Easily Set Up Online Exports: Step by Step

Business starts with strategy formulation. These strategies ensure higher possibilities of business success. Digital global business planning requires meticulous work on strategy formulation, which logically starts with the product strategies.

Hello friends,

Welcome back to the course.

In the last few lessons, I discussed with you the reasons why the importance of digital channels for carrying out international and global business has emerged, because of the drastic changes we have seen in recent times and the overall level of technological advancement, including the availability of the latest technologies such as digital currencies. These new kinds of digital currencies are very different from fiat currencies, which I will talk about later in this course.

Many new and well-tested technologies have their own merits. They are proving to be better than any technologies ever created by humans in the past.

There are compelling reasons for these new practical, possible, and enabling technologies. There is great potential and many strong reasons for these technologies to be adopted by global industries and traders.

These new developments are enough for us to realize that digital business is here to stay for a very long time, and even newer technologies will help this process become faster and more profitable.

The time has already come for us to adapt to these new technologies — to adapt to these new digital ecosystems, digital channels, and large online communities.

We need to gain the skills. We need to learn how to harvest the users who are part of digital communities around the world and benefit from global interaction among people anywhere on this planet.

Let us look at what comes next in this process of understanding the skills required to become a successful digital marketer and global digital businessperson.

What is next?

I will discuss with you, in very simple language, the step-by-step approach to setting up your online global business. That is the important part.

Without going too deep into the concepts — because that depth comes with experience — I will be discussing these things, at least in this episode, in a brief form. In the subsequent episodes, I will explain these different steps that I am introducing today.

In this episode, I will discuss these steps more deeply in later lessons.

In this step-by-step approach to setting up your online global business, the first step is to formulate different types of strategies.

Every business requires strategy formulation, but the types and importance of certain strategies needed for setting up your global online business begin with the products and services you are going to offer.

Create those strategies. That is very important.

If you can identify the right products and services that match your capabilities, internal strengths, implicit strengths, and the external environment, half the job is done. Ultimately, what you need to sell online are products and services that must be identified in such a way that you face less competition and can differentiate your offerings from others.

The process starts with the formulation of product and service strategies.

At the same time, you need to formulate your business model.

What is your business model?

You have to decide what kind of offer you are giving, under what business model. Are you providing value to the customer by being a manufacturer? Are you a trader? A merchant exporter? A service provider? Or are you an exporter of services provided by others?

Whatever your model or role in this process, you must determine how you add value to the customer.

These things will be discussed in more detail later in this course when we talk about business model strategies — the kind of business model you are offering to the world.

Next, you need to formulate digital marketing strategies.

Digital marketing today is not the same as it was ten years ago, when simple steps could give results. It is no longer possible to achieve desired results just by doing search engine optimization (SEO), keyword research, or using a few standard techniques.

Competition is heating up. More and more businesses are going online, and they know how to use digital marketing effectively. There is intense competition in this digital marketing space.

In this highly competitive environment, the right digital marketing strategies must be formulated to achieve the desired results.

In the context of international business and selling your goods and services across different parts of the world, physical goods still require movement from one place to another.

What will be your logistics strategies?

How will you add value while moving goods, which involves logistics costs? These include cross-border movement by sea, air, or other means, along with costs related to clearing goods in the home and host countries, government regulations, duties, and local taxes.

Ultimately, what is the cost to the customer?

These strategies must be clearly understood, and proper financial planning is required in this case.

Along with logistics strategies, you need a financial plan that complements your logistics management.

A digital marketer's main challenge for successfully running a global digital business is to place themselves and the company on the digital channels. Digital and Social Media marketing management is all about meeting this challenge. Your digital personality may be a key factor in your overall digital success. More so in the global markets.

In step number two, you have to create a digital presence.

You have to do everything that is required initially to be present on digital media. You have to define the face of the company—the people who will represent the company and the brand—and decide how you are going to make the image of the organization presentable and how you will position it across different digital channels and media. You have to create that digital presence on these digital communities, channels, and highways.

For that, the typical steps include creating your dynamic website, which is a highly professional task that requires proper planning to design a website that suits your products and services, as well as the strategies you have already created for the offerings you plan to present to the world.

Then, invariably and typically in export, import, and global business, you need to be present on high-traffic and already popular digital marketplaces such as Amazon, Shopify, eBay, and many others.

You have to create your presence on those marketplaces by establishing your own shop, store, outlet, or showcase. You have to display your products and your complete product range with appropriate pricing. You need to present your entire offer of products and services through these marketplaces.

You must choose the right marketplaces from among the 10 to 20 most popular global platforms and create your presence there.

In addition, there are digital communities that are buzzing with activity—large, segmented social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

These are vast social media communities. In this sea of social media, how do you position yourself?

What kind of personality are you able to build in this social media space? What message do you want to convey?

It will all stem from your product and service strategies that you have already created.

You have the tools and methods available to ensure your presence on social media 24×7, 365 days a year.

How do you do that? How do you maintain your omnipresence on these social media channels?

That is extremely important to drive traffic to your store, to your website, and to ensure international visibility.

To support your efforts—and depending on your product, service, and financial strategies, as well as your digital advertising budget—you may choose to use both organic and inorganic digital marketing methods.

For that, you need to design marketing campaigns that are usually conducted on large social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

These massive user communities are where you can trigger emotions, attract attention, and bring people to your store and website.

How do you attract the attention of your desired audience on social media?

It requires different types of digital marketing campaigns, which you must learn to execute—some paid and some free.

Depending on how you plan your overall digital marketing strategy, you need to carry out these campaigns effectively.

And then, in step number three, you have to capture the buyers—international buyers.

You have to create leads through digital mediums. You need to find and learn the skills of different tools and techniques to search for and create those kinds of international leads—buying leads. You should be able to capture those international buyers through the groundwork you have already done in the previous steps, through your knowledge of the product, and by demonstrating the value in your product or service offer.

If you are able to show that value and do the right things on digital platforms, you will be able to create those leads and capture international buyers.

Then, in step number four, you have to understand and learn the skills of online customer retention, for which you must understand the mindset of the online customer.

Who are the customers?

How do they behave? How have you targeted them? How have you segmented them? And how have you positioned your products to online customers?

By understanding these things, you will be able to develop certain customer retention strategies that you must implement. You also have to manage customer relations in such a way that you generate repeat orders online.

And then, in step number five, you have to re-examine your digital space, digital presence, and the digital ecosystem you have created—the global digital empire you have built online. You have to review it carefully.

You must optimize it based on the insights generated from your digital space data.

If you are able to derive those insights and find ways to optimize your digital operations—by eliminating activities that do not give the desired return on investment and adopting those that deliver results—you can effectively optimize your digital marketplace.

For this, you need to gather feedback from your customers and from people who matter to you online.

That feedback—those customer comments, which should be part of a continuous process—will help you optimize your digital space.

And finally, in step number six, if your model is giving you the desired return on investment and you feel it is reasonably optimized, you can scale up your digital operations.

That is when you can truly benefit from the digital marketplace, where scaling up can be immense, highly impactful, and capable of giving you enormous returns on your investment.

It is often said that half the race is won in the global digital business space if you have a great product. Rest is done by the digital promotion.

Welcome back, friends, to the next lesson of this very important course on setting up your online global business step by step.

In the last few lessons, I discussed the outline of the different steps involved in setting up your very profitable online global business. In today's episode, I will discuss in detail some of the initial steps that you have to carry out. In the subsequent episodes, I will continue discussing the important points that you need to take into account while moving through these steps and building your online global business empire on the very large and important digital communities.

As I indicated in my last episode, the very first step is the formulation of strategies.

Within that, the very first thing you have to do is to formulate product strategies—or product and service strategies.

This is the most important question you must ask when you start building your online global business: What is it that you are going to offer to the world?

What can you offer? What are you capable of? What is something that perhaps you can do best for the world, for the consumers, for customers across the globe?

And is that product or service you want to offer different from others?

Is it something that can actually be made available to consumers worldwide?

These are the very important questions with which this whole process begins.

The product strategies are typically dictated by the internal and external strengths of the global digital marketer, as well as by what the international market can absorb and what it is looking for.

Where are the gaps? Where are the vacuums? Where are the opportunities where a customer is seeking solutions to problems, and can you fulfill those needs by offering the best possible solutions that are also affordable?

These are the critical areas that require careful introspection of your internal and external strengths and of the external environment in which you are operating.

One of the things you can do to understand which products and services you should focus on—and to assess whether you can realistically offer them to the world—is to conduct international market research on the different types of products and services that are commonly available in the global trading system.

What are people selling, and how are they selling?

International market research and product research are the starting points.

For your benefit, a list of very good resources has been provided in this course.

You can refer to the resource section, where you can access tools for international product and market research to help you identify the right products and services you can offer to the world.

But a more important consideration is whether the products and services you identify through research can actually be made available in a way that is better than others.

Can you offer better pricing to customers? Can you provide certain differentiating features or attributes in your products and services that others cannot?

This is a very mature and serious research process that can truly make or break all your international business setup efforts.

To give you some examples of the products and services that are commonly exported from countries like India—developing countries such as India, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia—these are the typical exporters of different types of items.

They can provide certain attractive consumer goods, goods of daily use, and products required by the modern online customer.

Some of the items, examples of which can be seen here, include products exported from countries like India, such as handloom and handicraft products, handmade products like handmade paper, environmentally friendly handmade products, packing materials, disposable sanitized medical-grade flexible packing materials, and packaging materials.

Then we have certain light engineering goods that may be required by manufacturers of more sophisticated engineering items, or they may belong to the B2B or B2C domains.

There can be a very large range of engineering goods and intermediate products that can be exported.

Other examples include office consumables, readymade garments, handmade or power-loom floor coverings of different materials like wool, cotton, and jute.

These include different types of floor coverings, laminated wooden items, and furniture of various kinds for office and residential purposes.

Chemicals and allied products are also important exports.

Manufacturers of different types of consumer goods require various chemicals and allied products—consumables, intermediate formulations, technical grades, and a wide range of scientific chemicals and allied products.

There are also different types and varieties of goods, utensils, and consumer products made of stainless steel and other materials.

These are only some of the examples.

If you look at the resources provided in this course, you will find something called the International Trade Classification or Harmonized System (HS) of classifying different types of goods that are frequently traded among countries.

You will find a list of more than 5,000 such products, and you need to identify the types and categories of products that can be sourced or manufactured by you more efficiently—products for which you can offer competitive pricing, differentiation, or special added value for customers.

You have to conduct this kind of research while formulating successful product strategies.

When we talk about product strategies, there are certain very important points that must be considered.

The first and most important point in this context is that your research should help you identify certain products and services for which you either already possess or can acquire deep knowledge—those products and services that you want to offer to the world through digital channels.

These are the products and services that are important for your foreign markets, and that depth of knowledge can make or break your international efforts.

Next, you must consider whether the products and services you plan to offer to the world are able to meet different types of compliance requirements, standards, and regulations of the countries that commonly buy such products.

Are you able to provide the desired quality, required standards, and appropriate compliances mandated by local laws?

Are you able to offer product attributes that consumers in the developed world or importing countries expect from such offerings?

You need to assess what kind of products and services you can provide, what quality and standards you can maintain, and whether your offerings will be received favorably by buyers and customers in those countries who are interested in purchasing your products and services. You must ensure that your offerings meet their expectations and, wherever possible, that you can provide a variety of options for consumers to choose from.

Are you able to provide a reasonably large range of products and related product groups in your offerings?

This is also very important.

Certain product categories attract consumers through the availability of a diversified range of choices.

By offering such variety, you can also add value to your international buyers.

The online channels thankfully make it easier and cheaper to obtain quality market and product intelligence. The challenge is to understand - How and where to find this information?

Friends, this particular portal is called the Indian Trade Portal.

This trade portal is an initiative of the Indian government, and most governments around the world have similar websites available where you can conduct all kinds of market research and find information that will be very important for you to become a successful global businessperson.

As you can see here on this website, I will just give you an overview so that you get an idea of the kind of information you can gather.

The Indian Trade Portal, which is an Indian government initiative, provides information that is extremely important for exporters, importers, and international traders, such as trade statistics.

These trade statistics include data related to, for example, 87 countries for which information is available on this website. These are important countries that are actively involved in global export and import activities.

Information about countries such as the US, UAE, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia is provided here.

These are the top 25 export markets, for example, for Indian exporters.

Similar websites maintained by other governments will list the top 25 export markets for their respective countries.

However, you will find a lot of commonalities in the information and listings available.

For example, on this website, you can find ITC HS Codes—that is, the International Trade Classification Harmonized System codes—of different items.

Using these, you can find details about import tariffs and any import restrictions.

You can actually get a complete overview of the products that are exported and imported in these countries, as well as information on what is in demand. You can also find details about government policies, trade restrictions in different countries, and even updates about policy changes related to international trade in those countries.

All this information is available on these types of websites.

If you explore this kind of portal further, you will find a great deal of valuable information.

For example, you can find details about tariffs, various incentives available—such as those offered by the Government of India for Indian exporters—and export-import policy conditions.

All this information is readily available on these portals.

You will find that these portals are very handy and extremely useful. You do not need to visit any organization to obtain this information. You can access it 24×7, 365 days a year.

This kind of information is very, very useful.

Now, similarly, if we go to another website that I want to show you, this is the website of the International Trade Center.

This website contains information about all countries.

For example, on this particular page, you will find information about India.

The country brief is provided there, and you can see not only the country overview but also data related to product groups that are exported and imported in India—how much is being imported, what the value is, and what the trends are.

All this information is available here.

You can find this data for any country in the world, not just 87 countries, as was the case on the Indian Trade Portal.

Here, you can find information for more than 180 countries that are members of the World Trade Organization.

You will find very detailed and comprehensive data.

When I talk about market intelligence research and market intelligence data, it actually and automatically means that you should have very good numerical and data analysis skills.

You should have a flair for finding insights and drawing inferences from data.

That skill is an essential part of market research competence and attitude.

This particular area is one of the most important and useful for becoming a successful businessperson.

For example, here you can also find international trade statistics for almost 20 years, from 2001 to 2020.

All the information, including customs data of different countries and export-import data, can be found based on the Harmonized System of International Trade Classification.

As you can see here, data is available up to the four-digit level.

You can access this information free of cost.

If you want to get information beyond the four-digit level, you can go up to six digits or even eight digits.

That information is also available on this particular website, but it is a paid service.

It mentions that the Trade Map, which is a map of the complete movement of goods and services from one country to another, contains data for 220 countries and almost 5,300 products under the Harmonized System.

This trade statistics database, presented in the form of the Trade Map on this website, is part of the International Trade Center’s offerings. This information is available and highly useful.

You will find plenty of similar online and offline sources. You can also find many local organizations in different countries around the world that help provide this type of information—often free of cost.

All governments across the world want their citizens to become successful exporters.

They support export organizations and provide this kind of information free of cost.

A great and unique business idea, sellable online, and having potential to trigger emotions among the target audience is a recipe for a great business model which is scalable and can be very profitable.

Along with the product strategies, your business model formulation—your business model strategy—is also very important, as I mentioned in my earlier episodes.

What is your business model?

You have to ask this very important question: what do you consider to be the right business model for digital channels that you want to work on and from which you expect to get returns on your investment?

Will you be able to achieve those kinds of returns with the business model you have in mind?

Do you add value by being a manufacturer, and by being a manufacturer, do you have control over the product, its attributes, and its price?

Is this your model? Or are you a merchant exporter who is able to provide a range of product groups, product categories, and services by sourcing them from several manufacturers and by combining products offered by different producers into a large and diversified range of offerings?

Are you looking to add value in this way? Or are you simply a trader who makes goods easily available—goods that are not otherwise easy to find? Are you a trader who has strong knowledge in a particular product group, who knows the sources, who knows the buyers, and who can trade in those goods in large quantities and varieties with highly specialized and in-depth knowledge of that product line?

Do you have a market reputation in a certain kind of product range?

Are you that kind of trader, and is this your business model—the marketable one?

Or are you a service provider with specific skills, able to offer certain services that are rare or in great demand, adding value by delivering those services to the satisfaction of foreign buyers? Or are you a provider—or exporter—of a range of services offered by several service providers?

Are you able to combine those services into a single window and add value for your customers?

Is your business model of this type?

