there, but what I believe makes ours different, the cost to join (advertise).

For any company that starts up, this is the single biggest problem, the cost of advertising. Take newspapers, yellow pages, internet advertising etc, it costs a fortune and a lot of times it is geographically focused. Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind to pay a R 1 000 or even more for something that can add value to my business (such as SABusinessHub, I am not trying to get discount here!) and not just a small add waiting to be found or a flyer laying in the street somewhere.

That is why we created Galaxy Trading, to allow even the guy working from his garage to advertise his products, locally and internationally, for R 150 – R 300 per year i.e. full company profile, product catalogues with pictures, sell / buy offers, internal messaging etc. etc. My opinion from personal experience, South Africa has very good products / services to offer, but the problem, we are too dependent on local business and geographically bound i.e. town, province, country.

Before I turn this into an essay…….is it too late for that? The bottom line is that we are here to assist new, small, basically any company to expose their products / services in South Africa (yes, all the provinces) & internationally. And why, because I am in the same boat as most of you are and also want to succeed with my own business, but also helping others to do the same and not be limited to an address.

I have a LOT to learn about running a business, but one thing I am doing is thinking big and believe that our service is just as good and even better than similar companies…….maybe to confident?!?!?!?!?!?!

Kind Regards,

A big welcome to you from the SABusinessHub team, we look forward to sharing knowledge and resources with you here.

For aditional exposure why not activate your signature.

Ben

Hello Ben

Thanks for the welcome note. I have activated my signature, is this acceptable?

Kind Regards,

Feel free to add a strap line. Although all the usual forum rules apply in order to cut down on spam, we're very happy for you to add a one-liner for that extra bit of exposure.

Thanks Ben. Does anyone have some personal preferences about on/offline marketing that is cost effective and efficient? I have joined similiar international sites to mine, but very expensive and would like to target more South African companies as well. I have joined the Cape Town Chamber of Commerce a few days a ago........what is your experience with local chambers of commerce?