Have  you exhausted your supply of local leads and want to expand your market by looking for international trade leads?  Then you’ll need to start making sure your products are in a state where they can be bought by importers from many different countries.   You’ll find that rules and regulations vary from country to country, your marketing literature will have to change and what about things like packaging and finance?

We’ve got a new article in the guide on this very topic that will get you asking: are my products ready for export?

What on earth is a Bubble Ice Bong?!!!  You can definitely find the weirdest sounding products by searching through our sell leads.  They may sound odd but many of them are ideal for the small business looking for that special product that’s going to sell like hot cake (especially in the lucrative run-up to Christmas).

There’s a new article in the guide section that touches on just this topic.  Trade Leads to Wealth (Yeah, we like the pun too!) discusses how you might increase your chances of financial security by searching online trade leads for that wealth producing product.

So what is a Bubble Ice Bong I hear you ask – best leave you to work it out yourselves, let us know if it makes you a fortune!

So the new Standard and Basic Membership system went live at the end of last month. Whew!!! It has been such a stressful time, so much to take care of!

Happily it went without a hitch and the number of Standard members is rising (more slowly than we would have hoped but we’ll give it time).

Just to recap on the differences, Standard members (they pay a small membership fee) can post up to 50 Sell Trade Leads, 50 Products, unlimited Buy Trade Leads and unlimited Partner Trade Leads, have an extended company profile including more contact details. They can also post Documents and appear higher in lists and search results. It all serves to make their company and products a lot more visible to Buyers and, we all hope, will help increase the volume of international trade these members enjoy.

For the time being Basic members can post 2 Sell Leads, 1 Partner Trade Lead, Unlimited Buy Trade Leads, 2 Products and a Company Profile. This subscription level is free and is really aimed at Buyers.

Those of you who are considering subscribing might be interested to know we’re running a promotion until the end of this month – 33% off the first quarter’s membership fees!

Love this, it really puts things in perspective!

Sadly nobody on the trade portal is selling trips to Arcturus and beyond but if you’re interested in making a go of it yourself why not buy some nitromethane?  The trade lead details sound pretty technical but apparently one of its uses is as a rocket propellant.

Take a quick scan through the trade leads and you’ll notice the large number of Chinese companies selling shoes – mainly sports shoes with big brand names. Here’s one such trade lead.

I couldn’t help thinking about them whilst I read ‘A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers‘, a book that’s recently been published, written by a Chinese woman – Xiaolu Guo.

It’s a romantic comedy about a young lady whose parents run a shoe factory in China. She’s sent to England to learn English and we get an amusing look at how she grapples with the differences in language, custom and her new found sexual freedoms. Well worth a read.