Are you able to offer certain products and services where you are the cost leader—where competitors are unable to provide products at similar prices?

Or are you a brand leader—a person who can build brands internationally, who has the resources and capabilities to establish a global brand?

If you are a brand leader, what are the differentiating factors of your brand? What value does your brand add, and what are your brand strategies?

Is this the kind of business model you are aiming for?

These are very important questions that must be answered.

You have to be confident in your answers, and you should have conducted proper research—talking to experts in the field and ensuring that your business model is marketable.

This kind of groundwork is essential before you venture into global online business through international digital channels.

Now, friends, the next category of strategies that are required to be formulated for building your global business empire online is to work on international logistics strategies.

Things like: What is your distribution plan?

If you get orders, when you get the orders, how are you going to distribute them? What are the requirements of your products? What is the weight and volume of your products and packages, and what kind of packing will you be using?

How will you make them available internationally to your B2B or B2C customers?

It will be more challenging in the case of B2C customers because the cost of transportation will be comparatively higher.

Depending on your business model, your product line, and your services, you have to find all practical ways and means of sending or moving your goods from your own country to the overseas market.

And if your goods are virtual in nature—downloadable from the internet—how are you going to do it? How will you protect your data and your virtual content from hackers or fraudulent clients?

What kinds of firewalls are you going to implement, and how are you going to make your products available on the internet?

These things have to be discussed and understood very well at this stage.

Whether your goods and services are physical, virtual, or downloadable from the internet will determine the course of action for developing practical, workable, affordable, and attractive international logistics strategies for customers, because these have a direct impact on your final cost and final price to the customer.

This also includes other incidental costs, such as landing at the customer’s warehouse or premises, depending on your delivery terms and whether you are going to pay for the local taxes and import duties at the customer’s end, or what policy you decide regarding delivery terms.

These factors have to be worked out at this stage because they will determine what kind of pricing or price structure your products will have.

If physical goods are involved, what are the local and host country compliances or government regulations?

What laws apply?

These compliances have to be understood, assessed for practicality, and matched with your ability to carry them out.

What are the taxes levied in the host country as well as in the home country?

In most countries, for export purposes, home country taxes and levies are refundable or not payable, but local taxes, import duties, GST, service tax, or VAT are payable in the host country.

Also, in the home country, if you are availing services from logistics companies or international marketplaces, the payment for such services is taxable.

You must ensure that you have the necessary government compliance in place to pay and account for such taxes.

These aspects have to be understood and decided at this stage.

You also need to decide how you are going to ship your goods—by sea, by air, or by road—and who will handle the logistics.

Will it be warehouse-to-warehouse, or will it be up to the port of discharge?

These aspects have to be understood well in advance at this stage.

For example, if your strategies focus on B2B customers, what is your logistics plan?

Because your shipments will be comparatively larger, will you take the help of a cargo company or a multimodal transport operator?

What kind of clearing and forwarding agents will you work with?

Do you have their pricing and service charges ready with you?

These decisions have to be worked out at this stage.

If it is a B2C customer, who will pay for the host country import duties and taxes?

Because the customer will not like to take any responsibility for customs clearance at their end, how are you going to address this issue?

Many international marketplaces, like Amazon and eBay, provide shipping services.

In the case of Amazon, it is called FBA—Fulfilled by Amazon—where they take care of all logistics for both B2C and B2B customers.

Are you going to use such services from international marketplaces?

These aspects have to be worked out, and you need to understand the cost of such services.

These factors have to be noted and analyzed at this stage.

As I have already mentioned, these service providers, marketplaces, and logistics companies provide services within your home country as well.

Are there any local or service taxes applicable to their services?

These factors have to be researched and understood properly.

You also need to have a clear understanding of your overall logistics costs.

That worksheet must be in place.

You should know, for your product range and product groups, what the total logistics cost will be.

The overall incidence of logistics costs must be worked out and calculated per unit of your product or service so that you can incorporate these costs into your final price to the customer.

The most prominent role of a global digital marketer is to be able to formulate correct digital and social media marketing strategies. It requires experience, common sense, and perseverance. In the next few videos, aspects related to building a global digital presence are discussed. In the next several videos, the entire Global Digital and Social Media Marketing and Strategic Management aspects are discussed one by one.

Hello friends, welcome back to the course.

In the earlier episode, I discussed the different types of strategies that you need to formulate in order to effectively take off in building and creating your global business empire online, by exploiting the vast digital communities and the highly dynamic digital channels.

Friends, the most important strategic formulation in this regard is related to digital marketing—digital and social media marketing.

In this episode, I will discuss digital and social media marketing strategies that you need to think about, brainstorm, and formulate. I am going to talk about these points in today’s episode.

Let us look at what needs to be understood and formulated as strategies in this area.

In digital and social media marketing strategies, you need to consider whether you will focus on promoting your own e-commerce website or whether you would prefer to use the already existing, high-traffic international marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, and others.

You can adopt a mixed approach. You may choose to promote your own e-commerce-enabled website—complete with a payment gateway and capable of managing all your products and product ranges—or you may use both your own website and international marketplaces together.

This issue needs to be carefully considered and brainstormed based on your product type, pricing, and business model. These factors must be evaluated now, as this is the stage when you must decide how to proceed.

Another important area to think about is: Who are your online customers? What kind of customers do you want to target online?

Friends, let me tell you that online customers are very well-defined. The data available about them is mature, detailed, and extensive.

If you know the right methods, it is comparatively much easier to segment and target the customers you want to position your products for.

This is the time to decide and understand who your customers are.

You really need to find your customers by exploring different trade forums online and by visiting various blogs and vlogs where your products are discussed. You will find many online resources that can help you identify your target audience. Depending on your business model, these will show you who your customers are, where they are located—both geographically and digitally—and which platforms are most effective for reaching them. You will also learn which marketplaces cater primarily to the types of customers you are targeting.

These aspects must be carefully analyzed and identified at this stage. These factors must be absolutely clear before you move further.

Then, friends, in the strategic management of digital marketing and social media marketing, a very important decision to make is whether your focus will be on B2B or B2C customers.

Friends, let me tell you that international marketplaces are designed to cater to either B2C or B2B customers.

There are several models of international marketplaces that focus on B2B deals. However, if you look at marketplaces such as Amazon or Shopify, their major focus is on B2C customers, even in international sales.

At the same time, they also offer ways and means of facilitating B2B sales.

You have to decide whether you want to focus on both formats or exclusively on either B2B or B2C.

These decisions must be made at this stage.

It is also possible, for example, that if you are focusing on B2B sales, you might prefer to promote your own e-commerce website. In that case, you can target wholesalers, importers, and specific buyers in a customized way, bringing traffic directly to your website rather than depending on international marketplaces that primarily focus on B2C.

I will tell you more about this later—about the different types of marketplaces you can consider depending on whether you are targeting B2B or B2C customers—and of course, the ways and means of reaching them.

Where are they located?

If you are targeting B2B customers—importers, wholesalers, large retailers, or retail chains—how do you approach them, find them on social and digital media, influence them, and reach them?

This is extremely important.

Such research can be conducted in advance during this very phase.

If you are, for example, looking for B2C customers—even in international sales—then you can effectively depend on several international marketplaces that specialize in B2C sales.

For example, Etsy.com primarily focuses on specific categories like artwork, handmade items, and fashion garments.

They have a very strong base of international customers, especially in the US and Europe, who buy on a B2C basis and place direct orders with sellers who have their own outlets or shops on Etsy.com.

B2C sales are comparatively easier to reach if you take advantage of these international marketplaces. Many small and medium exporters are successfully using the B2C format through such marketplaces.

You need to strategize at this stage, depending on your situation—your business model, your expected profit margins, and your overall business format.

Then, you have to decide your primary focus—whether it will be B2B sales or B2C sales—and how you will reach those customers.

Now friends,

Another important aspect in the formulation of digital and social media marketing strategies is to identify and determine whether you have the budget for international digital marketing. What kind of budget do you have? Or do you want to first test the waters for some time without spending much, just to see the potential of your product and your model?

You can do that.

If you already have some kind of marketing budget, then your approach would be a little different.

You have to assess this particular factor—if you already have certain funds and wish to invest some amount in digital marketing, that must be decided at this stage.

Would you handle digital marketing yourself, through a third party, or by hiring a digital and social media marketing professional in your organization?

These things have to be understood and decided.

Depending on the scale of your business, the complexity and nature of your products and services, what you are targeting, how you are targeting, and how your reach to online customers will happen—

You have to decide whether you would like to do it yourself or seek professional help in this regard.

These matters need to be settled clearly.

You must also determine who will create and maintain the website.

If you are focusing on your own e-commerce website, it requires continuous attention—24/7, 365 days a year.

You really need to formulate protocols for how you want to manage this. Will you do it yourself, or will you again take professional help to create and maintain your website?

If, for example, you are focusing your sales through international marketplaces, how many such marketplaces do you want to tap into?

Do you want to begin with a few marketplaces, such as eBay, Amazon, or Etsy, and start small to see what kind of results you get before scaling up later?

Or do you want to start with a multi-location presence for your business?

Do you want to begin with 10 to 12 places to launch your store, your outlet, or your digital export store on these marketplaces?

These are the things you need to be very clear about.

This is the stage when such strategies must be formulated.

Then, friends, it is very important to plan how you will build and increase your presence on social media.

What are your social media strategies?

That understanding is extremely important because social media marketing has become very mature and quite complicated.

The challenges in social media marketing require very specialized and intense skills.

How are you going to handle it, and what are you going to do about it?

I will discuss all these things later in this course, but this is the time when you need to think about them using the knowledge you already have or have acquired, for example, from this course.

How will you build your social media marketing strategies?

For example, what messages will you share about your company, your product, your offer, and the factors that differentiate your offer?

What messages are you going to spread through social media?

Who is your target group on social media?

Where are they located?

Which digital communities are they part of, and how will you reach them?

These social media strategies have to be clearly understood.

For example, what are your web baits to drive traffic to your website or your store on international marketplaces?

The concept of web bait I will discuss later in this course.

Web baits are essentially attractive propositions used in digital and social media marketing campaigns to trigger audience action and encourage them to visit your website.

They are also called web magnets.

This concept of a web magnet will be explained in detail later in this course, but you need to do some research now to understand what kind of web bait will work best for your target group.

That has to be studied carefully.

You also need to determine what kinds of social media campaigns will work for you.

That research must also be done—what others are doing, what your competitors are doing, what types of digital marketing campaigns they are running, and how they are operating them.

You have to find out the nature and type of those campaigns.

You must understand their strengths and weaknesses, exploit their weaknesses, and build upon their strengths to create your own unique digital and social media marketing campaign.

That exercise is extremely important.

For your campaigns, what should be their frequency—weekly, monthly, depending on the kind of budget you have, or whether you have a budget at all?

These things must be decided at this stage.

You also need to be aware of the costs involved in digital and social media marketing campaigns—the creation of web baits, web magnets, attracting the audience, and motivating them to act the way you want, such as visiting your website, viewing your products, and paying attention to your brand.

What kind of costs may be involved in such activities?

That has to be clearly understood.

Friends, it is not very difficult to find this kind of information, depending on your product, your business model, and the type of campaigns you are planning.

You will find many examples of similar campaigns on the internet. You should gather this information, talk to experts or people running such campaigns, and ask them about the costs.

By talking to many people, you will come to know what the actual costs involved in such marketing campaigns are.

What is the correct recipe for an awesome global digital and social media marketing? Does it exist? Let us know in the next few lectures.

Hello friends, welcome back to the course.

In the last several episodes, I discussed how you can create your global sales online export store on large international marketplaces like Amazon.

Friends, in today's episode, I will discuss with you a very important area of online presence that you really have to master, and that is digital and social media marketing — the techniques required to promote your e-commerce website globally and to promote your products and services internationally.

It is very important to have a strong and effective presence on social media and on large digital communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

What kinds of techniques and methods do you need to learn to be visible on social media and thereby promote your e-commerce website and your products and services effectively across the world?

These are the things I am going to discuss in today's episode.

Friends, the main areas of promotion — the focus areas — that need to be emphasized for the global promotion of your e-commerce website, especially if you plan to prioritize your e-commerce website over your presence on international marketplaces, are very crucial.

If you want to have a full-fledged, fully functional e-commerce website, you can do that — particularly for B2B sales. If you believe you can manage complete digital marketing, then promoting your e-commerce website becomes very important.

Of course, in both cases — whether you are promoting your e-commerce website or your global sales export online stores — you need to promote your products and services.

That is extremely important.

You must follow a step-by-step approach to effectively promote your products and services. You need to develop strategies to attract the attention of your target audience. You must define your target audience and find ways to draw their attention to your products. You will mostly find this audience on social media because it is the best tool to bring them to your e-commerce website.

In this episode, we will also talk about how you can create a very effective and meaningful social media presence.

The third area, friends, is the global promotion of your brand — your brand visibility, what your brand signifies, and whether the audience can connect your brand with effective solutions to their problems through your products or services.

If you are able to associate your brand with a positive perception of your products and services among digital customers on large global digital communities, that is the ultimate goal.

Basically, you must not only ensure brand visibility but also create a very positive image of your brand.

Friends, let us first talk about the first area of focus — the promotion of the e-commerce website. Friends, the first step and an important area to promote your e-commerce website is, first of all, to get it prepared by a professional organization or a professional person who will be able to create your e-commerce website, or you can do it yourself.

Whatever way you create your website, once it is ready, you need to analyze it for technical feasibility, especially its optimization and alignment with search engine optimization.

If that is not in place, among the billions of websites that exist on the Internet today, your e-commerce website will not be visible.

You really need to work on analyzing your website and rectifying any weaknesses that exist.

For that, you need to do something called web analysis.

Now, friends, luckily, there are various free web analysis tools available online.

You can use those web resources, most of which are free.

For example, I have given you one example — lyfemarketing.com.

If you go to this website, they will analyze your website and indicate the weaknesses that are present, whether the website was created by a third party or by yourself.

They will provide a very comprehensive analysis report. Later on, when your business matures, you can even opt for paid services for this kind of analysis.

Based on this web analysis, you need to perform search engine optimization because, as I mentioned earlier, there are billions of websites on the Internet, and to be visible through search engines, you need to optimize your website — a process called search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization mainly, but not exclusively, includes keyword research, the relevance of your website content to its main theme and focus, on-site optimization, and link building (both internal and external links).

The idea behind on-site optimization and link building is that search engines prefer websites that provide the best experience to the audience.

If your internal and external links are relevant and supported by high-quality content, it helps search engines and their algorithms identify your website as one of the most relevant and valuable ones for online audiences.

The area of keyword research is extremely important because keywords determine the relevance of your website, its content, and the offer you are making.

Keywords are the best method for search engine robots to scan and identify your website and assess its importance for their users.

Friends, the third very important step in promoting your e-commerce website is content marketing.

On your website, the best tool to ensure visibility is your content.

This content can be in the form of text, images, videos, tables, reports, downloadable brochures, and other materials.

You have to create highly relevant and search-engine-friendly content of various types, including blog posts, videos, e-books, infographics, and others that I have mentioned.

Friends, another integral and very important part of promoting your website is your social media presence — an effective and positive presence on social media that builds your reputation, creates consistency, and triggers emotions among your audience.

That kind of social media presence is essential.

You need to focus on platforms based on your target audience — the digital communities and platforms where your online customers are most likely to be active.

This focus should be on the right platforms to ensure meaningful social media visibility.

Now, friends, to further reinforce your e-commerce website promotion, you have a very powerful tool — email marketing.

Friends, several studies indicate that the most powerful digital and social media marketing tool still remains email marketing, which gives the best return on effort.

You can amplify your e-commerce website promotion through email marketing, which cannot be ignored. It is a very important tool.

Then, friends, another possible reinforcement and support you can provide to your promotional efforts for your e-commerce website aimed at the global audience are paid ads, also called inorganic digital marketing.

You must have a budget and create advertising campaigns on social media and other platforms where your online customers are likely to be present. You can use tools such as Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, Facebook News Feed Ads, and many others. You have plenty of options available for advertising.

And finally, friends, you need to implement all these efforts to achieve your goals — your digital goals for global sales.

