Top 5 Tips to be Export Ready

It’s not simply enough to want to sell your products internationally; you should also be prepared for this new business venture. Here are some tips to help determine if you're export ready.

Plan, plan, plan.

While most people don't relish the idea of writing a 25-30 page business plan, if you are venturing into new markets, a well researched business plan will guide you through the process and save you a lot of headaches. If done right, your business plan should be able to tell you if there is a market for your product, how to best get into the market, how much it is going to cost you, and how much you should profit.

Be prepared for border crossing costs.

How much is it going to cost to get your product across borders? In addition to the regular cost of doing business, international trade can also include international freight costs, customs brokerage fees, export insurance, and agent's fees or commissions. Some additional indirect costs include translations of labels, travel costs and currency conversion costs.

Remember, the government is on your side.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has nearly 150 Trade Commissioners posted in foreign cities (as well as 17 in Canada) to promote the export of Canadian goods. The Trade Commissioners can help with directories and manufacturer lists, assessing market potential, meetings with foreign buyers, and preparing products for entry into international markets. The Trade Commission’s Virtual Trade Commissioner website guides you through the process of researching your target country and sector, providing business leads, reports, business culture tips, contacts, and resources.

Make sure you get paid.

The most common form of payment when doing international trade is Letters of Credit (LC's). With an LC, you minimize your risk because the banks assure that the goods are delivered before the money is exchanged. If you are looking at ways of making sure that you get paid, talk to your bank about LC's.

Get good shippers.

Because transportation is such a big component of international trade, you need to be able to rely on your shippers so that you can meet the demands of your clients to get your product to them when they need it.

Useful WordPress Coupon Plugin

We all love coupons and discount codes as saving money is always nice. Actually it has become a business model to find and share coupon codes attached to affiliate links. If you are running a web site business relying on sharing coupon codes and affiliate marketing you need a good WordPress Groupon Plugin to speed up the process and make sure your readers click on your links and not just copy the code. This WordPress Coupon Plugin enables you to embed and share as many coupons as you like with your readers and visitors. With this nice WordPress Coupon Plugin you will easily drop any coupon into your Posts or Pages using handy short codes. Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.

Import and Export Goods in and out of Singapore

If you want to imports goods from overseas to retail in Singapore, you are required to apply for both import permits and licenses for ‘controlled goods’.

To begin, you will need to make sure your business is already registered with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore (ACRA). Your business, may be retail, must register as a sole proprietorship, partnership or a private limited company.

Two more things have to happen before you can start importing goods into Singapore. First, after you have the business registered with ACRA, you will then activate your Custom Accounts using ACRA assigned Unique Entity Number (UEN) and Singpass. Second, you will have to be registered as a trader with Singapore Customs. As a trader you will be able to apply for permits using TradeNet® for each shipment of goods.

Generally most goods are considered ‘non-controlled goods’ such as clothes and shoes. You do not need license to import ‘non-controlled goods’. However, if you are going import “controlled goods” such as food and animal products, drugs or telecommunication items, you will need to apply for appropriate license for each category from the ‘competent authority’. An example would be importing animals and birds products, you have to apply for a license from the Agri-food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore.

Be forewarn that there is a significant amount of paperwork to submit for application of import permit for each shipment with the addition of customs documentation and clearance; insurance papers; and paperwork for ‘controlled goods’. There are also taxes, duties and fees to pay. You can do all the paperwork as you are also a registered trader with access to TradeNet®, however, most businesses choose to relegate the task to freight forwarders and cargo agents since the import procedure is quite complex.

WordPress Groupon Plugin

Today i'm going to tell you how to power your very own group deals just like Groupon using WordPress. Today Groupon is all the rage among smart & social shoppers but does groupon have the only stake in the business? Surely Not! After careful consideration we decided it was time to give people the ability to power their very own Groupon Site. We built a Groupon WordPress Clone and did it twice. First through the convenience of a plugin, so you don't have to change your theme. Second we built a dedicated Wordpress Groupon Theme.

