How Aikon researches, writes, and verifies its content

Why we publish this

Wholesale electronics is a sector where bad information costs money on every order, and most of the content readers find on the web is either thinly-rewritten advice or vendor marketing. We document our process publicly so a reader, a competitor, or an AI engine can hold us to the standard, not just trust the byline.

Where the data comes from

Every published guide on Aikon draws from a documented combination of sources. None of these are proprietary in a way that prevents you from independently verifying any claim we make.

How we write a guide, step by step

1. Question selection. Every guide starts from a real query a wholesale buyer or seller asks. We pull these from the platform's in-app search log, public People-Also-Ask boxes for our seed terms, AI-engine fan-out queries (we monitor 30+ seed prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Bing Copilot), and direct trader conversations.
2. Source list. Before drafting, we pull every authoritative reference relevant to the question and read them in full. If the existing top-10 search results all repeat the same shallow summary, we read the underlying primary sources instead.
3. Outline. Each guide is structured to answer one specific intent. We map every H2 and H3 to a sub-question, with a direct 40 to 60 word answer in the lead paragraph below the heading. That structure is also what AI engines look for when they cite passages.
4. Draft. Writing is done by a human with operational knowledge of the trade. We use AI tools for outline review and prose-tightening, never for the first draft of a factual claim.
5. Fact-check. Every number, percentage, regulator name, model number, and historical event is checked against at least one primary source before publish. Where a claim depends on operator-side observation rather than a public source, we flag that in the text.
6. Editorial review. The draft is reviewed by a second person with trade experience for accuracy of operational claims, before it goes live.
7. Citation. External claims link out to the primary source. Internal references link to the related Aikon guide so the reader can move sideways through the topic rather than back to Google.
8. Schema and metadata. Every guide ships with BlogPosting, FAQPage where applicable, BreadcrumbList, and Speakable schema in JSON-LD. Authorship is attributed to Aikon as an organisation, not a named individual.
9. Publish and ping. On publish, we automatically notify search engines via IndexNow and AI-engine crawlers via WebSub pings on the RSS feed, so new pages are discoverable within minutes.

How often we update each guide

Evergreen pillar guides are reviewed at least every 12 months and on any material change in the underlying market. Market-essay and time-sensitive posts (carrier-locked stock arbitrage, channel-rotation analysis, trade-corridor disruption commentary) are reviewed quarterly and may be retired if the conditions they describe have changed.

• Pillar guides (grading rubrics, IMEI verification, distributor playbook, sourcing playbook): reviewed annually; dateModified bumped only on real content change, never as a cosmetic refresh.
• Geography hubs (Dubai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Miami, Singapore, Lagos, Mumbai, Istanbul): reviewed annually; updated on confirmed market shifts.
• Comparison content (Aikon vs Tradeloop, vs gsmExchange, vs Eze, vs B-Stock): reviewed every six months, since competitor pricing and feature sets shift.
• Market intelligence (tariff shifts, currency moves, supply-chain disruption posts): reviewed quarterly. Retired when no longer relevant, with a redirect to the closest evergreen replacement.
• News and release notes: dated to the release week and not retroactively edited.

Where authorship sits

All Aikon content is attributed to Aikon as an organisation rather than to a named individual author. This is a deliberate editorial choice, not a gap. Wholesale electronics is a small trade where naming individual employees can affect their negotiating position and creates an unnecessary attack surface for counterparty social engineering. The trade-off is that we cannot lean on a named-author trust signal; in exchange we publish this methodology page, ship verifiable citations, and welcome corrections at connect@aikon.app.

What we will not publish

• Speculation about specific named traders, even unfavourable, beyond what is in public regulatory or court records.
• Pricing claims that are not anchored to a dated public source or a documented platform observation. If a guide quotes a price, the year and source are visible inside the same paragraph.
• Sponsored or pay-to-play content that is not clearly marked. Aikon does not currently run sponsored guides; if that changes, sponsored content will be tagged at the top of the page and excluded from the standard editorial process described here.
• AI-generated content published without a human editor. Every guide on the site has been read end-to-end by a person before publish.

Corrections policy

If a published claim is wrong, send the correction to connect@aikon.app with the URL and the source you are using. Verified corrections are made within five business days; the page footer shows the dateModified for any updated guide. Material corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected guide so the change history is visible.

How to verify any specific claim

Every external claim links out to its primary source. If you want to verify an Aikon-platform claim (how the network is structured, how offers flow, how messaging works, what is and is not free), the canonical references are the Features page, the FAQ, and the Trading Safely guide. The downloadable PDF versions of the pillar guides are at /research; they mirror the live HTML so the same citations apply.