Even great marketing minds would struggle to sell a product that does not deliver value. One of the lessons we can learn from highly successful global marketers is their motto to ‘build insanely great products’. When you focus on building great products, you do not have to spend so much time struggling to understand the behavior of your digital consumers. If your products or services do not deliver what you promise, your online buyers will not hesitate to share their unsatisfactory experiences. Therefore, build the very foundation of your online business on great products. And thankfully, promotion does the rest.

Friends, the second focus area in digital and social media marketing for global sales is the global promotion of your products and services.

In this episode, I’ll be talking about the global promotion of your products and services on digital media and social media.

Friends, for promoting your products and services globally, the first prerequisite is that your product and service promotion strategy is already in place.

Not only that, but your product or service must also be the right one, as we have already discussed in this course when talking about product strategies.

That is the first requirement for the effective global promotion of your products and services.

The second prerequisite for effective global promotion of your products and services is that your online assets and websites are impressive, accurate, consistent, and convey the right offer — the offer that differentiates itself from the competition.

The customer should be attracted and impressed with your website and other online assets.

These two prerequisites are essential to be able to globally promote your products or services.

Only then will the traffic to your e-commerce website or your international marketplace — your global online export store — begin to increase.

Friends, if you have these prerequisites in place, then what you require is to constantly keep analyzing your product — continuously studying the strengths and weaknesses of your products or services — because that is a constant process.

Your research about your products and services should never end.

You should know what is happening in the industry and among the competition — what new products and services are being launched, and what kinds of services from other industries might become substitutes for your offers to customers.

Your continuous research should include entry barriers, competing offers, price points, price changes, and differentiating features.

This kind of ongoing analysis is extremely important.

Of course, you also need to constantly pinpoint the key features that sell.

In the case of global sales, it is very important to identify region-wise or country-wise product features that are required.

Due to international and cultural differences among people, customer needs and behavior vary from country to country.

Different attributes and features of products are required in different parts of the world.

This continuous research on identifying the key features that can make or break your offer to international online customers is very important.

Additionally, you also need to conduct continuous keyword research to understand what people are talking about on the internet, what words are being used that relate to your products, services, or industry domain.

This list of keywords must be readily available to you.

It should always be growing and expanding.

You should know how to incorporate new keywords, buzzwords, and, most importantly, trending hashtags that people are using in conversations related to your products and services.

These things must remain under constant research and observation.

This identification, listing, and safekeeping of strong keywords is very important.

You then need to prepare your creatives — such as flyers and banners related to your products and services — because they communicate your messages and convey them to the online customer. You must be very smart and expressive — digitally vocal — through your creative work.

These creatives speak volumes about you and represent your personality in front of online customers and the global community.

Very intense and in-depth research is required on the visuals, audio, and videos that you create.

The elements of your banners and messages should be highly creative.

Your creatives must convey your messages effectively and, most importantly, should trigger emotions among your audience.

Otherwise, you cannot increase the visibility of your products and services.

These creatives — banners and ad materials — convey the quality and merits of your products and services, especially because there is no physical touch and feel factor online.

Your creatives should be able to compensate for this lack of physical experience in the digital medium.

That is why it is a very important area — to prepare highly effective creatives.

Friends, in order to make sure that your online efforts for global promotion of your products and services are effective and aligned with the perception and expectations of your target audience, you may seek expert help if required.

You need to discuss whatever you are learning and gathering about your product and competition. You should talk to the right people about your progress — about what you are doing, and if something is not working, what corrections or remedies are required.

This constant interaction with experts is also very important.

Along with this — along with the creatives and all your efforts — you need to create well-tuned messages for social media as well as traditional media.

They should be consistent, although they may differ in format.

You must remain consistent and focused on your message in all social media campaigns.

You have to build a strong story around your products, services, and messages.

A story has the potential to trigger emotions — and triggering emotions online is the most difficult part.

If you can trigger emotions among your audience, half the job is done.

The likelihood of your audience reacting to and noticing your products, services, brand, or website online will increase significantly if you can effectively build your messages and create a strong story around them.

These are very important areas.

Depending on your budget, you may go for organic or inorganic marketing of your products and services.

For the organic marketing of your products, the best tool is search engine optimization. For inorganic promotion of your products and services globally, it is search engine marketing — such as Google Ads, Facebook News Feed Ads, or Google Display Ads — which I have already discussed with you.

This search engine marketing will depend on your budgets and goals.

Finally, if you find that digital marketing for your products and services requires professional support, you can explore the possibility of hiring a professional organization or an experienced person.

The experience of a professional organization or an expert can be extremely valuable and useful — and it can save you a lot of time.

Friends, this was all about the global promotion of your products and services online, which is a very challenging job because one major issue with digital marketing is the lack of touch and feel.

You have to do a lot of things to compensate for this touch-and-feel factor and to be able to generate both B2C as well as B2B sales internationally for your products and services. You must carry out these different activities in a very professional manner.

Now, friends, coming to the next very important area in the promotion of your products, services, and brand on social media, you must have a very effective, useful, and meaningful presence on social platforms. The key to this is a good amount of hashtag marketing, because hashtag marketing involves the marketing of the latest topics and trending issues that are the buzzwords on social media.

Your awareness of hashtags can be very important, and all your efforts on social media will receive a significant boost if you are able to understand hashtag marketing.

The second part is that you should know how to maintain the reputation of your products and services, your offers, your e-commerce website, and yourself as a seller.

You must focus on the consistency of your messaging on social media — how consistent and how constantly present you are online.

There are several such factors that contribute to building the right kind of reputation online, and this reputation alone can trigger the right emotions among the audience, prompting them to act in the way you want.

That is how you will get a return on your investment in digital media.

Another important aspect is the use of the latest scheduling tools.

When you are dealing with global sales, transactions happen 24/7, 365 days a year — which is humanly impossible for you to manage alone, especially since you are located in a specific country with your own time zone and working hours.

You need time for yourself, and it is not feasible to delegate all your work, especially social media engagement, to a large team spread across different parts of the world.

Because the timings differ from country to country, it becomes necessary to use the right scheduling tools.

Luckily, artificial intelligence has made available automatic scheduling tools that allow your messages, monitoring activities, and audience engagement — including responding to queries from around the world — to continue 24x7, 365 days a year.

Using these scheduling tools can make the impossible possible — being present and responsive at all times.

The use of these automatic scheduling tools is therefore very important for maintaining an effective presence on social media.

Of course, as I have already discussed, the most challenging part of online marketing is to be able to trigger the right kind of emotions — the positive emotions.

You may receive negative feedback or critical reviews, but the right approach is to convert this negative feedback and criticism to your advantage.

They already indicate emotions, whether negative or positive.

Positive emotions are desirable, but you cannot prevent negative ones.

The key lies in converting those negative emotions to your advantage — and that is an art in itself.

Your messages, stories, and overall efforts on social media are what trigger these emotions and help you manage your target audience effectively.

By triggering these emotions, success becomes very much possible.

Another very important area is to constantly keep optimizing your online assets, your website, and your presence on social media.

You have to remain watchful of your conversions — identify which activities are generating conversions and which are wasteful.

If you can remove those activities that are ineffective or time-consuming, your overall efficiency on social media will improve.

You must focus on doing activities that bring conversions, that help trigger positive emotions among the audience, and that build a positive image, reputation, and favorable environment in which the audience views your offers, products, and services positively.

That is the most important part.

You must consistently track conversions, analyze the right metrics, and, based on what drives those conversions, continue optimizing your activities — scaling up the ones that deliver results and eliminating those that are wasteful or time-consuming.

And then your constant watch on the competition — what they are doing. You need not imitate them, but at least you should know what they are doing.

It will give you an idea of what needs to be done — something unique in nature that you can do yourself in a way that is different from your competitors.

Otherwise, you will not be able to create your presence on social media because your personality has to be unique.

At the same time, this unique personality requires you to be very watchful of your competition.

A very effective way of triggering emotions on social media is to keep sharing behind-the-scenes stories — what is happening at your manufacturing base, in your office, or in the activities you are engaged in.

If you can share those behind-the-scenes stories, it is very effective and has great potential to trigger emotions.

As I already mentioned, to be able to have a distinctive tone on social media, you need uniqueness in your content, messages, creatives, and your ability to optimize your online efforts — to differentiate in such a way that you have a positive personality and people are impressed with your online assets.

The uniqueness of content is very important.

Another very important tool that people normally use on social media is collaboration with others.

While you need to be unique and have a distinctive personality, to maintain audience interest and provide something different at different times, it is a very good idea to collaborate with others — not necessarily your direct competitors, but businesses in complementary areas.

If you can engage in collaborative creation or creative collaboration, it will definitely add value to your efforts and may amplify your results.

An important skill for being effective on social media is the ability to understand key performance indicators (KPIs).

You must be able to monitor the numbers — conversions, timing, the hours when people are most active on social media, the days of the week, the weeks of the month, and the months of the year.

You should know which times are most dynamic and which periods yield better results.

And then there is the data — the so-called big data.

Are you able to generate data that can tell you a lot about customer behavior, their habits, needs, and expectations online?

Friends, in the absence of face-to-face interaction and the touch-and-feel experience, these numbers — these key performance indicators — will be the guiding light for your online efforts.

Your ability to draw inferences and gain insights from these KPIs is very important.

These abilities and qualities can only develop after you immerse yourself in social media.

Once you begin, you will start learning how to read KPIs and derive insights from them.

These insights will be your guiding light.

In fact, these insights will guide your next steps in this journey.

And finally, friends, reviews, and feedback — the feedback from customers, whether positive or negative — will give you a very good way to optimize and modify your efforts, to improve your online performance, fine-tune your online tools, your e-commerce website, and your international marketplace stores on Amazon, Etsy, Shopify, or Amazon Handmade.

Friends, without this feedback and without these critical customer reviews, you will never know the true picture.

These were the different ingredients of the recipe for an effective presence on social media — one that can create the right image of yourself, your company, your products, and your services, and that can trigger emotions among online customers.

This approach helps you target the right online customers in a way that allows your business to scale up to greater heights.

And friends, in this whole milieu of work, it is very important that during your online efforts, you take care of yourself — and occasionally take a break, a “switch off” from the socials, which actually serve as your office.

A correct organizational personality online is the most challenging work for the digital marketer. Thank god, with the right knowledge and skill, it can be done. Watch out next few lectures to understand how it can be done.

Now, in step number two of building your global business empire on digital channels, this step deals with creating and building your digital presence.

The first step in this process is creating your website.

As I already mentioned in the earlier episode, step number two is very important, and you already have certain strategies formulated.

You already have some ideas on this — certain protocols and decisions you have made.

For example, who will create the e-commerce website?

Are you going to do it yourself, or are you going to take professional help from a third party? Are you going to hire a professional?

How will you do it?

This step requires you to implement those strategies and decide on the creation and maintenance of the website.

If you are focusing on a website, you need to plan its creation; if you are focusing on international marketplaces, then you need to set up your online stores.

If you are building your own website, you have to decide on the domain names and website hosting.

For that, you need to understand the technical requirements and determine what kind of hosting plans you are looking for.

That will depend on how much traffic you expect.

Your strategy formulation will help you estimate what kind of traffic you can expect for your products and services on your website.

The architecture and ecosystem you have created will determine the type and volume of traffic you attract — it may be large or small.

Based on that, you have to decide on your domain name, hosting attributes, bandwidth, and traffic requirements, and then finalize your hosting plan.

You must also finalize the person or agency responsible for creating your fully functional e-commerce website.

What will be the nature and design of the website? What kind of corporate image are you going to present? What will be the main colors you use? What logo will you display on your website or online store?

All these things must be worked out in this step.

You must also determine who will maintain the website — whether it will be done in-house or outsourced to a third party.

And, very importantly, who will optimize the website?

Because creating a website is one thing, but optimizing it for search engines like Google and making it discoverable on digital channels is a technical subject that must be taken seriously.

Your goal should be to make your website fully optimized, discoverable, functional, and free from technical weaknesses in terms of search engine optimization.

It should contain relevant internal and external links as part of the optimization process.

These things must be completed in this step, as they are extremely important.

Next comes the task of creating your presence on international marketplaces by setting up your online export store, if you choose to focus on that.

You need to choose the right international marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and others, depending on whether your overall strategy focuses on B2B or B2C customers.

Depending on your target customers, you must choose the appropriate international marketplaces.

It is also very important to consider both international and regional marketplaces.

Every country’s government promotes its own regional marketplaces, which are often available to citizens free of cost.

Look for such international marketplaces.

For example, in India, the Government of India sponsors a portal called FIEO — the Federation of Indian Export Organizations — which, in private collaboration, is available to Indian exporters free of cost.

It is a fully functional international export portal focusing on B2B customers, where you can create your online store.

In this course, later in the episodes, I will show you how you can set up your account and create your online export store on the Government of India FIEO export portal.

This will serve as an example for you to understand how to create your own account and online export store on such international marketplaces, whether B2C or B2B.

The methods and processes for creating an online export store on these marketplaces are largely similar, whether it is a portal like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Etsy, or B2B platforms such as Alibaba, Made-in-China, TradeIndia, or IndiaMART.

All these portals — both B2B and B2C — have similar procedures for account creation and setting up your online export store.

As I was discussing, the possibilities of setting up your presence on popular international marketplaces can be classified based on their focus on B2B or B2C customers.

Depending on your target group, you can choose marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon, Amazon Handmade, Etsy, or Shopify.

These are some of the most popular international marketplaces where the potential for generating international sales and business is very high.

As I have already mentioned, you should also focus on certain popular local marketplaces in each country — whether in the US, Germany, France, the UK, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, or China.

You will find several well-known local marketplaces dedicated to international sales.

These marketplaces generally focus on B2B sales and are often sponsored by local governments.

Because of their local nature, large international importers, retailers, and wholesalers are attracted to these portals to get better deals.

These importers prefer such platforms because they can filter local manufacturers and assess the credibility of suppliers on government-sponsored platforms.

The greater credibility and trust offered by such portals help attract international customers more effectively than global marketplaces, which are flooded with suppliers from all over the world.

In those international platforms, it is often very difficult for large buyers to identify suitable suppliers for their import requirements.

One example I want to share in this course is the FIEO Export Portal, a local marketplace sponsored by the Indian government.

It is a relatively new initiative, but in a short time, it has become very popular, with many exporters setting up their online export stores on it.

The portal has been established by the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO), a Government of India body, in collaboration with a private company.

It is completely free of cost for Indian exporters.

Similar local portals are available in most countries and are generally free for exporters from those countries.

Their focus, as I have mentioned, is primarily on B2B customers, though they may also cater to B2C buyers.

However, due to the structure and strengths of such portals, they generally attract more B2B business than B2C customers.

Such portals should be identified and utilized by anyone aiming to increase their digital presence on social media, digital media, and digital communities.

Let us now look at some examples of B2B portals and international marketplaces that facilitate B2B sales.

Some of them include Amazon, which also offers the FBA service (Fulfilled by Amazon) — an international logistics solution even for large orders.

Amazon takes care of logistics from warehouse to warehouse and handles all import duties and local taxes, which are paid by the exporter but included in the price charged to customers.

Depending on the arrangement between the seller and buyer, FBA services can be customized according to contract requirements.

Other top B2B portals include Alibaba.com, TradeIndia.com, GlobalSources.com, IndiaMART, Made-in-China, and EworldTrade.

These are some of the top and most popular B2B service provider portals where you can expect B2B customers.

On these online platforms, you can create your online store and connect with international buyers — both in the B2B and B2C space.

Hello friends,

Welcome back.

In today's episode, I will demonstrate how you can create your global selling online export store on major international marketplaces like Amazon.

I will be taking the example of Amazon.com, focusing on how to create your store and how to register.

In particular, I will be taking the example of registration for selling into the US, Mexico, and Canada — the North American region.

Let us first see what kind of international marketplace Amazon is.

When I talk about the international marketplace, I am referring to both B2C and B2B aspects of selling goods internationally.

In today’s example, I will demonstrate this for Indian exporters who are interested in selling their goods in the North American market.

For example, how Indian exporters can register themselves and create their online store on Amazon.

This will serve as an example.

The same procedure can be used by exporters from other countries as well.

Here, we are looking at the website of Amazon — the big international marketplace — as you can see here.

If we look at the different product categories, let us try to understand what people are selling, what the prices are, and what the marketplace looks like.

We will see different types of product ranges.

