If you operate a small business, you may feel that your income potential is quite limited. However, you can increase and diversify your income through international trade.

1. Importing

Retail store owners can find additional products to sell from foreign manufacturers, distributors, and other suppliers.

Advantages of importing include increased product selection, lower costs, and increased income.

You may even decide to go exclusively into the import business and become a wholesale distributor.

2. Exporting

Manufacturers can find new customers for their products in foreign countries.

Perhaps consumers in your country have lost interest in your product. It may have become obsolete because of technological advances. A foreign market, however, may be desirous of that very product.

Maybe there is an economic slump in your country. Another country may be experiencing a boom. Sales from customers in that country may help stabilize your income.

Exporting can also help smooth the peaks and valleys of your income. For instance, if you sold winter sporting goods, you could sell to both northern and southern hemispheres to help offset the seasonal nature of your business.

Of course, you might also consider selling sporting goods for all the seasons and still export to other countries to increase and diversify your income.

You could also become an Export Management Agent. Arrange for other domestic companies to sell their products to foreign corporations and earn a ten percent commission.

You would think that selling to foreign customers would be quite risky. However, use of letters of credit can protect all parties. An Export Management Agent might actually arrange for ninety percent of the sale to be paid directly to the domestic supplier and ten percent to be paid directly to himself.

3. Licensing

Consider becoming a licensing agent. Earn royalties by arranging for foreign corporations to manufacture and sell the products of domestic companies.

4. Finder's Fees

Imagine the possibilities for earning finder's fees in international trade!

You can earn fees from domestic companies for finding foreign buyers (or for finding suitable imports from foreign suppliers). You can also earn fees from foreign companies for finding domestic corporations that will buy their products (or for finding suitable suppliers and products from domestic corporations).

5. Drop Shipping

Visualize receiving an order from a customer based in a foreign country and not having to be bothered with shipping and handling the product. No customs declarations or brokers are required by you. This is because your drop ship supplier is handling those details.

You might collect $100.00 plus shipping of $15.00 from your foreign customer. You then simply send your customer's order to your drop ship supplier with your payment of $65.00 (consisting of $50.00 wholesale cost plus $15.00 shipping). Your drop shipper will now fulfill the order. Congratulations! You just made fifty dollars.

6. Mail Order

Add a mail order service to your existing business operation. Manufacturers, retail stores, and other businesses can increase their sales by using this additional method of selling that is very conducive to international trade.

7. Internet Marketing

You can also extend your reach to worldwide customers by means of the Internet. Methods of obtaining foreign business include affiliate marketing, online auctions, online stores, and websites.

Yes, to increase and diversify your income, consider international trade.

Resource Box

J. Stephen Pope, President of Pope Consulting Inc., has been helping clients to earn maximum business profits for over twenty-five years.

For profitable Work at Home Small Business Ideas, visit http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/

To learn more about How To Start and Operate an Import - Export Business and Make Your Fortune in International Trade, visit
http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/impexp.html

When most small manufacturing businesses start-up, they concentrate their sales efforts on the known markets here in the U.S. Defining their markets as the known users of their products; known distributors of those products; and known, or accessible, sales areas within the U.S., overlooking the larger, more profitable, markets outside this country.

Most small manufacturers who do investigate the possibilities of exporting their products GIVE UP after reading a number of Department of Commerce publications detailing the intricacies of export documentation, freight forwarding, and international banking instruments. (The same complex, intricate processing, paperwork jungle, methods I studied when I was 18 years old...and discarded after I made my first real sale overseas.)

What the Department of Commerce...and other learned sources ...fail to tell you is that ALL of the necessary documentation, freight forwarding, and international banking aspects of exporting can be handled...easily and cheaply...by professional service providers who do it every day. As a matter of fact, the 'cost' of those services are so negligible it usually isn't even necessary to make a provision for them in your pricing structure.

Exporting is, really, no more difficult than marketing your products here in the U.S. -- All you have to do is...Make a Sale...Get Paid...and Ship Your Product. The rest of the procedures can be handled, inexpensively, by the customary service providers.

Beyond that, exporting can allow a small manufacturing company to grow...almost exponentially...because you will experience:

LARGER ORDERS -- Importers in other countries won't just buy one or two of your products (unless they are ordering samples). Due to the added costs of freight, insurance, and customs duties in their countries, they will order in bigger and bigger volume in order to reduce the per piece cost.