WPoupon Features

WordPress Groupon Plugin Features

1. Plugin is embeddable on any WordPress website.
2. Plugin uses simple short codes to display the group deals
3. Plugin uses simple short codes to display forms to create deals
4. Plugin can power unlimited deals simultaneously
5. Plugin gives site admin the ability to charge for deals
6. Plugin has built in PayPal integration
7. Plugin has the ability for users to create their own deals and make money
8. Plugin has custom designing options with easy to modify CSS
9. Plugin as built in category management & new category creator
10. Plugin can embed on any post or page within a WordPress website.

WPoupon Benefits

Benefits of having your own groupon

The benefits are almost endless. We looked at what would provide the most value to bloggers and WordPress owners. The firts thing that came to mind has convenience. Everyone has spent time and money developing there websites or blogs and many have expressed a desire to have something like a WordPress Groupon Theme but do not want to change their theme. So we created a WordPress Groupon Plugin instead. This way you can easily upload and activate the plugin and start generating deals for your readers.

Went one step further than that. Now site owners can enable the readers to create their own deals to power on your website. Even better the readers don't even have to login or be a member or access the back end of your website, it's all front end ajax powered. FANTASTIC

If you're an internet marketer or someone who provides services or goods onsite this WordPress Groupon Plugin Is perfect for you. Maybe you operate a community website with lots of readers and want to offer up killer deals this is the plugin to do it.

Start a Groupon Like Site Using WordPress

Sites such as WordPress Groupon ! Do not need any introduction. Those of you who love following deals and bargains online have probably taken advantage of some of the deals these sites have to offer. Do you have your own deals that you want to share with the world? Thanks to Matamko, you can start your very own daily deal site using the WordPress platform. Matamko is designed strategically to get your top deals the most attention. Once you enter your deals into your database, they will be displayed at a prominent place on your home page. Your visitors will know how many of each item you have in stock and when your deal ends. The deal board is quite dynamic and attractive. This theme does use a good amount of text, which makes it more search friendly. Your visitors will have the option to submit their own deals to your website. They are provided with a form that they can use to share their deals’ details with your audience. This theme is quite powerful when it comes to deal management. Webmasters are always in control of what gets published to their site. Daily Deal comes integrated with various payment system so your visitors can buy through your website easily. Matamko has a versatile back-end that lets you change your navigation settings, SEO options, and theme style. You get 5 color themes to choose from. Matamko can be localized easily too. If you are a small business owner hoping to offer your visitors daily deals, Matamko theme is a good theme to consider picking up.

3 Ways to Clone Groupon Using WordPress

People who are into local deals and coupons are most likely familiar with sites such as Groupon. Sites such as Groupon can bring businesses a lot of new customers and help their owners get the word out about their service. Groupon is not flawless by any means and not for everyone. You can always create your own local deal business if you are not too happy with what Groupon offers. Here are 3 ways you can go about creating a  WordPress Groupon. Wpoupon for WordPress: a Groupon clone theme for WordPress. Lets you feature your top deals on its home page. It offers Paypal or Authorize.net integration. Daily Deal: lets you create and manage your own deal portal in WordPress. It has 5 color schemes and a deal moderation system. reCAPTCHA is integrated into it. It can be localized. Group Deals plugin: not interested in installing a brand new theme to turn your site into a Groupon-clone? This plugin can handle Group Deals on WordPress. It is not perfect but has a lot of potential. The above themes and plugin are useful for anyone who wants to start a Groupon style site using WordPress. Which one do you like the most?

Where Should You Start Your Groupon Clone?