For example, let us take the example of handloom fabrics.

If we look at handloom fabric items, we can try to see what the sellers are focusing on and how they are selling.

For example, if we look at this Chandrakala Women's Handwoven Cutwork Indian Ethnic Brocade Banarasi Dupatta Stole, which is selling here at a price of INR 3,400 (almost equal to USD 50), we can see that this particular item is being sold at that price.

It has almost 59 ratings, and the rating is good — around 4.5.

That’s a very positive sign.

Looking at this particular item, it appears to be a handmade item, and it seems to be made in India, as it is a Banarasi dupatta, which originates from India.

We can also see that different colors are available.

This seller seems to be specializing in this particular item.

If we want to see what other items this person is selling, the name of the store is Chandrakala Store.

Let us visit the Chandrakala Store.

Now, this is the Chandrakala Store.

This is how the person has created the store.

As you can see, the main image — the index image — is present here.

The store name “Chandrakala” is displayed, along with a slideshow and different types of images.

A message is also given.

The message says, “We certainly think that everybody should be a celebrant of her ever so vibrant spirit. Give the fabulous woman in your life something special.”

That is the message displayed.

You can click on this section and explore the items. On the same index page, the material from which these products are made is also mentioned.

It looks like this person specializes in handwoven women’s brocades and outfits.

That’s quite interesting.

We can also see that this seller is offering women’s dresses as well.

Now, if we look at this person’s performance, let us examine what is available in this person’s store.

For example, this particular listing has 78 ratings.

This is a woman’s sari, handwoven again.

Let us try to see how this person is performing.

This seller has received different ratings on different items, and overall, seems to be doing fairly well.

The store is very well organized, and some additional information is provided.

This person started the store in 2017, and there is a number mentioned — which I will explain to you later — called the ASIN number.

There are 78 ratings, along with product details.

This store is quite elaborate.

We do have some useful information available about sales data through the ratings.

By looking at the number of ratings, you can get an idea of the percentage of goods being sold and the quantity, although not every buyer leaves a rating, it still gives an approximate picture.

This product has also been listed since 2017, indicating that this seller has been on Amazon for quite some time.

They offer multiple product categories.

Here, for example, this particular product has a rating of 3.8 out of 5 — these are global ratings.

This means that people from different countries have rated it.

For example, if we look at one of the ratings, it is from the US.

There are reviews from various countries, mainly from the US.

This means the seller is successfully selling in the US market.

Great.

This was one example I wanted to show you — this is the kind of store we are talking about.

In the next few videos, Dr. Jain will discuss Amazon Global Selling, the different markets it covers, and minute details of the different international marketplaces Amazon offers. The platform, as well as doing international business on Amazon, had its own challenges. But you will soon realize that the benefits mostly outweigh the obstacles different international marketplaces have.

Hello friends,

Welcome back to the course.

Before going forward in the course, I would like to share with you something about selling on Amazon internationally.

Amazon Global Selling is something that cannot be ignored.

Amazon is a very big platform — in fact, it is the biggest international marketplace for selling globally. With over 200 million Prime paid members, it is the largest shopping community in the world.

If you really want to sell digitally through online channels, you should focus on and try to understand everything — each step of how you can sell through Amazon, which markets you should sell in, and what your strategy should be for selling your goods on Amazon.

You need to understand what products to sell, what features you must add to your products to make them suitable for selling through Amazon internationally, and which markets and regions Amazon covers — almost 200 countries and territories — across 18 different international marketplaces.

The biggest among these is the North American marketplace, which comprises the US, Canada, and Mexico.

It is the largest platform for international selling.

It offers the most features, tools, and opportunities.

However, it is also a platform that requires a lot of learning, a thorough understanding of how it works, and complete knowledge of all the steps required — from registering on Amazon, creating your Seller Central account, tracking your shipments, managing your fulfillment, and listing your products to selecting appropriate categories.

Amazon has 36 different product categories, so you must list your product in the correct one.

Understanding all this requires significant knowledge and research.

Selling through Amazon is not a simple process.

You really need to learn and understand every step.

You need to be aware of the different charges you must pay to Amazon for selling globally, as well as the various benefits you can get from the offers that Amazon provides to exporters selling internationally.

There is a very high demand among exporters to sell through Amazon’s platform.

For example, in India alone, there are already more than 70,000 exporters selling through Amazon Global Selling.

If you look at exporters worldwide, the number runs into millions, with millions of product listings.

With almost a million exporters across the world on the Amazon platform, it is very important to understand this marketplace, which I am going to explain to you today.

I will take certain examples, mostly from India, to help you understand how Amazon Global Selling works.

Largely, these examples will apply to exporters from any country — not only from India but from anywhere in the world, and to any market on Amazon.

Before I start discussing Amazon Global Selling, I just want to share a few important points — the first things you need to understand before deciding to sell on Amazon Global Selling.

If you want to sell internationally through Amazon, there are two ways of doing it.

The first method is suitable if you already know which markets you want to sell in, what products you want to offer, and you have a fairly good idea that your products will sell well in that particular market through Amazon.

In this case, one way is to have someone in that country who can import and stock your products and handle all domestic formalities by setting up their own account on Amazon domestically in that market and selling your products.

This is one method. But generally, it is not practical.

It is very difficult to find someone you can fully trust — someone who will import your goods, sell them, and pay you reliably.

There will also be many cuts, commissions, and costs involved, along with several practical difficulties in this method.

The second method is to sell yourself through Amazon Global Selling.

That is the platform designed for exporters.

Before you begin, however, the first thing you must understand is whether your product is suitable for selling through Amazon Global Selling.

If it is a very ordinary or common product, easily available in most countries, it will not work. It will not be practical.

There are two reasons your product should not be ordinary or common.

It must have some premium value — an additional or unique value that makes it stand out.

It should be a premium product that can fetch a good price and one that customers are willing to wait for.

There are two reasons for this.

First, the cost of selling through Amazon Global Selling is higher than the normal cost of selling domestically.

Second, the fulfillment time on Amazon Global Selling is generally longer, and there are many complications involved in the process.

It takes time, and the process is a bit slow.

If your product is premium, unique, and not ordinary — something that customers are willing to wait for and pay a slightly higher price for — then your product is suitable for selling through Amazon Global Selling.

Otherwise, I would not suggest it.

You must conduct proper research to determine whether your product is suitable for selling through Amazon Global Selling.

This is very important.

Going forward, I would like to restate that there are hundreds of countries where you can sell your products on Amazon.

There are complicated steps involved in selling through Amazon Global Selling. There are costs involved, and there are time gaps that exist.

But at the end of the day, the platform is so robust that the challenges of selling through Amazon Global Selling are eclipsed by the huge benefits.

By selling through Amazon, you are selling directly to customers.

You are not only selling B2C but are also likely to get B2B orders.

One very important thing you should understand is that through digital selling on platforms like Amazon, your listing generally becomes active, very active, and sellable after proper optimization on the digital platform.

Generally, this initial period, the difficult kickoff phase, is around 12 months.

This is the typical experience.

It means your listings — and you may have many products listed through Amazon Global Selling — take about 12 months to mature.

Once the listing matures, it often becomes viral on digital platforms, and you start receiving a good number of orders from both B2C and B2B customers.

With that understanding and the information I just shared, it is important to know what you need to sell on Amazon internationally, what information is necessary to open an Amazon account, and what information is not required in certain regions.

This table provides you with all the relevant details.

For example, in certain countries, you need a business license for your own country.

You should have some kind of business license and tax identity information.

For example, in India, you can have a PAN number, TAN number, or TIN number.

You also need a current account — for example, from India — to sell internationally in different marketplaces. You need a credit card that is active internationally so Amazon can receive its monthly charges, referral fees, and any other associated costs related to the sale of your goods. You need that credit card. You also need to provide your business name, address, and contact details. You need a government-issued identity card (a domestic ID card). You need a UPC for your product category or an EAN code for your product category, both of which are easily available online. You can get this information about your product if you know your product description well.

If you know your product thoroughly, you can easily find the UPC or EAN number, based on which you will get an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN).

That is very important.

When you list your product, Amazon provides its own unique number called the ASIN number.

In certain countries, due to language differences, you may also require translated content.

These are the main requirements to sell in different markets.

Let us take the example of the United States, whose website address is Amazon.com.

You need a business license for your country.

For example, if you are selling from India, there are certain formalities you must complete to establish your company, whatever the business entity is, although you can also sell individually from India.

Individual sellers can sell, but generally, it is preferred that you have a registered business entity in India — for example, an LLP, a private limited company, or another form of company.

That information serves as your license.

You also need tax entity information, a current bank account (for example, from India), an internationally active credit card, and your business name, address, and contact information for the U.S. market. You need a government-issued identification number for the main account holder.

In certain cases, you can also provide a government-issued ID for your company.

It is possible.

You also need a UPC or EAN number.

For the U.S., which uses English as its primary language, you do not need any translated content.

One of the easiest and largest markets on Amazon Global Selling is the United States.

With the same account for the U.S. — which is part of the North American marketplace — you can also sell in Canada and Mexico.

You don’t need to pay extra for that.

The monthly subscription charges are not required for Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

A single account gives you access to all three markets — the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

The only fees you pay are the referral fees or any other commissions, which I will explain to you later when we discuss the different types of fees you must pay on Amazon Global Selling.

Similarly, for the U.K., the requirements are listed, as well as for Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

The U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain fall under the European Union international marketplace.

With a single account, you can sell to all these European countries.

You do not have to pay extra subscription charges for each country.

With one account, you can sell to all these countries.

Then you have listings for the Asian markets, such as Japan.

For Japan, you need a separate account, and the required information is listed accordingly.

You also have the Middle Eastern markets, which include the UAE and Saudi Arabia — the main markets for Amazon in that region.

Additionally, there is India in the South Asian region, as well as Australia, Brazil, Turkey, and Singapore.

You can find the information on what documents and details are required for each.

Other documents you may need are also listed — for example, for the U.S., no additional documents are required, but for many other countries, you will need documents related to GST or VAT.

These details are essential.

This table provides a complete overview of the information required to create an account on Amazon Global Selling for different regions.

Now, friends,

The next information we need is why you want to sell internationally — and, of course, why on Amazon.

Amazon is continuing to expand internationally, allowing sellers to cross borders and reach new audiences.

Even though there are some obstacles for most sellers, the benefits outweigh the challenges.

This is what I just explained to you — that the benefits are huge.

You really need some waiting time, which I mentioned earlier, that in the initial stages of your digital selling through Amazon, the response will be slow, but you need to manage that period, the initial period, which is generally around 12 months.

Once you cross this time, your listing matures, and you get huge benefits and tremendous selling potential.

By that time, you will have learned the ways of selling your goods, marketing them, and managing fulfillment, which is the most important part.

How do you fulfill the orders?

That is a major challenge internationally — how to fulfill your orders efficiently.

Let us see what the advantages of different markets are and what the obstacles can be.

Here, I have not mentioned anything about the U.S. because the U.S. market is one of the easiest markets, and in fact, there are no major obstacles when it comes to the U.S.

Amazon, being a U.S. company, presents absolutely no barriers to entering the U.S. market.

The first obvious choice for exporters from many countries, including India, happens to be the U.S. to start with.

Similarly, Canada is also one of the easier countries to enter.

The only obstacle for Canada is that taxes can be complicated if you are selling through FBA — that is, Fulfillment by Amazon.

I will tell you more about this later.

The most important step in Amazon Global Selling is how you fulfill your orders.

You can fulfill them either through Amazon’s logistics infrastructure or by sending the goods directly to the customer yourself.

I will explain the benefits of selling through Amazon’s fulfillment service and the benefits of self-fulfillment by the merchant.

If you are selling through Amazon in Canada, you may face some complications related to local tax laws.

Similarly, in Mexico, seller support is available in English, which is an advantage for exporters from English-speaking countries.

However, for using Amazon’s fulfillment service in Mexico, you will require a local person as an importer in Mexico — and that is the obstacle.

For other markets, there are certain advantages and obstacles that are similar in nature.

For example, if you look at the U.K., it can be used as a gateway to the rest of Europe, which comprises the European Fulfillment Network.

With a single account and the common fulfillment network available in EU countries, the U.K. becomes a gateway for all these countries.

Although there have been certain changes recently because of Brexit, there are now other gateway countries.

For example, Germany can serve as a gateway, but language can be a problem there.

The obstacle in the U.K. is that businesses need a tax ID and a business license to sell FBA from within the country.

After Brexit, Germany can be used as the gateway for the rest of Europe using the common European Fulfillment Network.

Businesses in Germany also need a tax ID and a business license to sell FBA from within the country.

It becomes a little complicated if you are using Amazon’s FBA services and want to take advantage of Fulfillment by Amazon.

You really need to understand the tax requirements and carry out certain formalities that are not required, for example, in the U.S.

In most European countries, the advantages are similar, and the obstacles are also similar in nature. In the case of Japan, the market comprises a population of 127 million and is the third-largest economy in the world.

This marketplace grants access to millions of customers as a trusted brand and a proven high-volume e-commerce platform.

In Japan, Amazon receives 17 million unique visitors and 30 million unique mobile visitors.

Japan is a very promising market, but the obstacle to selling there is that sellers will need an Importer of Record (IOR) in Japan.

This formality involves certain complications.

You need an importer of record because Amazon does not provide this service itself. You cannot use the name of Amazon or Amazon’s fulfillment center for this purpose.

If we talk about the advantages of the Middle East market — mainly focusing on the UAE and Saudi Arabia — there is a large existing customer base.

Amazon also acquired Souq.com, an English-Arabic language e-commerce platform.

It is the largest e-commerce platform in the Arab world and is now called Amazon.ae.

The obstacle in the Middle East market is that restricted product categories exist, such as sexual wellness, supplements, grocery, and government-regulated food items, which must be Quran-compliant in many of these countries.

Food items, therefore, are a little complicated to sell and are not yet allowed in the marketplace.

There is no definitive list at this time, so there are certain complications regarding product categories that can be sold.

You really need to do that kind of research.

Similarly, India is also a very large market for foreign exporters.

The population size provides a huge audience for sellers, but the obstacle is that selling is available through Amazon Global Selling only by invitation.

You need an invitation to be able to sell in India.

If we talk about the advantages of selling in Australia, it is a new marketplace with low competition.

Australian shoppers can only purchase products through the Australian Amazon website, which offers about one-tenth of the range of products available on the U.S. site.

Product categories are limited in Australia.

Being a new marketplace, FBA has just started, and the infrastructure is still not fully mature.

For the Brazil market — which is also new and has low competition — there are limited categories available, and FBA service is not available.

In Turkey, again, it is a new market with low competition and limited categories.

Singapore’s official language is English, which is an advantage as no translation is needed.

However, the obstacle is that only limited product categories are available.

Every market has its advantages and obstacles, which must be carefully understood and researched before you decide on your strategy for selling through Amazon Global Selling.

You must determine what products to sell, at what prices, and why your products are suitable for selling through Amazon Global Selling — despite the higher costs, time gaps, and challenges involved. You really need to do a lot of brainstorming to gauge the benefits and compare them with the challenges that exist in different markets.

Accordingly, you have to create an Amazon Global Selling strategy.

In my next episode, I will tell you step by step, taking the example of registering as an exporter from India.

The process is very similar for registration on Amazon Global Selling for exporters from other countries.

I will take the example of India and show you how you can register step by step on Amazon Global Selling.

What are the things you require? What are the steps involved? What are the things you should know before registering on Amazon Global Selling?

These are the things I will discuss in the next episode.

After you create your account on Amazon Global Selling, you have to list your products.

You will have the Seller Central account of the target country or region, and you can manage everything from there. You can list your products.

How do you list them, and what is required for listing?

Those things have to be considered.

For registration, you will have to create this Seller Central account separately for each marketplace.

For example, in North America, which consists of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S., you can create one account and pay for that account.

Every region has a different account, and you must pay a monthly fee, which I will explain to you shortly.

This is how you have to register your account and list your products.

The next step is to decide on the method of fulfillment for your orders.

How do you ship the goods? How do you fulfill the orders received on Amazon?

You can either do it yourself through self-shipments or use the Amazon FBA service, which means “Fulfilled by Amazon.”

I will explain to you what the Amazon FBA service is in a short while.

