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.

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

by J. Stephen Pope

How do you know whether your advertising is effective or not? The answer is to track advertising response for each ad you run.

Whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, you can measure the effectiveness of your advertising.

1. Which Publications Produce Profits?

When new customers phone or visit you, ask how they found out about you. They might say they found you through your yellow pages ad or your newspaper ad.

Record the responses and resulting sales from each ad. Then, analyze whether each particular advertisement is producing the desired results.

If an advertisement consistently produces profits for you, keep running it. On the other hand, if an ad consistently performs poorly or produces a loss, discontinue it.

In mail order, you can key each ad so that you can measure the resulting sales from each publication.

For example, you could add “Dept. A” to your name or address in the ad to indicate the July issue of a particular magazine. Key it as “Dept. B” for the August issue of the same magazine. “Dept. C” could indicate the July issue of a different magazine you advertise in.

Thus, as orders come in, you can track the response and sales made from each advertisement. From that information, you can easily determine the profitability of your ad in each publication.

2. Which Ads Produce Profits?

Not only can ad tracking show you which publications are profiitable to advertise in, but it will also help you measure the effectiveness of the ads themselves.

If you change your ad, and the results for the new ad are consistently better or worse, you can take the appropriate action; either continue or discontinue the advertisement.

Change only one element in an ad at a time.

For example, if you decide to change the price, don’t change the headline. Otherwise, you won’t know if the difference in results was due to the changed price or the changed headline. For greater certainty, change only one thing at a time when testing your ads.

On the Internet, you can use tracking software and services that will aid you to determine the source of your sales and the effectiveness of your advertising, article writing, and other activities.

So, whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, use ad tracking for increased profits.

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