EASIER FINANCING -- Since export orders are (almost always) accompanied by some method of payment...Letter of Credit, Sight or Bank Draft, etc...your local banker will (usually) be willing to advance funds against that documentation. Beyond that, both State and Federal Governments offer a wide variety of financing incentives...everything from free grants to production financing... for exporters. And, even the smallest of companies can qualify for that financing because the financial strength of the foreign buyer, not the manufacturing company, determines the creditability of the transaction.

LIMITED COMPETITION -- No matter what you manufacture, you won't have the heavy competition you might face here in the U.S. -- Statistically, less than 20% of the manufacturers in this country export their products - and - of those companies that do export, fully 50% of them only export to one (1) foreign country. So, even if one of your competitors is exporting, the odds are you can still be the ONLY supplier in a number of other countries...without competition.

The only concern then is...

HOW TO MAKE THE SALES

...but, just as there are Manufacturer's Representatives in the U.S. who will take a manufacturer's products directly to the distributors, there are International Manufacturer's Reps who will do the same thing for your company in the marketplaces of the world.

Usually, the employment of an International Manufacturer's Rep doesn't take any 'out of pocket' money...other than the provision of your usual printed materials, catalog sheets and brochures. -- Like Manufacturer's Reps in the U.S., International Manufacturer's Reps pay their own way and earn commissions based solely upon the sale of your products. But, unlike their domestic counterparts, International Manufacturer's Reps can, and do, assist the manufacturers in accessing necessary service providers, freight forwarders, banking and financing.

Exporting truly is the fastest ... and easiest ... way to grow a small manufacturing business. Just one export order can turn a small manufacturer into a mid-size manufacturer, virtually overnight. -- As an exporter and international manufacturer's rep for well over 30 years...with clients and customers in over 70 countries....I've seen it happen countless times. So...

If you are a manufacturer...looking to expand your business, exponentially, investigate Exporting today. -- It's much easier than you might think.

Resource Box

You will find a complete "how-to" course on Exporting in our "Power Tools for Entrepreneurs."

Importing Is More Difficult Than Exporting.

But you can build wealth in importing if you follow some simple rules. These rules are:

1. Import specialty items instead of mass-produced
   products. Why? Because there's less competition when
   you sell specialty items in your home market.


2. Import higher-priced items instead of low-priced
   items. Why? Because you'll earn more on each sale of a
   high-priced product, increasing your income.


3. Import items you can sell to the business market,
   instead of the consumer market. Why? Because you'll
   have surer sales results when you deal with business
   customers, as compared with "the person in the street."


4. Import items for which you have an exclusive
   market. Why? Because you'll have less competition and
   customers will beat a path to your door to buy from you.

Here's a Real-Life Example of this Strategy for Importing.

It works wonders for this importer. This BWB (Beginning Wealth Builder):

1. Imports large, hand-made sailing ship models of famous
   ships from overseas. They are Specialty Items because they are
   large, they are hand-made and they appeal to many different
   business customers. A typical model is 3-feet long, 2-feet high.


2. These sailing-ship models of famous vessels, such as the
   Constitution, Nelson's flagship, the Victory, the Coast Guard
   Training Ship, the Eagle, the Bounty, of the famous mutiny, the
   Clipper Ship Cutty Sark, etc., are well-known to business
   customers. You don't have to explain the ship's history!


3. Hotels, motels, restaurants, business offices and similar
   groups order these models in quantities of 50, 75, and 100 at a
   time. Since the models are priced at several hundred to a few
   thousand dollars each, the sales generate significant revenue for
   the importer. And when a business orders a group of models
   they stay with the order, and do not change their mind on a
   whim, such as consumers might do. Business Purchasing
   Agents know what they want and are ready to pay for it!


4. This importer has exclusive rights to these models. Hence,
   he has little, or no, competition. When a business needs
   decorative sailing-ship models they come to him for them.

Use these tips for your importing and you'll find that your
business will grow, and prosper, along with your bank account!

Resource Box

Copyright © 2004 by International Wealth Success, Inc. All rights reserved.

Learn more from the Import-Export Riches Kit at http://www.yenommarketinginc.com/importexportkit.html