Your fourth step is to keep up with customer service and returns.

Amazon has a very clear-cut policy in every market, region, territory, and country.

They have specific guidelines and rules for engaging with customers, managing customer relationships, and maintaining mandatory communication with customers in different countries.

Every country has its own requirements for dealing with customers.

Of course, return policies are also there. For every market, there are different return policies, and there are certain choices available when you create your listings.

Accordingly, you are obliged to provide customer service and handle returns.

Using your global sales summary, you can review your sales, orders, and buyer messages from all your marketplaces.

You can do this in a single console on Amazon — at the Seller Central account — where all the details from different market regions can be seen in one place.

That is possible.

As I have mentioned to you, Amazon is a very feature-rich platform.

The kind of features you get on Amazon are not available on competing platforms.

This is the reason Amazon is the biggest shopping platform.

And in the Asia-Pacific, you have Amazon Japan, Amazon China, Amazon India, and Amazon Australia.

This is the Asia-Pacific region.

In this way, Amazon has 18 different marketplaces in which you can create your account.

Now, the question that comes up while operating on Amazon Global Selling is: how do I handle order fulfillment and ongoing account management?

That is very important.

At the end of the day, your service quality and your feedback from customers will come from these activities.

As far as fulfillment is concerned, in self-fulfillment, what you need to do is fulfill orders in compliance with local regulations.

Your knowledge of local regulations is very important.

What are the regulatory requirements of the local governments? What is required to sell your goods in that particular country?

That knowledge is essential when you are doing self-fulfillment, which is also called fulfillment by the merchant.

The second thing you must do is provide timely customer support in the local language.

Wherever English is not supported, you have to provide customer support in local languages, and you also have to handle all returns in compliance with Amazon’s return policy in that particular country and market.

If you choose Amazon’s FBA service (Fulfillment by Amazon), you ship your goods as inventory depending on how many sales you expect in the next few months.

In one shipment, you have to supply your goods to the main Amazon fulfillment center in that particular market.

For example, if you are targeting the U.S. market, Amazon has many different fulfillment centers.

The main fulfillment center will be guided by Amazon, and you have to supply your inventory directly in one lot for the next few months, whatever you think you can sell.

You must provide that lot in bulk to that particular fulfillment center.

When you do that and ship your goods, you cannot use Amazon’s name as the importer of record. That is not allowed.

Wherever an importer of record is required, you will have to find an importer of record.

In the U.S., it is not required; you can directly ship the goods to the Amazon fulfillment center.

Then you can leave fulfillment queries and return handling to Amazon and the Amazon FBA service.

Questions not related to fulfillment — for example, technical product specifications, life expectancy, shelf life, or expiry dates if not mentioned — are questions you must still handle even when using FBA.

General queries and standard fulfillment queries can be handled by Amazon in the local language.

Amazon will take care of the language issue and can address those queries itself.

The next question is: how do I register for an account on Amazon Global Selling, and how do I list my product?

I will give a detailed step-by-step description in my next episode explaining how to register for an Amazon Global Selling account.

In short, you have to assess the Amazon seller account options.

From the example I will give, you will get an idea of what the Amazon seller account options are, and you have to assess them.

You should know all the requirements. You must research the registration requirements of each international marketplace because every international marketplace has its own registration requirements.

The example I’ll use will be for an exporter from India who wants to create and register for an Amazon Global Selling account and create a Seller Central account on Amazon to sell goods in the U.S. market.

You also have to establish a preferred payment method — the payment method for transferring subscription amounts to Amazon, commissions, and other fees payable to Amazon.

Those payments must be made through a chosen payment method.

You have to create an account for each marketplace you want to sell on. You cannot have a single account that handles all markets, although you can have a central console: once registered on multiple marketplaces, you can view progress, statistics, orders, customer messages, pending orders, and sales volume for each market in a single console. That is possible.

Finally, you have to select a listing tool because you can list products one by one or in bulk by uploading a complete listing in an Excel sheet.

You can include all the details of multiple products you want to export and do a bulk upload, or you can do individual uploads.

Different options are available, and accordingly, you can select the listing tool and then list the products.

Now, another question that is important and needs to be understood, which actually will vary on a case-by-case basis, is what strengths your company has, what you manufacture, or what you want to buy from the local market, and which country you belong to.

It will depend on what products you can sell on Amazon, across the different international marketplaces — the 18 different marketplaces in more than 200 countries and territories.

If we take the example of exports from India, almost 70,000 exporters are operating from India on Amazon.

The top-selling product categories from India, as per statistics, are home essentials like bed sheets, pillow covers, and curtains.

India is a big export hub for household textile items, and these are widely exported.

The second category is health and personal care — hygiene products, personal care products, home care products, toiletries, and more.

These are mostly chemical-based items or, at times, herbal products. India is a very big export hub for herbal items.

Then come beauty products, personal grooming, makeup, and more.

Here also, there are many traditional Indian products based on Indian herbs that are available.

Clothing and apparel for men, women, and children, as well as fashion garments, form another major category.

Readymade garments are a significant export earner for Indian exporters.

Then, of course, there are office products — office essentials, diaries, notepads, novelties, and other items that fall under office automation or office consumables.

These are the top-selling product categories from India by Indian sellers.

The fast-growing product categories from Indian sellers include medical instruments such as thermometers, blood pressure monitors, and similar items.

These small medical appliances have a lot of export potential from India, but similar products can also be exported from other countries.

For example, from Vietnam, you will find very similar product categories that have high export potential.

Another growing product line is scientific instruments — lab instruments, calculators, lab essentials, and many more items in that category.

Then come toys and sports goods, which are very big export products from China.

Now India is also coming up strongly, competing with China and other ASEAN countries.

Toys and sports goods such as kids’ toys, learning activity boxes, robotic toys, and more — many premium children’s toys and sports products — are coming to the market, which are based on non-toxic materials.

India is a major exporter of these items.

Of course, there are also handicrafts — traditional handicrafts like Tanjore bobbleheads, paintings, Channapatna toys, and many others.

These are all handmade products — handicraft products.

By the way, for handmade products, Amazon has a special program called Amazon Handmade.

If someone wants to export handmade items on Amazon, they can apply for registration through Amazon Handmade. It is a very specialized and premium category, and the charges are much lower on that particular platform. It is a very good and encouraging platform for the exports of handmade items.

Another growing product category from India is Ayurveda.

Ayurveda is the Indian traditional system of medicine, which includes products from categories such as personal care, health supplements, and many more under medical and wellness products.

Ayurveda is emerging as one of the fastest-growing product categories from India.

Now, friends, it is important to understand what exactly the role of Amazon is in this whole process.

Apart from marketing your product and providing a very robust and large global platform, Amazon also plays a major role in the storage of your products in its state-of-the-art fulfillment centers.

Amazon already has more than 175 large fulfillment centers across the globe.

Amazon not only showcases your products to customers who are searching for them in every corner of the planet, but it also handles the packing and delivery of products to customers once they order.

It strives to do this in a very short time.

Normally, depending on the type of fulfillment you have chosen, delivery is expected within a few days, typically two days.

The payment system of Amazon is also state-of-the-art, and payments are credited to the seller’s bank account — for example, in the case of India, in Indian rupees or in international currencies as preferred by the exporter from India or any other country.

This is a very strong role for Amazon, and it performs it best.

It is, therefore, the best platform in the world — the biggest platform in the world — and it has the largest shopping community.

Now, friends, let us try to understand the cost of selling on Amazon.

On Amazon, sellers can choose between a professional account or an individual selling plan.

There are two types of selling plans.

In the individual seller plan, it is not very difficult. It’s not rocket science. It’s a very simple method they use. In the individual seller account and plan, the seller pays approximately $1 for each item sold on Amazon, in addition to the normal commissions and cuts, which are of two types: one is the referral fee, and the second is the closing fee.

A closing fee is charged only on certain media items like books, CDs, games, or some software CDs or other types of media items.

But for non-media items, there is no closing fee.

It is only the variable referral fee, which ranges from USD 0.45 to USD 1.35 in the individual plan.

This is how Amazon earns money.

It earns money in two ways — one is through per-order charges, which are approximately $1, and the rest is through cuts in the form of referral and closing fees.

The second seller plan is called the Professional Sellers plan.

In this, professional sellers pay a variable closing fee and the referral fee.

As mentioned earlier, closing fees are applicable only for certain media items.

Non-media items do not attract any variable closing fee; they only attract the referral fee.

Referral fees range from 6% for certain categories.

As mentioned earlier, Amazon has 38 different categories, and every category has a different percentage of referral fee in the professional seller account — from 6% to 25%, with an average of around 13% charged by Amazon.

In addition, as already mentioned, professional sellers also pay approximately $40 per month, but they are exempt from the $1 per item fee, which is chargeable to individual sellers.

That fee is not to be paid. Instead, they simply pay $40 for the full month, and an unlimited number of items can be sold without paying $1 for each item.

This is how the cost works on Amazon.

For example, imagine you are a book merchant who has been able to sell a book on Amazon — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone — for a price of approximately $16.

Suppose the customer paid $4 approximately for shipping and did not ask for any gift wrapping.

Assuming that you are not a professional merchant subscriber, which means you are paying $1 for each sale, here is how Amazon will deposit your revenue.

From this example, the item price was approximately $16, and approximately $4 was for shipping.

The total price charged for this transaction is approximately $20, and there is no gift wrapping fee here.

After this transaction takes place, Amazon charges the referral fee for books, which is $2.40.

Since books are media products, as mentioned earlier, certain media items like books, CDs, and software games also attract a closing fee.

For example, in this case, for the sale of the book, the closing fee is $1.35.

Amazon will reduce this $2.40 referral fee and add the closing fee, depending on the category.

Since the sale is through an individual selling plan, $1 approximately will be subtracted from the transaction.

The merchant’s total revenue would be $15.20.

This is the calculation of the price.

In addition to this, the customer also has to handle fulfillment — that means the shipping of the goods either on a self basis or, if subscribed to the Amazon FBA service, through that option, for which approximately $4 has already been charged from the customer.

One major advantage of the FBA service is the Prime category — that you are a Prime product seller — and it definitely sells more.

The biggest advantage is that your customer gets the product much faster because it is already in that country.

It has already been dispatched to the main Amazon fulfillment center in that particular market, and once the order is received, delivery is made very fast.

Not only that, but many services are provided to the FBA customers of Amazon, including customer support, return of goods, and return pickups.

All these facilities are provided by the Amazon FBA service in that particular market.

The only thing is that Amazon will not pick up your goods from your country.

You have to export your product to the fulfillment center in that particular market only.

Once you do that, the FBA service starts.

This was the brief about Amazon Global Selling.

In the next video, I will tell you step by step what the registration process is for creating a Seller Central account on the Amazon Global Selling platform.

In the next video, you will see all these steps explained in a very detailed form.

In the next 2 lectures, Dr. Jain will talk about the registration process explained to an exporter from India who wishes to set up an online exports store on the Amazon Global Selling Platform, North America Marketplace. His store name proposed is - Chandrakala, selling Indian handicrafts and home textile products.

Now, let us look at the registration process.

How do you create your global online store on Amazon for both B2B and B2C sales?

Let us look at that part.

To start the process, you need certain documents to be submitted to Amazon when you register.

Documents needed for registration include:

A very important one — the bank account details.

And second, the credit card details.

For global selling, Amazon generally charges $39.99.

That depends on the country from which the exporter originates.

This figure is $39.99 for exporters from India.

Generally, you will find that in many countries, Amazon charges a similar amount — $39.99 — for exporters from different countries.

The amount being charged monthly can be checked on the Amazon website of your country to see how much the monthly fee is.

These two things are required for registration purposes.

Secondly, documents are needed for identity and business verification.

The first document for identity is required for the person who is opening the online store on Amazon — the person who is the owner of a company or an individual seller.

Whatever the case, the person requires a national identity proof copy, which, in the case of India, can be an Aadhaar card.

It can also be a passport, and a passport as a national identity will be suitable for exporters from any country in the world.

This national identity proof copy is one required documents.

The second very important document is the business bank statement copy.

This bank statement should cover at least the last 90 days and should include at least one transaction that has taken place in that particular account. This defines the business bank account and serves for business verification.

Whether your business is proprietary, a partnership, or a company — whatever the status — you will require this business bank statement of the last 90 days.

These are the minimum requirements for registering your online store.

This is the first step toward creating your online store on Amazon for global selling.

These documents are required.

Now, for the account registration, what you need to do is provide the business type and the location.

The business type can be a state-owned business, publicly listed business, privately owned company, charity, or an individual.

If your company is a registered, proper company, then select “privately owned business.” In case you are an individual, select “none” or “I am an individual.” Enter the business type here.

Here, since I am taking the example of business location as India, I have entered the business location as India.

In the next step, you have to provide details depending on the type of company you have — it may be a privately owned company, or you may be selling as an individual.

If it is a privately owned company (POC), then the business name used to register with your state or federal government must be provided.

Whatever name you have already used to register your company, you have to give that name. If you are an individual, then simply provide your own name, first name, and last name.

This information must be provided next.

After that, you have to provide the business information.

Business information for the Amazon test is required.

Fill in the details.

The business address has to be mentioned as per the bank account statement that you are furnishing.

The bank account statement you have furnished for the last 90 days — that address should be mentioned here.

Enter your valid mobile number so that you can receive an OTP.

You can get the OTP either as an SMS or a call.

This mobile number is given for the Indian number because my example is based on the location of India.

You can choose the SMS language here and provide the name of the primary contact person.

If it is a company, then whoever is the owner of the company or the authorized person, you can provide their name here.

Now, you have to provide the seller information.

What is the seller's information?

It includes the country of citizenship of the person who is either an individual or has a privately owned company.

Whatever the case, that particular person has to provide details as per the national ID card.

In the case of India, as I have already mentioned, it can be an Aadhaar card or a passport. In this example, after entering the country of birth and date of birth, you will see the proof of identity as an Aadhaar card.

The number is given — the Aadhaar card number.

Since the Aadhaar card does not have an expiry date, nothing has been mentioned there.

The country of issue is India.

Now, you have to provide the residential address as well.

Here, provide the residential address.

If the address already exists in your basic account, you can use the same one. If it is different, you can add another address.

Whatever address you want to give, you can provide it.

Since this is seller information, this address may not be the same as the one given in the bank statement — it may be different.

You need not worry about that.

It should be your personal address because we are talking about the information of the seller, not the company here.

Now, you have to give your mobile number.

It is better to provide the same mobile number that you have already given.

Here, you also have to declare whether you are the owner of the company or a representative of the company (authorized signatory).

This declaration must be made here, and you must also declare whether you have added all the beneficial owners of the business or not.

You can mention it here — if you do not want to give the names of your partners, you can write “No.”

If you want to give the names of all your partners, you can add them here.

In the next step, you have to provide the billing details.

Billing information has to be entered there.

Enter your valid credit card details in the space provided.

Credit card details must be entered there, and you have to ensure that the credit card is internationally valid and acceptable.

This information has to be provided because this card will be used to charge the monthly fees, which, in the case of India, is $39.99.

Here, you have to add the store information.

First of all, you have to provide the store name.

For example, I had shown you that the store name in my example today was Chandrakala.

Whatever the name may be — it may be Ruby Store or Diamond Store or any other name — you can choose accordingly.

In case it is a registered business, it is better to give the registered business name.

However, you can still change the name later.

It is not necessary to give the business name as per the bank statement.

You can give any store name here.

That is not a problem.

Based on the type of business you have — whether it is an individual business or a privately owned business — and the products you offer, you have to select the right options for each question, and then click “Next.”

Do you have a UPC for all your products?

UPCs are Universal Product Code numbers for global selling. For certain brands, Amazon mandatorily requires UPCs.

In some cases, when you are selling the brand of others and you are a wholesaler, you can go for an exemption from this UPC requirement.

That is called the GTIN — Global Trade Identification Number.

You can apply for a GTIN exemption by giving the appropriate justification for your status as a seller.

Otherwise, for selling goods and creating listings in your store, you do require a Universal Product Code.

For example, in the Chandrakala case, there was an ASIN number.

A universal code or GTIN can also be an ASIN number.

Whatever product identification code is acceptable by Amazon, you have to use that code.