New York, Chicago, LA, SF, and Boston are heading the Groupon Clone charge for good reason — there’s variety in cuisine, services, and attractions in order to sustain a different, premium daily deal. I wanted to see which cities are the hottest based on sales and predict where we’ll see the biggest growth. Until recently, it would have been impossible to have an apples to apples comparison of deals in each city — some pizzerias are just better than others, e.g. Grimaldi’s versus Famous Rays, so we can’t compare intra-city, and who wouldn’t agree that NYC pizza is better than Chicago’s, so inter-city pizza deal comparisons are also out the window. However, The Gap recently ran a national Groupon deal, allowing me to compare city vs. city. I emailed Groupon for the statistics of their Gap campaign, but they didn’t answer me fully back yet (only that there were 440,000 in total). So I went to their website and checked the Gap deal for every city, replacing each city name, one by one. The result is a list of cities by Gap deals sold (by “GAP rank”). Traction Gap Rank shows the most accurate traction statistic for group buying: Groupon sells thousands of deals more than its competitors combined, this was a national campaign, and the same product was sold in every market on the same day. Moreover, it’s something my mom would buy, or Oprah would recommend — so it passes the mom test! We have to adjust for relative size — NYC is 8 times the size of Salt Lake, so it should sell 8x the deals. So I ranked by GAP deals per capita (“Gap / Population Rank”). Affluence The other factor to consider is relative affluence (after all, these are deals for spa treatments, not doctor visits). I measured the growth potential for each city by affluence based on ranking GDP per capita (by population). I realized that some cities were penalized for a lower population, even though they had great traction (for example, Washington DC which has a 25th ranked population but was the 1st ranked city for GDP/Capita — and 5th overall for deals sold!). Ranking by GDP per Capita fixes that problem. The Score The score (column G) is a measure of the likelihood that the people of a city will buy group deals based on traction (GAP / Capita) and how wealthy they are (GDP / Capita), but this score omits the significance that Groupon is a viral beast — network effects further fuel the fire. The absolute number of total deals sold is significant – it represents the number of people in the city who will go off and tell their friends about their awesome deal at the Gap. So, taking a weighted average of each variable including the total number of GAP deals sold is the most accurate score for growth of top cities: Weighted Score= (1/3 rank GDP/CAP) + (1/3 rank Total Deals) + (1/3 rank GAP/CAP) Therefore, the Top US cities for deal growth are (in order): Washington, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dallas (Fort Worth), Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Portland, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Orlando, Raleigh (Durham/Chapel Hill), Hartford, Providence, Tampa, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, San Jose Conclusion A deal aggregator should target cities based not where the most number of deal service providers are, but where they’re going to be — cities with traction and people who are going to buy them (so stay away from Phoenix, Houston, and San Antonio in the next 6 months to 1 year, despite population size). So go after the cities with the highest weighted average score (mentioned above). In terms of choosing cities based on deal services, there are currently estimates of 150 Groupon Clones — with such low barriers to entry, it’s really difficult to know of (be aware of) each Deal provider in every city. They’re popping up left and right, and with Group Buying really getting hot in the summer, I expect a bunch of deals in other verticals to start popping up in the fall, specifically on college campuses (CampusDibs.com). These are places where populations can change dramatically (think Game Day at Penn State when 100,000+ people come to see a football game) and could take flash-mob deals to a whole new level. Look out for daily deals on campus at schools with large student bodies and a vibrant college town: OSU, Arizona State, Florida, Minnesota, UT Austin, Michigan State, Penn State, but remember, size isn’t everything, right Washington, D.C.? Groupon clones should hit the streets in the cities with the lowest weighted score. The cities are familiar with Groupon deals, but Groupon doesn’t have a strong hold since 2/3 of the weighted score is based on deal flow. These cities are:  Albuquerque, Memphis, San Antonio, Louisville, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Ok. City, Omaha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Phoenix.

