Many companies are taking advantage of electronic media quite aggressively by making new contacts, tapping into new markets and reducing costs with help of online technologies.

Whether you are starting a new import business or planning to expand your existing business, you too can use Internet as your primary channel for getting information, sourcing products or services, finding suppliers and doing your marketing.

Before Internet era, finding a viable product for importing was not an easy job! Trade shows and traveling to foreign lands were two best options available for getting hands on information on a product and its supplier. Today, required information on any conceivable product from virtually any market is available at your finger tips.

Finding a product

If you know what you are planning to import, a substantial work is already done! Otherwise, your first step is to choose a feasible product or service to import. Whether you are planning to import a general merchandize or an industry-specific product, do your homework right.

Browse through Catalog repositories, B2B exchanges, electronic trade boards, trade journals and virtual trade shows to find a product. If you know manufacturing country from where product is possible to source, check out country specific portals and exchanges. Here is a list of high quality electronic trade boards:

For China made products: www.alibaba.com Sourcing from India: www.trade-india.com For Russian Products: www.rusbiz.com Products from Europe: www.europages.com From South Korea: www.ec21.com

For other country-specific or industry-specific B2B exchanges check out this list: http://dmoz.org/Business/E-Commerce/Marketplaces/

Your criteria for choosing a product for importing should include:

Your prior knowledge of product you intend to import and its industry. Your possibility of success increases considerably if you know product well.

Access to required quantity of this product. If you spend time and effort in developing a local market for a product and unable to deliver, you will loose business and reputation.

Quality of product. This is a crucial aspect for developing a market for any product. Quality of product should be consistent with market requirement.

High profit margin. As import incurs many expenses that are specific to this type of business only, prior to import anything, you should carefully calculate all required expenses and see that you still make handsome profits. You can check out sites of your prospective competitors and make a price comparison to get initial idea on your products present market price.

Finding supplier

Once you know – what you are planning to import – your next step is to find a reliable supplier for this product.

Emarketplace or B2B exchange

B2B exchanges can be a good help in getting suppliers of products you are planning to import.

The possible steps, you have to take to find a supplier from a B2B exchange, are listed below. As an example www.rusbiz.com is used.

There are numerous inherent benefits in this fairly simple and innovative way of promoting your website and your products.

You can establish yourself as an expert in your field

People trust and tend to buy products from somebody they consider to be an expert. Once you start writing articles and if these articles provide valuable information, it won’t take long for you to get accepted as an authority in your subject matter.

Augment your own knowledge

If you write articles, apart from knowledge that you already have, you still have to do some home works on relevantmaterials – gathering and culling information, data, surveys, etc. This process eventually improves your own grasp of subject as well.

Get targeted traffic to your site

As far as web marketing is concerned this is main reason why you should consider writing articles. Each of your articles that you allow others to republish should carry a resource box which includes a short description of you as an author and a link to your website. If readers like your articles, they will visit your site to check out what else you have to offer.

Increase link popularity of your website

All your articles published in other websites with a backward link to your website will help boosting your link popularity. Link popularity indicates number of web pages that link to your website. Many search engines use it as one of main factors in their algorithm which determines search engine ranking of a certain website.

If you are a novice writer and would like to pursue this unique method of promoting your website, you don’t have to worry about where to start. There's a load of information available on Internet about writing. However, before even you start writing your first article, no matter how good you are in your chosen subject matter, you still have to do some extra research to seek out an interesting topic, gather relevant materials on topic, evaluate gathered information, organize your thoughts and plan your article.

While writing an article, maximum time and effort, probably, you will spend on preparation rather then physical process of writing itself.

Here are five steps for novice writers to jump start their website promotion through article writing.

Step I: Choose a topic