In case you fall into a category where you do not need to have a UPC, you can get a GTIN exemption — that is, the Global Trade Identification Number exemption — for which you have to request Amazon, giving the reason for the exemption, and you will get it.

In that case, you do not need to provide any type of UPC numbers, such as the ASIN number, which I have already shown you an example of.

Another question is: Are you the manufacturer, brand owner, agent, or representative of the brand for any of the products you want to sell on Amazon?

If that is the case, and you select “Yes,” it is possible that for that particular brand, there may be a mandatory requirement for the UPC.

That list is available on the Amazon website, showing the brands for which you must provide the mandatory UPC numbers.

You have to find that information depending on your status, your business type, and your products.

The next question is: Do you own a government-registered trademark for the branded products you want to sell on Amazon?

Whatever the correct answer is, you have to provide it here.

If you do have a government-registered trademark, you will obviously have to provide a UPC number.

As I had already mentioned to you, the identification of the seller is verified by these documents.

The first one is the National ID, and the second is the bank statement.

That is what I had already explained to you.

In these two documents, in the seller identification document, the name should exactly match the one provided during registration.

The name should be the same. The ID proof should be clearly visible, and a color copy should be provided.

In the case of Indian exporters, you can use an Aadhaar card, voter ID, or passport.

The passport will be suitable for exporters from any country. The second document, which is for business verification, as I had already explained to you, requires a bank statement of the last 90 days, and this is used to verify the company address. The bank statement should be recent, with at least one transaction from the past 30 days. The bank statement should have the bank logo.

Online statements are preferred. For offline statements, get the statement stamped and provide a clear scan.

The bank statement should be either in the company’s name or in the individual’s name, depending on what you have mentioned as your status.

If it is a POC (Privately Owned Company), then the bank statement should be in the company’s name. If you are selling as an individual, then your bank statement should be in the individual’s name.

This is the required information about these two documents for registration.

Let us go to the next step.

Here you can see the samples.

You can see a sample of the document, like the Aadhaar card, which is valid for Indian exporters and serves as a national ID card.

And the bank statement.

As you can see here, it is in the individual’s name. The address is given, and the branch name is mentioned. The phone number, email ID, and all details about the bank are provided, including the IFSC code and the MICR code.

These are the samples of the documents. These are the samples of the documents that are needed.

The last step in this registration is that you will receive a video call.

You have to arrange for a video call with the Amazon team, which will talk to you and verify your details.

After that, this process will be over.

After that video call and after the verification process is over, the post-registration requirements are that you have to provide your tax information — for example, PAN card, TIN, or GST number if you already have GST in the case of Indian exporters (Goods and Services Tax number).

Those details have to be provided.

After the tax information has been submitted, you have to get category approval.

You must specify your product range, select the appropriate category, and get it approved by Amazon.

As I had mentioned to you earlier, if your organization falls into a category where you do not need to provide any UPC numbers, you can get a GTIN exemption. If you are eligible for that, you will get the exemption — in which case you do not need a UPC number, such as the ASIN number, which I had already shown today in the example of the Chandrakala store.

The listing of your product then has to be done on Amazon Seller Central, after you provide all this information.

In the inventory section, you have to start your listings, which can be done in bulk or one by one.

This process has to be completed.

The last important requirement is fulfillment because you are selling internationally.

There are two methods of selling internationally:

One is exported by the exporter directly to the customers, and the other is fulfilled by Amazon (FBA).

It can be fulfillment by the merchant or fulfillment by Amazon, which is called FBA.

If the fulfillment is to be done by Amazon, then it is called FBA — a very popular service — in which case you send your goods, even without orders, to one of the major Amazon centers in the target country, and you maintain an inventory of goods at the Amazon center.

Amazon will then handle the shipment of the goods from the Amazon fulfillment center in that particular country.

In this case, we are talking about the US, Mexico, and Canada.

You will be required to send the goods directly to the Amazon fulfillment center in the US, and from there, Amazon will fulfill and distribute the goods as per the orders.

For the listing creation, what you require are these bullet points about the product: images of the products, keywords for the purpose of improving visibility of your listing, pricing details, product title, description, and information about different colors available for sale.

All of this information must be provided.

All images are required, the brand name is required, the description must be given, and pricing details must be included.

All this information should be available to you for creating listings on Amazon.

As I already mentioned about fulfillment, it can be of two types — either individual fulfillment by couriers (merchant fulfilled) or fulfillment by Amazon.

That is how deliveries are done.

In no case will Amazon lift the goods from India or the origin country.

It has to be done by the exporter only.

Even for fulfillment by Amazon, in which case, as an exporter, you have to export the goods to the Amazon fulfillment center, you must arrange for the importer on record as well, because Amazon will not act as the importer.

You have to get it done through your service provider or the merchant who is handling the delivery of the goods — in this example, from India to the US Amazon fulfillment center.

In no case will Amazon serve as the exporter of record or the importer of record — both roles you have to handle yourself.

If it is individual couriers, then you can directly send the goods, and it will be fulfilled by the merchants that are recognized by Amazon.

These are the third-party service providers that will help you with all the activities, depending on whether you are sending goods yourself or using Amazon’s fulfillment service.

For different types of requirements — for example, you need a credit card for the process — you can approach these particular third-party merchants.

International tax advisory services are available from these merchants, as well as digital marketing, imaging, and trademark services for both global and local trademarks.

For return processing, you can also take the services of these companies recommended by Amazon.

International return facilities are provided by companies such as UBX, for example, American eBox.

For product testing, there are different types of services provided by merchants within Amazon’s network.

That is how the whole process is done on Amazon.

You have to register yourself and your company, identify yourself, provide tax information, create listings, and decide on fulfillment — meaning the distribution and delivery of goods to end users.

Initially, Amazon encourages you to focus on B2C sales, and once you grow into a mature merchant in global sales, you will automatically start receiving B2B orders on the international marketplace, which is Amazon.

The marketing starts with understanding the customer. An online customer is indeed different from traditional customers in several ways. Let us understand the typical profile of an online global digital customer.

Hello friends,

Welcome back to the course. In the last few episodes, we discussed the different tools and techniques that are very, very important to learn to be a successful global online exporter and to be able to set up a successful global online business.

After getting to know all these tools and techniques, it becomes very, very important to actually understand the profile of the online digital customer, whether it is a B2C customer or a B2B customer.

Ultimately, we have to find out whether there exist any differences between a traditional customer and an online digital customer.

The point is whether we find any differences in consumer behavior when the customer is online or offline.

For example, in international business, we talk about customers from different countries, and we encounter a lot of complications and differences in the process of exporting because of national and cultural differences.

Because of these national cultural differences, there do exist differences among customers of different countries, and these have an impact on our sales and marketing strategies in various markets.

At the same time, we also know that digital channels provide us with many commonalities among different customer segments in various countries, as they come together on a common platform.

The geographical and political boundaries become blurred, and we have a digital community of consumers with very similar tastes and preferences.

However, there still exist some differences between these digital customers located in different countries and the traditional customers.

Someone may say that, after all, a customer is a customer, and both traditional and digital customers are human beings likely to behave in similar ways.

Yes, they are likely to behave similarly, and their motivations and impulses would be quite similar.

But at the same time, there do exist differences between a traditional customer and an online customer because of segregation, in the sense of who is coming online and who is not coming online for real transactions.

The point of purchase — whether customers are coming to the internet or not — brings about the categorization between online customers and those who are not online.

Let us try to understand that aspect.

Various researchers in this area who have tried to find the differences between traditional and online customers have found that, in many ways, there may not be major differences between them.

However, they have definitively and significantly found differences in the sense that customers who are online are generally more educated than traditional customers.

The number of online customers who are genuinely educated is significantly higher.

That difference does exist.

Secondly, customers who are online are better informed.

Obviously, they are better informed because of the very fact that they are using the internet.

They are seeking information — most of them actively doing so — and they can find it much more easily by switching from one website to another and accessing numerous resources available online about products, services, facts, and figures.

They can compare prices and find online reviews from past customers. They are better informed and ready to put in the effort to gain more information about products, services, and companies. They have also been found to be more vocal about their actions on the internet, including their shopping behavior, and they are willing to share their post-sale experiences.

These are very, very clear differences.

Another thing researchers have found is that the online digital customer, whether a domestic or globally active customer, seeks more convenience and is often time-starved.

In the global selling context, more and more international buyers — even B2B buyers — are finding it impractical to conduct due diligence of exporters through physical means because it takes time and is costly.

Friends, the research is very, very clear about the differences in the profile of a typical online customer, whether B2B or B2C.

As per the research, it is very clear that the online customer is typically more educated than the traditional customer.

He is better informed because, at the convenience of a click, 24×7, 365 days a year, he is able to move from one website to another and access billions of resources available on the internet.

It becomes very easy for the online customer to find information, compare prices, and gain knowledge about products. Obviously, he is a smart person who is educated and on the internet for convenience or due to a lack of time.

The person is smart enough to acquire complete knowledge in a very short time.

Another trait of an online customer is that he is more vocal in nature and willing to share information, particularly their post-purchase experiences.

This creates another kind of differentiation between the online customer and the traditional customer.

The online customer is more vocal in nature because he is ready to share their post-purchase experience.

He cooperates and helps other smart online customers gather information, which works in favor of customers overall.

Because of this vocal and sharing nature, the situation creates a very comfortable and strong position for the customer.

Typically, an online customer is looking for convenience. He is mostly time-starved, doing many things at once, scaling up his operations, and in a mode where he does not want to spend unnecessary time on a particular deal.

An online customer is looking for quick information.

He seeks due diligence — but not in the traditional sense.

He is not interested in the physical due diligence of the exporter in the case of global sales.

Instead, he relies on small, trial orders based on the information provided by the exporter online through the online export store or brochures — the kind of message being communicated by the exporter to the importing community.

He tries to understand how much the exporter knows about the product and gathers information about the exporter from reviews by other importers or through other online methods.

This is the new normal — a new behavior of importers operating on platforms offered by global digital channels.

The online customer is a little different in type. He tries to avoid traditional market crowds.

He is not very willing to travel the world, visit product sources, and conduct traditional types of market research — unless necessary.

What he expects instead is quick and high-quality information.

He looks for exporting partners — international sellers — who can provide the best possible information.

He seeks knowledgeable partners.

That is the key — the main point of differentiation between online selling and traditional selling.

There is also a strong indication that the online customer is highly influenced by internet influencers because, as mentioned earlier, he either look at previous purchases made by other importers or consumers.

In the absence of such information, which is common in international sales, he turns to influencers.

He trusts certain people who are constantly present in his domain on the internet — on platforms like YouTube and other digital media — and who have a large following online.

The crowd is there.

Today’s online customer tries to gather information through crowdsourcing.

The best place for crowdsourcing is word of mouth from influencers on the internet.

In all probability, he is significantly influenced by online influencers when making purchase decisions.

Finally, he is generally young and tech-savvy.

The new types of international B2B customers, and even B2C customers, are mostly young and tech-savvy individuals active on the internet.

It is not always true, but in most cases, online customers are comparatively younger and more technologically adept.

The implication of this type of profile, which is a very general kind of profile of the online customer, especially in B2B sales, is that international sellers on digital channels really need to focus on the things expected by this type of online customer — the factors that make it easy for online customers to operate and feel comfortable.

What is important, very obviously, is that sellers have to be highly knowledgeable about their products.

They really need to focus on having world-class product knowledge.

Their research on the product should be perfect.

They should know the latest developments in the industry in which they are operating. They should have the latest images, video clips about the products, the manufacturing processes, and be aware of the laws and regulations that govern international trade for such products. They should also be fully aware of the ways and means of selling their products online and what it requires for successful online selling.

For that, they have to focus on all their online assets, whether it is their e-commerce website, their export online store on platforms like Amazon, Shopify, or any other B2B or B2C portal. In the case of Indian exporters, for example, I talked about the FIEO Global Trade Portal, which is emerging quite well for Indian exporters.

Similar types of government initiatives and local government platforms exist in many other countries for their exporters, as governments want their exporters to perform well on digital media.

You really need to focus on all these types of online assets and keep updating them regularly. You should also focus on the online message you want to convey.

It should be subtle, consistent, and genuine. It should reflect your personality, your manufacturing expertise, your innovation, and, very importantly, how your offer is different from others — what value it adds to customers and end users.

A lot of research is required in creating online messages that are to be broadcast on social media and other digital channels.

You have to carefully examine the content of your messages, the content of your website, and what you write on your online export stores and product listings on international marketplaces like Amazon. You really need to focus on those aspects and be fully aware of the value and relevance of your online efforts.

They should add value.

Your online efforts should be supported by your knowledge of logistics — how you are going to supply and move your goods to B2B or B2C customers.

All your online efforts should be backed by the right methods and systems that do not add unnecessary cost to your product.

Your final landed price has to be carefully focused upon.

You need to really determine what the price of your goods will be in the hands of the customer. You add value to the customer by giving the right landed price so that the customer feels motivated to reorder from you.

In all probability, an online customer will start with small orders.

That is why, on Amazon, it is an unwritten rule that when you start with international global sales, you begin with B2C sales.

Once you grow and become more mature, you can start using services like Amazon FBA.

When your volume increases, you start getting B2B sales.

You also need to be aware of the right influencers on the internet, especially in the absence of your own past reviews, so that international buyers have a credible medium through which they can be referred to buy from you.

You must understand how to take help from these influencers, what kinds of costs are involved in promoting your products and messages through international digital channels, and how to reach customers via these influencers.

All these efforts have to be made. All this awareness has to be in place.

In the next few lectures, rare tips and techniques to carry out an online exports business are discussed.

Hello friends,

Welcome back to the course!

In this episode, I will be talking about practical tips for online exports marketing and getting online orders. In present times, digital channels have made many things easier for exporters — to find information and to conduct research to determine which products should be exported, how they should be exported, where to export, and where to find buyers.

These things have become digitally possible — to research, act upon that research, find insights, and benefit from those insights.

I am going to discuss certain practical tips for online exports — setting up your online exports and using export marketing techniques that are very typical and general in nature.

It is the emergence of these practices that defines the newfound way of exporting goods through digital channels.

Let me first start with the tips for export pricing in the present times.

The pricing goal for online digital global sales, especially in the case of B2C sales, should typically be to obtain a net profit of around 100%.

This is a normal standard for all the efforts you are putting into digital channels — the efforts, advertising, optimization, and everything you do online — all must be rewarded.

If you are selling to B2C customers, the net profit should be approximately equal to 100%.

Similarly, for B2B sales, the target should be a 66% profit unless the ordered quantity is quite large.

If you can get some B2B sales in large quantities, how you get them — whether through direct sales or digital platforms — will determine whether you can accept a lower profit margin.

But in general, a 66% margin is the standard practice.

Another pricing tip for online exports is to avoid deep cuts in pricing, as good buyers are actually looking for fair prices rather than the cheapest prices.

In present times, no buyer wants to take risks, and the majority of good buyers want to maintain a long-term relationship with their suppliers.

They prefer to work with suppliers in such a manner that they don’t have to switch frequently.

They definitely keep two or three suppliers in their network, but their normal and general aim is to target fair pricing rather than the cheapest pricing.

Maintaining workable quality — quality that may not be the best but is accepted by customers — is important.

You can check product quality by studying digital marketplaces, reading customer reviews of certain products, and even purchasing one or two items to check their quality yourself.

If that level of quality is acceptable to customers and reviews are good, then you can decide on a fair price to offer for that quality.

That is the real trick of the game.

The main aim of the buyers is to focus on relationship building rather than seeking suppliers offering the cheapest, rock-bottom prices.

Focus on building relationships rather than becoming the price leader in the marketplace.

In the medium to long term, being the price leader is not a good strategy.

Generally, you will not get repeat orders because, to be the price leader, you will have to compromise on quality.

Your customer reviews will go down, and ultimately, your digital reputation and status will decline.

It is very important to focus on building relationships, looking at the medium and long-term interests of the buyer, explaining the merit of your price and the associated quality, giving the right picture to the buyer, and helping them achieve long-term business success in their home market.

This should be the goal used in the present times.

As per the requirement of the buyer, you can also offer ex-factory prices.

Ex-factory prices can be more attractive, and the buyer may be encouraged to choose that option.

In such cases, however, many shipping-related difficulties may arise unless you are already experienced in handling such shipments.

