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Going International With Your Home Business
by Trevor Marshall
Published on this site: October 20th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
For those home business owners lucky enough to survive the first two
years, at some point, you might be contacted by someone internationally
who's heard about your business. Let's face it, once youve conquered your
local area and done business by post or email with other areas of the
country, dipping a toe into international markets seems like the next logical step.
- Costs Increase
If you are considering exporting a physical product, you have to
understand that your costs can significantly increase. Thus, your products
should be made as light as possible for the purposes of international
shipping. Check that youd be able to get the things youre selling to
the place where you plan to sell them without it becoming prohibitively
expensive. Next, check if there are any customs requirements. Sometimes
even the most well planned international businesses flop because they fail to take into account local laws or customs.
- Non Physibal Products
The best kind of product you can sell is a digital one, because
the only cost of distribution is your bandwidth. Of course, you still
need to worry about currency fluctuations. You therefore might want
to price your products in the currency of your country. Non physical
products are often called bits on a wire products.
- Maintain a Niche for Your Business
Regardless of your product, be sure that it caters to a niche customer
base. In other words, make sure there is a market for your product in
the country before doing anything. Disney, for example, made the mistake
of opening amusement parks in countries that held strong anti-american
sentiments. The parks performed extremely poorly. Fast food giant KFC
fails horribly in China, where the general population never eats such
huge meals and avoids eating anything with their hands and finds it offensive
to be served food in buckets. If youre not sure, you could talk to a
few local businesspeople about how they think your product would be
perceived, and they may be able to suggest a suitable target market
for you.
- Produce Internationally as Well
If the cost of distributing overseas appears to be too expensive,
you will want to investigate the possibility of producing your product
on international soil to eliminate that cost. At the same time, if you
do this, you may be able to take advantage of hiring international workers
that will work for less, and purchase international materials that will
also be cheaper.
Trevor Marshall: For more great home business related articles
and resources check out http://findbizopps.info
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