How about affiliates? What are benefits they get from an affiliate relationship?

No product or service to carry Online business with your own product or service might be rewarding, but it requires substantial investment from your part. With carefully chosen affiliate programs you can have your online business without requirement of having your own products.

The investment is low as all you need is a website.

No need to have a merchant account Since you don’t carry your own products or services you do not have to go through hassle of having a merchant account to cater your clients. Your affiliate program owner will do everything. All you have to do is supply clients through your designated link.

Possibility of residual income Many programs pay you a commission from sales made to customers generated from affiliates, who have signed up as an affiliate following your link. This kind of affiliate system is called 2-tier system.

Visitor tracking system allows affiliate programs to pay you a commission when same visitor from your website makes repeat purchase.

Some affiliate programs that promote monthly or yearly subscription services pay a commission each month as long as customer referred by you stays subscribed.

Complement you website with added products and services If your site is dedicated to certain products or services, there must be other stuffs that go well together with your own products. It’s a good idea to seek out viable affiliate products of these items and promote through your site. Your visitors will love this and this will help building loyalty among your visitors.

Have new contents for your site many affiliate programs supply you with valuable marketing materials. Some of these materials can be nice addition to your site content bringing further value to your website.

Various Affiliate programs

There are two ways of running an affiliate program: The company owns and handles program itself, using certain software.

The company uses third party administered affiliate programs. The reasons why many companies prefer to hand over management of their affiliate programs include technical aspects, cost factor and human factors.

– Companies do not have to spend money on developing, running and updating software. – Proven technology allows companies to concentrate on their job of selling their products and services. – Many prospective affiliates prefer third party managed programs, because they rightfully ponder, in this case program owners have less chance to cheat their affiliates.

Find below a list of some leading third party affiliate program administrators:

http://www.befree.com http://www.linkshare.com http://www.cj.com http://www.clickbank.com

However, this does not mean that you should avoid company run affiliate programs. On contrary, some of most successful and best affiliate programs are run by owners.

If you find an affiliate program that suits your requirement and you feel that company is a reputable one, by any means you should give it a try!

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.