If you want to avoid these difficulties of shipping goods from your factory to the port, you can encourage the buyer to purchase on EXW terms or FCA terms, which means “place-to-place” terms, wherein you hand over the goods to the first carrier.

EXW or FCA terms can be very comfortable, convenient, and enable you to focus on your production rather than logistics.

Now, the second very important tip for an online export business is to be very careful about communication with buyers.

International buyers are judging you by your communication.

In the present time, it is very difficult for an international buyer to do physical due diligence, travel to your factory or place of business, and visit multiple locations.

Digitally, buyers are looking at your communication through your online assets — your website, your online export store — and especially what you write in your emails while communicating with them.

Are you able to understand what the buyer is asking for? Are you able to supply the right information? Are you able to answer all the questions of the buyer?

If a buyer is missing certain questions that are important to his business, are you able to provide those answers and encourage the buyer to understand the issues involved — something he may have missed? If you can convey that, the buyer will be impressed because he is looking for complete information — almost 100% accurate and high-quality information. If you can provide that, it becomes the main due diligence process for the buyer.

Things like your knowledge about the approximate lead time, payment terms, payment policy, and delivery terms that are win-win for both parties are very important.

Anything related to your products — in terms of patents, certifications, and any restrictions on buying or selling your products — should be very clear to you.

At the right time, this information should be conveyed to the buyer, whether he asks for it or not, because it is very important for him to know all these things.

Then, what is your sample pricing policy?

What is the ASIN number — the Amazon Standard Identification Number — which has become a norm in today’s world, just like the UPC (Universal Product Code)?

These ASIN and UPC numbers are very useful for buyers because they help in conducting digital market research on both the product and the supplier.

If you are a good supplier, using these numbers makes it easier for the buyer to make a quick decision about placing orders with you.

The initial orders may be trial orders, so you should focus on these trial orders because they can convert into large orders later.

Replies to buyer inquiries and their questions should be reasonably prompt.

There should not be any delays because, as I mentioned, today’s online digital customer wants quick, accurate, and complete information.

You should also be aware of and ask the buyer about their brand use policy, and if there are any restrictions in the buyer’s country, which you may not be aware of.

Since buyers can be from different countries, some information might not be available to you. It is better to ask the buyer if he is aware, and if he is not, try to find that information from third sources and convey it to him.

These practices will help make your communication very professional, acceptable, and desirable to the buyer.

In communication, it is always better to be ready with testimonials about your product — what your past buyers have said about you.

If you can provide a list of buyers located in well-developed countries such as the US, UK, or those in Europe, it indicates that you supply quality products.

This kind of information will definitely impress the buyer.

Photographs of your manufacturing unit, especially if you use any special or advanced machines with specific standards and capabilities, can be very helpful.

If you can share details, photographs, or small video clips of your manufacturing areas and machines, it will definitely help.

Similarly, if you have adopted innovative processes, ideas, or methods in your factory, manufacturing unit, warehouse, or inventory management — and if these innovations can be useful to the buyer or help reduce the landed cost — then you should convey these details.

This forms part of a good and professional communication approach.

If you have any special patents in your manufacturing process — whether partial or full — or if certain patented processes are used by you that your competitors are unlikely to possess, you should communicate and prove that to your buyers.

This will give the buyer greater confidence in you, attract him more, and make him willing to accept your fair price.

Your existing status in international marketplaces through your past buyers or direct sales, or if your brand is already established and customers are talking about it with good reviews, can also be shared with the buyer.

Finally, provide packing details.

Share information about your standard packing, especially if you already supply customers located in the same country as your new buyer.

Explain why your standard packing helps you quote a better price — because you use it regularly — and why it will be suitable for the buyer.

Communicating this kind of information will definitely help.

You should be ready with complete and comprehensive information — whether technical, aesthetic, or related to product features.

You should also understand the concerns of the buyer based on your experience and those specific to the buyer’s country of origin.

If you can understand these concerns and communicate relevant legal aspects — applicable laws in the buyer’s country or in your own — it is always better to share that knowledge.

You should also impress upon the buyer the special differentiating features your product has compared to competitors, and why your fair price can help the importer sell the goods better in their home market.

It is always a good idea to discuss with the importer the real requirement and the real use of your product — whether he is selling through international digital marketplaces, to large buyers in his country, or for his own use.

This kind of information is always better to obtain and should be part of your communication.

You should also keep a good record of all customer reviews in different countries and on different international marketplaces — whether you are selling directly or your past buyers are selling on your behalf.

It is always helpful to make the buyer realize that your product is of good quality.

As I already mentioned, if you are selling to sophisticated markets such as the US, Europe, the UK, Japan, or any other developed markets where you have regular importers, conveying this message to your new buyer will reinforce your product quality standards in his mind and make him more attracted to your products.

Now, talking about the payment aspects for the online export business.

In today's world, for B2C sales, especially, it is always suggested that the payment should be received through the right channels. This means that if you are selling your goods through international marketplaces for B2B and B2C sales, and especially B2C sales, you should always insist on payment through the marketplace if it is offered by that platform.

Certain digital marketplaces allow you to obtain payment directly, but the majority of international marketplaces — the popular ones — offer payment collection services, which is a much safer method.

Of course, these platforms charge a commission, whether you are taking the payment directly or through the platform.

It is always better to take the payment through the platform because it is much safer.

Normally, these international marketplaces take advance payment from the buyer and keep it in their own escrow account until the shipment is made. In this way, both the buyer and the supplier are protected from payment risks.

As a thumb rule, you should always try to avoid any outside digital platform payments unless the order quantity is unique, large, and the products are customized, and you have received direct inquiries from the buyer. You should have complete trust in the buyer and conduct the transaction through proper banking channels.

If the buyer has agreed to open a confirmed letter of credit through a first-class international bank, then, taking all necessary protections and safety measures, you can proceed with payments outside the platform.

The outside payment must always be through an irrevocable, confirmed letter of credit by a first-class international bank.

You should always avoid using any local banks, especially those that are not in the list of first-class banks.

As already mentioned, the local banks of the buyer's country should generally be avoided unless the buyer is located in a sophisticated, rich market like the US, Europe, Japan, or the UK.

In such cases, you can accept the letter of credit from a local bank, but due diligence on the bank and its status should be carried out.

With the help of your international branch and banking contacts, you can verify whether you should accept the letter of credit from the particular bank suggested by the buyer.

In the case of a letter of credit, it is always better to insist on using the local currency of your own country, as it helps you save money by minimizing currency risks.

If the buyer agrees, it is a good idea to prefer your local currency as the main currency of the letter of credit.

It is also important, as part of your payment terms strategy for an online business, to clarify who will bear the LC amendment charges.

When the LC is opened, you have the right to accept or reject the letter of credit depending on its terms — including what documents are required and whether you can supply those documents.

If you face any difficulty in supplying the required documents, you can always approach the buyer before accepting the letter of credit to request amendments.

These amendments may relate to the documentation, quality inspection requirements, delivery time, or other conditions.

In case of any such eventuality, it is very important to clarify who will bear the cost of amendments.

If there are certain types of amendments for which the buyer is ready to pay, you should clearly ask which amendments will be paid by the exporter — that is, by you.

You should also ask for your own local bank to be the advising and negotiating bank in the letter of credit, as this can significantly reduce the LC risk.

Your local bank, which already manages your account, will be able to provide better advice and serve as a protective layer against payment risks.

It is always better to nominate your own local bank as the advising and negotiating bank.

Now, looking at the legal aspects.

Tips regarding legal aspects:

It is better to be sure about your product's legal validity, which means understanding the issues connected with patents, certifications, or any other kind of restrictions on the buying and selling of goods, both from your country of origin and in the destination country. This is especially very important for B2B sales.

To be safe, it is important to be selective about the choice of law and the legal jurisdiction of the courts, which should preferably be in the exporter's country. The choice of law should be closer to the exporter’s country.

If this is not possible or acceptable to the buyer, then it is always better to go for the choice of law and jurisdiction of a third country. This helps ensure there is no undue pressure from the importer of the goods on the exporter — that is, you.

It should never be the buyer's country, especially for B2B sales.

Now, talking about the delivery terms for business generated through online channels, it is always important to explain the commercial terms to the buyer and clarify the points regarding when the transfer of ownership or title of the goods happens.

You should be very clear about the international commercial terms (Incoterms) used for the particular transaction — and specifically, the point at which the responsibility, liability, and ownership of the goods are transferred from the exporter (you) to the buyer.

In the case of an FOB contract, it is important to know the shipping details from the buyer because, under FOB terms, the main carrier — that is, the ship in case of sea shipment or the airline in case of air shipment — is arranged by the buyer.

To match the delivery terms and the last date of delivery, it should be impressed upon the buyer that he must provide you with the carrier details in advance, within the range of the mentioned last delivery date, and that this should be mutually agreed upon between the buyer and the exporter.

It is important to stay in touch with the buyer to know about the shipping details.

If you are required to load the goods onto the ship or aircraft, it should be clarified who is responsible for the loading process.

Generally, under an FOB contract, the goods are expected to be loaded by the exporter, but it is better to confirm with the buyer, as the buyer may have a special arrangement with the main carrier for loading the goods.

In the case of Ex-Factory (EXW) terms, it is better to clarify your delivery policy and the point at which the title transfer will happen, because it is subjective in nature — whether it is the factory warehouse, the factory gate, or a named place.

It is important to understand the exact point of transfer of goods, because if any damage happens during loading, responsibility must be clear — whether it lies with the exporter or the importer. It is better to clarify the loading responsibility of the goods onto the first carrier, especially in the case of an FCA contract.

In the case of place-to-place delivery, when EXW terms are not used and FCA terms apply, it is better to insist on the Combined Transport Document (CTD), which is normally issued by the logistics company — the MTO (Multimodal Transport Operator).

The MTO can issue the Combined Transport Document even before the goods are loaded onto the main carrier, and this CTD can serve as the main transport document.

It is better to insist on the acceptance of the CTD in the letter of credit as the main transport document.

It is very important to know in advance the special packing requirements of the buyer because it can actually cost a lot. It is better to clarify what your standard packing details are, or whether any customization is required by the buyer.

If customization is required, you should be able to include the extra cost of customizing the packing in the price quote, because your price should reflect this cost, which can be substantial depending on the buyer’s specific requirements.

You should also confirm whether the buyer wants his brand name to be printed on the boxes or retail packs, how the branding will be done, and whether the buyer is authorized to use that branding.

These details must be discussed in advance.

It is always better to ask for the buyer’s specified marks as well, which the buyer wishes to have on the export shipment boxes. This can help the buyer identify the boxes, and it is especially important for B2B sales when the number of boxes is large.

With regard to export documentation, especially in the case of Ex-Factory (EXW) terms of Incoterms 2020, it is better to ask for the exact documents required by the buyer in advance, as customs clearance under this term will be the responsibility of the buyer.

You should confirm what documents the buyer requires, which will be conveyed by the buyer’s CNF agent. It is a good practice to know this in advance.

While accepting the letter of credit, it is better to study very thoroughly all the terms and documents required before acceptance, because if you cannot supply a particular document, the payment will not be released by the issuing bank.

In case there is any discrepancy in the letter of credit or any condition that is not acceptable, you can always ask for an LC amendment — for example, if a particular document is difficult to obtain or not valid in your case.

It is very important for the exporter to ask the buyer about any special document requirements, if any, in the host country.

Many such documents are required by the customs and local government authorities of the importing country, which you may not be aware of.

It is a very good practice to get in writing from the buyer the exact description of the goods to be used in the documents, such as the commercial invoice, bill of lading, airway bill, certificate of origin, quality certificate, freight certificate, and insurance policy.

The description of the goods should match the acceptable description used by the customs of the importing country.

It is always better for the buyer to provide in writing the exact description of the goods so that there is no misunderstanding between the buyer and the exporter.

The letter of credit should also reflect this exact description of the goods, ensuring that the documents you submit for payment under the letter of credit match the description required by the buyer.

It is very important that the buyer also supply you with the International Trade Classification Harmonized System (ITC HS) code for the product being imported, as this code is used by the customs of both the exporting and importing countries.

However, sometimes there is a mismatch between the ITC HS code accepted by the exporting country and that accepted by the importing country.

It is therefore important for the exporter to check with the buyer what, in their knowledge, is the correct ITC HS code that will be acceptable to the importing country, to avoid any awkward situation at customs while clearing the goods.

Finally, important tips for concerns related to insurance:

The exporter needs to clarify with the buyer the transit insurance coverage for inland transportation within the home country, up to the point when goods are moved to the port of loading.

Sometimes, the buyer arranges door-to-door insurance — that is, a single comprehensive insurance policy covering transit from warehouse to warehouse.

In such cases, it is not required for the exporter to arrange additional insurance protection for the movement of goods from the factory warehouse to the port of loading.

Thank you.

In present times, digital space has made it easier for entrepreneurs looking for import opportunities to import and sell the goods in their home country, either to B2C customers or to B2B customers. All that is required is a great knowledge of online resources and the steps involved in setting up the online digital online business.

Hello, friends.

Welcome back to the course.

In the last several episodes, I talked to you about setting up your online export business, doing online export marketing, and becoming a successful exporter.

In this episode, I will talk to you about setting up your online global import business — what is involved in setting up a profitable and successful digital import business.

This episode is devoted to the step-by-step method of setting up your global import business.

Setting up an online import business begins with the first step, which is finding out logical reasons for import — why you are importing and what the different reasons for your import are.

Are you importing for your own requirements?

Are you a manufacturer of some product that you sell in your home market and want to import some intermediate products for your own manufacturing process?

Or do you want to import something that you probably wish to export again through marketplaces like Amazon, Shopify, or any other digital marketplace?

Or do you have your own buyers in your domestic market or in some third country who require certain products or intermediate goods that you wish to source and import, either for your home country or for a third country?

Identifying the reason for your import will help you make further strategies for setting up your online import business.

The second step is to identify what goods, commodities, or items you want to import — whether a single item, a bundle of items, or a category of products.

You should write this down clearly. Identify the product, and use digital resources to find details such as photographs, technical specifications, availability, and any patents or certifications associated with that product.

You need to spend sufficient time and effort researching everything about your product.

If you are not aware of the product you want to import — if it is something new to you, but you think it has potential in your home market — you can use several online marketplaces to find out what people are selling, how they are selling, what customer reviews say about those products, and the possible sources.

You can use thousands of products listed on Amazon with their specifications, and use online research tools like Jungle Scout, which specializes in product research on Amazon.

Through these, you can identify product categories, specific products, photographs, technical details, patents, and brands associated with those products — helping you assess which products may be profitable for you to import.

A wide range of digital tools is available to help you research and select the right products to import.

Depending on your situation and your target market — where you intend to sell your imported products — you should then project the potential volume of imports on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

Decide whether you will import in part shipments or in single bulk shipments.

You need to make these strategic decisions and conduct research on likely sales volumes, identifying your customers — whether B2C or B2B — and understanding the expected demand for your chosen products.

The next step is to locate suppliers.

These will generally be international suppliers unless the product is competitively available in your home market. In most cases, you will want to import from international suppliers.

To find suppliers, you can again use online resources, including product listings on Amazon, and then use Amazon or Shopify’s product and supplier research tools. You can also access supplier databases available through online tools like Jungle Scout and others.

With just a few clicks and some browsing, you can find lists of suppliers.

These supplier databases cover almost all products sold on Amazon, and they even include details such as when the supplier started, who their main customers are, and which markets they export to.

If a supplier exports to sophisticated markets like the US, UK, or Europe, it indicates that they are likely to be providing quality products.

You can find all of this information through product and supplier research tools like Jungle Scout and many others.

Another excellent resource available is GlobalSources.com, which provides supplier databases, details about their manufacturing units, patents, certifications, and other useful information.

You can also use ASIN numbers or UPC codes available on Amazon product listings to identify exact products and their suppliers.

When analyzing suppliers, try to identify 10 to 15 or even 20 potential suppliers.

You will find that some suppliers are manufacturers while others are traders.

Depending on your needs, you have to decide whether you want to deal directly with manufacturers or work through traders.

Both categories have their advantages and disadvantages.

For example, a manufacturer usually offers a smaller product range but at more attractive prices. However, manufacturers generally expect larger order volumes — for instance, a minimum of 500 units for products priced between $10 $20.

