Chamber of Commerce

Another option is to contact Chambers of Commerce to find a supplier. A Chamber of Commerce is an association of companies that protects and promotes business interests of its members.

For a complete list of Chambers of Commerce from various countries check out this page: http://www.worldchambers.com/CCII/index1.htm.

Trade Leads

If other methods did not bring any fruitful result, you can consider posting classified ads in a range of trade boards. There are many trade boards available on Internet. While posting trade leads make sure that you specify your requirement precisely. A well-written ad will bring much better result. Post your trade leads frequently until you find a good supplier for your product.

Once you found a supplier that suits you, check him out thoroughly. Your supplier should meet following criteria:

The supplier company must carry product for a substantial period of time.

It should have experience in export – preferably to your country.

It should have readily available export references.

It should be a reputable company in its country.

If company meets above criteria get Dun and Bradstreet report of company to verify its financial background.

Selling imported products

Before even thinking about importing a product or service, you should know exactly who your customers are and how you are going to sell your products to them. Although, there are numerous ways of selling a product, selling through Internet is gaining ground fast.

Selling through your own website

Considering growth of e-commerce, today, any consumer-oriented product is viable to sell through Internet. Your success will largely depend on your ability to market your website appropriately. Your website should have following qualities among others: appealing design, well described product specification with clear pictures, great content, fast connection, easy-to-use shopping cart and a good merchant account.

Drop ship

As a drop ship distributor, you carry inventory and your joint venture partners make sales. Once a product is sold you get payment from your partner but ship out product directly to end customer.

Selling through distributors

Selling through resellers with expertise in your field lowers marketing and selling costs. If you sell products through a number of distributors and each of these distributors use diversified marketing method, your sales potential get multiplied without spending extra on marketing.

E-marketplace

An E-marketplace is a business community, where you can expect to see a large number of buyers and sellers. For a seller it is a low cost, highly functional and easy-to-use sales channel. Benefits of selling products through emarketplace also include:

- Low customer acquisition cost

- Improve customer service

- Efficient information sharing method

Reduce supply chain cost

Entrepreneurs who want to get serious about importing have to acquire substantial knowledge of process. Many of information needed to carry out an import export business is available on Internet. Anybody with enough enthusiasm to learn can easily find them and use to build a profitable and interesting business.

From broad base of your business field try narrowing down several subjects that could be interesting to your prospective readers. Use those subjects and related materials as your article topics.

Step II: Gather materials

Once you have a topic to write about and ideas to focus on, brainstorm surrounding it and find several key phrases relevant to this topic. All of information needed for you to explore your ideas and illustrate your points you can get from Internet.

Here is process of retrieving information from Internet:

- Use Google and other search engines to find information on search terms you identified. One of best search engines for this purpose is www.vivisimo.com. Vivisimo’s clustering and meta-search method will help you finding many relevant information that you might not have thought of.

- Browse through directories to find relevant websites and get required information from there.

- Seek out specialized repositories of related information. www.bitpipe.com and www.knowledgestorm.com are two wonderful resources if you are doing research on business technology. If you are looking for articles on a topic, try Looksmart’s www.findarticles.com

- Once you collected enough information, now is time for you to jot down your ideas and related points. Note down you thoughts using some structuring systems like mind mapping, listing, etc.

Step III: Make an outline

Spend sometime on planning your article and develop an outline of article. Process of making an outline of your article will help you visualize your finished product. An outline is a visual and conceptual list of your ideas and their place in article. It should reflect your logical thinking process – way you want your readers to see it, a beginning and a culminating point.

Step IV: Write article

Write your article addressing your readers in second person. Try starting your article with something that will spur interest in your readers. Your article should consist of words within range of 600 to 900. This size for articles became a standard for ezines and, therefore, many ezine publishers simply don’t accept larger articles.

Step V: Edit your article

After finishing, read article loud. Work on sentences that don’t sound quite right. Stack article aside and come back to it in a day or two. Revise it. You will find many ways to improve it this time. Your friends and co-workers can help you too. Let them read article and make their suggestions.

Writing articles is a skill like any other you develop by practicing. Why not start doing it now, and at same time get targeted traffics to your website?