Clone king Marc Samwer out as Groupon’s international head following record high ad violations

Groupon’s business stateside has been embroiled in an accounting scandal that cut the stock price in half. But its international operations are responsible for two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Yesterday the company announced that Marc Samwer, who along with his brothers notoriously creates clones of successful American startups, was stepping down as head of their international operations, to be replaced by the Austrian Veit Dengler. Samwer took over at Groupon’s international operations in 2010, after it bought Citydeal, the Groupon clone he and his brothers created. During his tenure the U.K. arm of Groupon was censured by regulators after it posted a record high 50 violations of that country’s advertising codes, including deals on breast implants that didn’t work and products that simply didn’t exist. In Germany, where Citydeal was based, Groupon has been accused of harsh labor practices and breach of contract, complaints that echoed those around a class action lawsuit here in America. And while Groupon vowed to improve in the wake of these customer and employee complaints, our own Rocky Argawal found the Groupon Promise isn’t as ironcald as it seems at first. New international head Veit Dengler most recently ran computer maker Dell’s Eastern European and Russian operations. He will have his work cut out for him as Groupon tries reverse its losses and claw its way to profitability in this next quarter. Filed under: deals

VENTURE CAPITAL-Groupon's success inspires copycats

Dec 1 - If Google buys the popular daily deal Website, it could fuel the creation of even more clones. Tom Stein of Venture Capital Journal reports: ********************************************************** * Report: Google in talks to buy Groupon for up to $6 bln * Yipit.com aggregates 130-plus Groupon competitor deals * Bloomspot applying Groupon model to luxury purchases WALTHAM, Mass. - When Todd Rideman first heard about Groupon, he figured he could do it, too. After all, what's so hard about putting up a Website, offering a few deals each day from local merchants -- like $20 worth of cupcakes for $10 -- and then watching the cash roll in? So Rideman poured $100,000 of his hard-earned money into his own daily deal site and, at the beginning of the year, launched WowWhatSavings, targeting the Boston area. He quickly learned, however, that building a profitable Groupon clone isn't as easy it looks. "I was able to get the local merchants, but getting people to come to the site was costing a fortune," said Rideman. After six months, he had just a few thousand people on his distribution list. He has since morphed his business into a deal site for restaurants only, and has seen sales perk up. WowWhatSavings is one of more than 130 Websites that offer daily deals like Groupon, according to Yipit, which aggregates the deals. Now, with the New York Times reporting that Google is negotiating to buy Groupon for up to $6 billion, the space is likely to grow even more crowded. Groupon competitors include well-funded, VC-backed companies like LivingSocial and BuyWithMe, as well as boot-strapped start-ups like CoupMe and ScoopCoups. AOL has launched a Groupon clone, as has Wal-Mart and Cox Media. Facebook has started offering local deals, and there's talk of Yahoo and Twitter wanting in. There has already been one acquisition in the space. Woot, which offers a single deal per day, was purchased by Amazon for $110 million in June. "The Internet giants are starting to pay attention to this space because it's an important new driver of revenue," said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, an investor in LivingSocial. "There will be lots of jockeying in the next 18 months, but any acquisition will have to be a major strategic thrust because it will not come cheap." The jockeying is understandable. This is a market estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars per year. That's the amount small businesses spend on advertising with local media like newspapers, television and the yellow pages. Sites like Groupon are disrupting this market, siphoning off an ever-expanding chunk of that revenue. HOW IT WORKS In the Groupon model, local businesses agree to discount their product or service by 50 percent, and then split the revenue 50/50 with Groupon. Deals become valid once a specific number of consumers agree to a purchase. This encourages users to spread the deal via social media, thus the group buying aspect. "I'm not at all surprised by the number of Groupon clones out there," said Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners, which took part in a $135 million round for Groupon in June. "I think anytime you have a company on the Web that grows as quickly and makes as much money as Groupon does, you attract a lot of entrants." Groupon's closest competitor is LivingSocial, which has raised a total of $49 million from Grotech Ventures, Lightspeed, Steve Case's Revolution fund, and U.S. Venture Partners. "You need tens of millions of dollars to be a player in this space," said Liew, who spearheaded a $14 million Series C round for LivingSocial last April. "We told LivingSocial that they needed a sufficient war chest to run fast and catch up with Groupon." Groupon, for its part, has raised a total of $169.8 million since 2008 from Accel, Battery Ventures, Digital Sky Technologies and New Enterprise Associates. The money is primarily used to enter new cities across the globe. Liew contends that Groupon and LivingSocial control the vast majority of the market. But that hasn't stopped new competitors from springing and attracting venture capital. In the last few months alone, several new companies have landed venture funding. One-year-old Bloomspot, which is applying the Groupon model to luxury purchases like spa getaways, raised a $9 million Series A in September from Menlo Ventures (which led the round), Harrison Metal Capital and True Ventures. Meanwhile Google Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in October in newcomer Signpost, a community-powered deals site that raised $1 million from Spark Capital just seven months earlier. There are even aggregators like 2-year-old Yipit, which raised $1.3 million in Series A funding in June from DFJ Gotham Ventures, IA Ventures, RRE Ventures, Ron Conway's SV Angel and a host of other angel investors. Perhaps the biggest threat to Groupon is not the influx of competitors, but the sustainability of its business model. The company has come under fire from some small businesses who complain that they have been overwhelmed by coupon-wielding customers. One cafe owner in Portland said her Groupon offering cost her business $8,000, after swarms of people descended on her shop with half-off coupons. In fact, a new study from the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University found that one-third of businesses don't make money from promotions on Groupon and that 40 percent of businesses said they wouldn't do a social promotion again. "An industry in which 2 in 5 customers are hesitant after a first purchase ... may need to modify its overall strategy," wrote Utpal Dholakia, author of the study. Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research, isn't convinced that Groupon will remain the dominant player. "Just because one company gets 50 million people on its list one year, that doesn't mean that next year someone else could not grow as rapidly," Mulpuru said. "Has Groupon fundamentally attracted customers that nobody else can attract? No, because they ask so little of their consumers -- simply subscribe to a list. But by the nature of asking so little, someone else can come in and do the same thing." (Venture Capital Journal is a Thomson Reuters publication. Contact editor in chief Lawrence Aragon at lawrence.aragon@thomsonreuters.com.)