Traders, on the other hand, may be able to supply smaller quantities, sometimes as few as 50 to 100 units.

The advantage of dealing with traders is that they often ensure product quality because they source from multiple manufacturers and already know which ones provide good quality at a reasonable price point.

Another advantage of trader-suppliers is that they can offer a wider range of related products and help you bundle complementary items together, which can make your offerings more attractive to both B2C and B2B buyers.

Therefore, you must assess which type of supplier best suits your business requirements.

Once you have identified 10 to 20 potential suppliers, the next step is to send them an initial inquiry.

Ask for prices, payment terms, delivery conditions, minimum order quantities, product details, and information on certifications, patents, or shipment lead times.

Evaluate the responses you receive based on the clarity of their communication, the quality of information, and their overall professionalism.

This will help you identify which suppliers you would like to work with.

You will likely receive different price points for varying quantities from different suppliers.

You must identify an average and fair price — not be lured by rock-bottom prices or overpriced offers — and filter your supplier list accordingly.

Ultimately, you should aim to build long-term relationships with 3 to 5 reliable suppliers.

Having multiple suppliers allows you to negotiate better on pricing and other business terms.

However, it is not advisable to press suppliers too hard on price, as this can harm long-term relationships.

Instead, focus on fair pricing, product quality, packaging, support, timely delivery, and the overall reliability of the supplier.

International suppliers may offer terms such as EXW (Ex-Works) or FOB (Free on Board), meaning the supplier can deliver goods up to the port of shipment.

Understanding these aspects of suppliers’ terms and information will help you filter your list from 15–20 suppliers down to 3–5 solid, dependable ones.

It is always better to depend on a couple of reliable suppliers rather than a single source, as already mentioned.

It is important to shortlist at least 15 to 20 potential suppliers and carry out online due diligence to filter out the ones that are not prospective partners. So how do we do that? Learn the same in the next video.

Then, based on these initial steps that you have already carried out, and after filtering out the suppliers, you already know the fair price. You also have detailed information about the products you are going to import, and a fairly good idea about the different costs involved in determining the landed price of the goods at your end.

The ex-factory price or the FOB price does not include the main carrier cost, which can be by sea or by air, nor the clearance of goods in your home country at customs, the import duties payable, any local taxes, or the costs associated with transit insurance and other incidentals.

You will now have a fairly good idea of what percentage of the unit price offered by the supplier represents other costs such as transportation, insurance, and local taxes.

You must determine the landed price of the products in your warehouse. Based on that, you can calculate whether you can work profitably with those prices and what possible revenue you can expect from your further sales of these products.

If you are going to sell them to others or to some third party, you must also estimate the expected profit margins from B2C and B2B customers.

From the expected revenue, projected volumes, and landed price, you can then calculate the profitability of the goods.

As a thumb rule, if you are dealing with B2C customers, the expected net profit is around 100%. If you are dealing with B2B customers, the typical expected profit margin is around 66%, unless the quantities are very large, in which case the profit margin may range between 30% and 50%.

However, this will depend on the type of product, the unit price, the total requirement of the B2B buyers, and their monthly or quarterly intake. Many such factors need to be considered, but these are typical indicators.

To successfully carry out an import business online, you should be fully aware of the legalities and compliance requirements associated with the items you intend to import.

These include issues such as patents, certification requirements in your home country or the country of sale, and the regulations governing the sale, distribution, and use of those products.

You must understand the laws and regulations related to the products — whether they can be sold by you as a third party, whether you own the brand, or whether you have authorization to sell from the original brand owner.

You must be very clear about all aspects of legal compliance related to each product.

To manage the risks of import transactions, depending on the quantity of imports, it is always a good idea to create an import transaction guiding document.

This document should list all the projected hurdles and details, such as how you will account for the purchase, how the delivery will be carried out, the points of transfer of responsibility and title of the goods from the supplier to yourself, the costs involved in the transaction, and your role in the import operation.

It should also specify responsibilities related to insurance, freight, and shipment (whether by sea or air), as well as the Incoterms (International Commercial Terms) applicable, and the terms of the purchase order, contract, or sales order that you plan to use for the actual selling of the product.

Based on these details, you should create a guiding document in advance, outlining the step-by-step method for carrying out the import transaction.

This will help reduce risks and allow you to predict and manage any potential issues or awkward situations that may arise.

It is always good to start with trial orders. You must account for the time required to execute trial orders and plan them so that they do not consume your profit margins or disrupt future projections.

You need to find a balance between the advantages of trial orders — such as risk reduction — and the potential loss of profits.

Depending on how much the market can absorb and how long it will take for trial orders to be executed, you must plan your methods to execute trial orders faster.

This will allow you to receive small quantities quickly, test them in the market, and gauge market potential.

Trial orders are important for risk reduction and for further filtering out the best suppliers.

It is also very important to execute a purchase order, even though purchase orders are not generally legally valid internationally. While they are valid in principle, they are not practically enforceable in most cases.

Nevertheless, it is always a good idea to use purchase orders, and if the quantities are substantial (not trial orders), you should execute a formal export or import contract.

The terms of such a contract should be in your favor — particularly regarding delivery terms, payment terms, commercial terms, legal clauses, choice of law, and jurisdiction of the court.

These terms should give you an advantage and allow you to apply reasonable pressure on the supplier to execute the order on time, with the right quantities and quality.

Your main concerns are lead time, product quality, and smooth execution of the order.

If you have the right contract in place, the right purchase order, and follow the correct process and method for importing your goods, you can ensure that your concerns are addressed — that you receive the right product, at the right time, and of the right quality.

You must also decide on the shipment mode — whether by sea or by air — depending on how much time you can afford for execution and delivery, and how quickly you need the goods to reach your location.

Generally, air shipments are much costlier and can have a significant impact on your landed cost.

Finally, you should be aware of the different tools of import transaction risk management. These include currency risk, commercial risk, export documentation risk, customs clearance risk, and transit risk.

You must understand all aspects of international transaction risk management. The guiding document you create, as discussed in this episode, can be extremely useful in your overall import risk management process.

In the next video, some important tips and techniques are discussed, which, if followed, can significantly improve your chances of success in the online import business.

Now, friends, I will discuss with you the smart online import tips — the so-called secret tips, I would say — that you can use to ensure success in setting up your global import business online.

One of the tips I can give you is that in a hyper-competitive environment, when you are trying to identify products for import and for selling in your home market, especially through digital marketplaces like Amazon or Shopify, it is a good idea to combine your offer with two or three items that are complementary to each other.

You can research what items people usually purchase along with a particular product so that your bundle of products meets the entire requirement of the customer at that point. This can help improve your overall profitability and sales volume.

The second tip is that if you are importing daily-use items, you can go for common products that may be available on an export-surplus basis, where you can get discounts on regular prices.

For this, you can join export-import groups on Facebook, which have thousands of members. Using these groups, you can connect with sellers from different countries and keep track of items of your specialization — the group category that you focus on — and monitor the products available as export surplus at discounted prices.

This can significantly increase your profitability and sales potential.

On Facebook, you will find groups with members interested in export surplus, both in buying and selling. You can join these specialized groups as well as general export-import groups. In both types, you will find suppliers interested in providing you with discounted products.

It is recommended that you master the importation of a single category or a group of related items only, because time and experience bring real rewards in the import business.

With time and experience, you gain valuable information and data about products, build a larger supplier base across different countries, and can compare their products, offers, quality, practices, and ease of doing business.

Specializing in a particular category of goods always benefits you in the long run.

Furthermore, the idea of sourcing discounted products available as export surplus becomes much easier when you specialize in certain products whose pricing you understand well. You can identify what kind of discounts are reasonable and profitable on these surplus items.

If you can sell those surplus items — mostly to B2C customers, who are usually the target group for such products — you may also find some specialized B2B buyers interested in them.

As I have already mentioned, when you filter out suppliers, it is always better to have two, three, four, or five groups of suppliers. This gives you the leverage to exert a little pressure on pricing and other business terms. However, it is always wiser to target a fair price rather than the lowest price, because in international transactions, extremely low prices often lead to problems.

If you have three to five suppliers and you have already researched the fair price, it becomes easier to negotiate fairly, reach that price point, and still maintain a good relationship with your suppliers.

Another smart move for setting up your online import business is that once you know your product and have good data about it, you can create your own website or list yourself as an importer of specific items on international marketplaces where you can post your requirements.

This allows more suppliers to locate and identify you, send you samples, prices, and offers, and explain why they are better than your existing suppliers.

Over time, you will develop connections with good-quality suppliers and establish sustainable sources of products at fair prices and quality levels, with complete information.

In this way, more manufacturers and international suppliers can contact you with offers, discounts, and possibilities of exporting surplus items, if applicable to your business plan.

You can also post your import requirements — including product images, specifications, and volume needs — on various online trade forums.

Additionally, you can share your requirements in Facebook groups related to export, import, or surplus trade. This will help more suppliers reach out to you.

It is very important to include quality inspection as part of your purchase order.

This quality inspection can be carried out by a third party, which will add to your cost.

An alternative, known as the “poor man’s inspection,” is to include a clause in the purchase order or import contract requiring the supplier to send you pictures or videos of the shipment before dispatch. You can also speak directly to the supplier’s team via video conferencing to inspect the goods yourself at the seller’s warehouse.

This method is easier and cheaper, though not perfect. It is always better to go for a professional quality inspection.

Similarly, regarding the legal requirements of the products you are going to import and their suitability for your target market, if the information provided by the supplier is not satisfactory, you may need to hire a professional lawyer to verify all the legalities involved with your imported products.

Now, another thing that is advised for success in setting up a global import business is to ensure that you are dealing with suppliers who can supply good-quality products.

One way to identify potential suppliers of good-quality products is to check whether their list of regular customers includes any located in countries such as the US, Europe, the UK, or Japan.

This can be verified using supplier databases available online and product research tools such as Jungle Scout and many others.

It is possible to find lists of suppliers as well as their common customers through these resources.

In this case, you can use the ASIN number, which I just mentioned — the Amazon Standard Identification Number — assigned to all products sold on Amazon, covering millions of items.

Amazon is an even better repository of product information than Google, as it lists nearly all items sold online, each having its own ASIN number.

Using this ASIN number, it becomes easier to find associated suppliers, the list of their customers, and the locations of those customers. This helps you conduct a certain level of research to determine whether those suppliers are reliable and capable of providing good-quality products.

You can also try to find listings of the supplier and their goods on international marketplaces such as Amazon, Shopify, and Etsy. By reviewing customer feedback using these ASIN numbers and checking the product images supplied by the suppliers against what appears on these marketplaces, you can judge whether the products are consistent.

Then, by reading the customer reviews — what customers are actually saying — you can assess the product quality.

In fact, this is one of the best ways to check product quality. If you are fortunate enough to identify where those goods are being sold, tools like Jungle Scout can help you find lists of the customers of those suppliers.

If those customers sell their goods online, especially on Amazon, you can directly see what buyers are saying about the products.

This is one of the best methods of verifying product quality.

It is also highly recommended to check supplier profiles on supplier databases such as Jungle Scout or GlobalSources.com, as well as other B2B marketplaces.

You can evaluate their level of experience, year of establishment, and activity on platforms like Alibaba.com or Global Sources — including how long they have been on the platform and how they are performing.

It is always better to go with suppliers who have their own factories, if they are manufacturers, or who have been in the business for a long time.

As I already mentioned, you have to decide and judge for yourself whether a manufacturer or supplier would suit you better or whether a trader supplier would be more appropriate.

These are decisions you must evaluate carefully, as they can be very important.

Now, another thing to look into, as part of the good practices you should use for setting up your online import business successfully, is to carefully observe the communication of the supplier — how clearly they respond, how comprehensively they answer, whether they provide satisfactory answers to all your queries, and whether they truly understand their product.

This communication, and the way it is conducted, will indicate which suppliers are good and should be shortlisted.

Communication methods used by suppliers, along with the clarity and professionalism they show, will give you a fairly good idea about their merits and demerits.

As I have already mentioned, look for the fair price rather than the cheapest price, because in international import business, if you chase the cheapest price, you can end up facing major problems. As I have already suggested, check the profiles of suppliers in supplier databases on marketplaces such as Alibaba or B2B platforms like Jungle Scout.

Jungle Scout is a specialized Amazon marketplace research tool and supplier database that can provide very detailed information about suppliers, their customers, and their profiles. Similar information can be found on many other online platforms, such as GlobalSources.com.

Similarly, many countries have their own local supplier databases, from which you can find additional information about suppliers and their profiles.

Your first inquiry to suppliers should be very professional and mature.

It should contain detailed specifications of the product, possibly including photographs and pictorial dimensions or measurements shown in your images, so that it is absolutely clear what size, shape, and color of product you desire. It should also include details about possible quantities in the near future and the range of quantities you are likely to purchase.

All this information should be mentioned clearly. You should also include the right type of questions, concerning lead time, payment terms, sample policy, and other important aspects.

Your first inquiry must be well-prepared because, at this stage, you are shortlisting certain suppliers and filtering them out. If your own inquiry contains flaws, you cannot expect suppliers to respond accurately to your questions. Your focus should also be on building a good relationship with the suppliers because, at the end of the day, this matters more than price, which, again, should be a fair price.

If a supplier is not making a profit and you choose the cheapest price, that relationship cannot be sustained in the long term.

In your initial inquiry, it is always a good idea to ask questions such as what the price slabs are — the different price ranges for different quantities, such as 0–100 units, 100–500, or 500–5000 units — and what the corresponding prices are.

If you are still unsure about the volumes you want to import, mention that you are undecided about the quantities and ask for a complete price matrix for different quantity ranges. The supplier will quote accordingly.

You can also ask whether they can send a free sample, or if it is a paid sample, what the sample cost and shipment cost would be, and how long it will take for the sample to arrive.

You should also ask whether the supplier is a manufacturer or a trader of that particular item, and what their payment terms are — whether payment is to be made partly in advance and partly upon shipment, or through documentary credit or document collection.

This information must be verified with the supplier.

Additionally, check whether the supplier is aware of any restrictions related to the buying or selling of products in terms of patents held by third parties, or if any certifications are required in your country or in the supplier’s country for exportation.

Ask about any formalities or regulations associated with selling and buying those products, as well as the delivery terms.

Clarify the point at which the title of the goods is transferred from the supplier to the buyer, and the pricing basis — whether Ex-factory or FOB.

Ask whether the supplier prefers EXW or FOB terms, and whether there is a price difference between the EXW (Ex-factory) price and the FOB price.

You can also inquire about packing details — the export packing policy, standard packing practices, and whether the supplier is willing to provide customized packing as per the buyer’s (your) requirements, along with any extra cost for such customization.

This kind of information should be prepared in advance and made part of your initial inquiry.

VJ Exports Mastery Series of Courses congratulates you on completing this important skill-building exports mastery course. We are sure you found this course informative, and we request that you share the course with your colleagues and contacts.

As a free bonus for completing this course, I am pleased to share a free copy of the eBook written by me for the students of this course. The title of the eBook is - How to set up exports and imports business in India. See the resources section of this lecture to download the file.

Also, request you to rate and review the course if not yet done. It helps.

In the next video instructor is pleased to share his final thoughts about this amazing course.

Thanks, and wishing you a great future.

Friends, in this concluding lecture, I want to tell you that you have learned very rare skills that are required to successfully set up your online global business, whether you want to export or import goods from all over the world and make money online.

In this course, I have given you a step-by-step account of setting up your online global business and discussed in detail some important aspects related to this area of international business.

This field is truly amazing, very rewarding, and you can become hugely successful if you master all the skills mentioned in this course.

You can go through this course again. I will keep updating it with new lectures and videos in the future, and this course is available to you for a lifetime.

Any new update will be visible to you. You can revisit those updates and reskill yourself by going through this course again whenever you wish.

You can also write to me if you have any queries regarding any topic in this course, and you can expect my response within one working day.

I really hope that you liked this course, and I wish that you will share it and recommend it to your colleagues, friends, contacts, and loved ones who are interested in setting up their own international global online business through the amazing digital channels that are vast, powerful, and full of opportunities for success.

The future is bright in this area.

I also request you to kindly rate this course and leave your review if you have not done so already. It will help me increase the reach of this course worldwide.

Wishing you a very successful global career ahead.

I conclude here. Thank you very much.