Import & Export Procedures

Import

For import of all goods (including controlled and non-controlled items) into Singapore, you are required to:

• Obtain an IN Permit through TradeNet® before goods are imported into Singapore, and
• Pay the duty and/or Goods and Services Tax (GST) due at the prevailing rate at the time of importation.

Import of High-Technology Items Certain high-technology items are subject to export control by the exporting country. In this case, the exporter in the exporting country may ask the Singapore importer to provide an Import Certificate and Delivery Verification (ICDV) so that the exporter can seek approval from his government authority to export the items. Importers can apply for an ICDV from Singapore Customs. Items covered by an ICDV must be imported into Singapore directly, and are not to be diverted to other countries.

Export

For export of goods out of Singapore, you are required to:

• Obtain an OUT Permit through TradeNet® within 3 days of export if your goods are non-controlled and are exported by sea or air*, or
• Obtain an OUT Permit through TradeNet® before goods are exported out of Singapore if your goods are controlled or are exported by road and rail, or
• Obtain an OUT (Temporary Consignment) Permit through TradeNet® before exporting goods previously imported under the Temporary Import Scheme out of Singapore, or
• Obtain an OUT (Re-imported Goods) permit throught TradeNet® before goods are exported under the Temporary Export Scheme.

*Note: Advance Export Declaration will be implemented with effect from 1 April 2013. Transhipment For transhipment of controlled items within the same Free Trade Zone, you are required to:

• Obtain a Transhipment (TTF) Permit through TradeNet if the transhipment goods were previously brought into the Free Trade Zone from overseas for temporary storage in the Free Trade Zone, pending transhipment via the same Free Trade Zone.

For transhipment of goods from one Free Trade Zone to another, you are required to:

• Obtain a Transhipment (TTI) Permit through TradeNet if the transhipment goods were previously brought into the Free Trade Zone from overseas and subsequently transhipped via the second Free Trade Zone.