When it comes to business energy tariffs and deals, they are not quite as straight forward as what the domestic rates are. Equally, if you ever need to change the tariff or the provider of your business energy, you will also experience that this is not a simple process. The main ways in which it differs to domestic energy are listed below.
Off the shelf solutions do not exist – with domestic energy, you are able to easily look at and compare all of the different tariffs that are currently available on the market from the various suppliers. However, when it comes to looking at business energy and comparing deals, it does not quite work the same way. Instead of this, the energy provider assesses each business in order to see what their individual needs are and produces a one off quote based on these findings. Whilst this provides more certainty over exactly what a business will be paying each and every month for their energy, it makes the process of comparing tariffs much more difficult. However, there are websites out there that do all for business energy comparison to be done.
Contracts are typically longer – whilst both variable and fixed rate tariffs are available to businesses, the length of term that these are agreed to are typically much longer and can even go for as long as five years. Until the renewal window is reached, a business is not able to search around for deals with other energy providers. This window usually comes into effect anywhere between six to one month before the contract comes to an end.
Rates are usually cheaper – because business energy is purchased in bulk by the providers, it means that it can be offered to those using it at a much discounted rate. This is in contrast to domestic energy that is purchased in much smaller amounts by the providers each and every month. However, because enough energy is purchased to see a business out for the entirety of their contract, it means that if they want to leave before this date, it is not an easy or cheap thing to do.
No dual fuel option – unlike as is the case with pretty much all domestic energy providers, there are no options for businesses to take out a single deal with an energy provider for both their electricity and gas usage. This is unfortunate as often this is a way for domestic customers to save a great deal of money. Because of this fact, businesses have to hunt around for separate deals for both their electricity and gas.
Cooling off periods do not exist – when signing up to a domestic energy deal, you will have a two week cooling off period, which means that during that time, you are able to cancel the contract without being penalized for doing so. This does not exist with business energy deals, meaning that once a business has signed a contract, that is it, there is no going back without being penalized for doing so.
Since more businesses are now going digital, the need for software to help them in their day-to-day operations is also increasing each year. From document and file management to customer service software, the demand for software as a service (SaaS) keeps on growing. This demand means a lot of possibilities to thrive as a SaaS business owner. However, because the competition is tough, you’ll have to come up with the right strategy if you want to experience significant growth.
Given that numerous individuals use the internet daily, online visibility should be your priority, and you have to learn how potential clients can find you. It’s advisable to start off by aiming to rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs) to ensure high visibility to prospective customers needing your service.
The SaaS market is expanding, with many different factors contributing to its success. It’s essential to know how you can maintain your company’s growth in this competitive market, so keep reading.
1. Build A Strong Brand
A strong brand is the foundation of a successful SaaS company. From design to tone, your branding should be cohesive across all channels. A consistent look and feel can help clients identify with you as an organization, establish value for what you offer, and set clear expectations about how customers will interact with your product or service in the future.
A strong brand can simplify your marketing efforts because you can establish a baseline level of trust with your customers by building on what they already know about you. In addition, strong branding will help your customers understand what to expect from your product or service and speed up the decision-making process.
2.Use Content Marketing And Social Media
To establish your SaaS business as an expert in the field, you have to know your audience and focus on providing them with content relevant to their interests. One way of doing this is by creating blog posts, videos, and podcasts, among others. The information found in those types of content can be used as a starting point for discussions and attract potential clients who might not have been aware of you before. They’ll also allow you to establish your company as a thought leader in the field, increasing trust and possibly leading to more conversions.
And don’t forget about social media. Social media is an excellent way of connecting with prospective clients because it gives them a chance to get involved in conversations related to their interests. It’s also the perfect way of introducing your company to a broader audience since most internet users are now in the habit of ‘following’ people or brands on social media.
3.Offer Special Pricing Packages
People might use your product in different ways. So if your product is subscription-based, offer special pricing packages, perhaps one for personal use and another for group memberships.
Those who are after your product for personal use may not want to pay the same price as someone who’ll use it for business. Offer them a lower price point to make them feel that they’re paying the right price. Knowing how to set the right price for your SaaS product will allow you to maximize your profits without sacrificing customer satisfaction and fair pricing.
4. Create A Strong Marketing Plan And Find The Right Marketing Channel
It can be easy for a SaaS business owner to focus on their product development and customer service strategy. But they forget how important it is to have a comprehensive plan for integrating their company into the marketplace via online and offline marketing channels. A strong SaaS business marketing plan should identify one’s marketing goals, their target users, and the marketing channels they’ll use to reach those clients.
To create a plan to help your business grow, you may start with determining your goals. What do you want to achieve, and when do you want it to happen? Then, establish a clear understanding of your target audience. What’s your typical user’s location? What’s the nature of their business? Ask those questions to yourself so you’ll be able to define and focus on people who surely need your service.
Lastly, be picky in choosing marketing channels to reach your audience. You don’t want to exert too much effort on channels that your target market doesn’t use. Find out where your future customers spend their time, and you’ll know how to reach them.
5.Come Up With Incentives For People To Sign Up
Signing up for a subscription service is often a difficult decision for customers. They may be hesitant to commit to the payment every month, or they might not know what they’re signing up for and want to try it first before committing.
Thus, it would be best to offer incentives or free trials in order for people to sign up and try the product first. This way, you’ll further introduce them to it and show them the value it can give. This move may attract more clients and increase your revenue in the long run.
Free trials can also make it easier for them to decide because even without shelling out money, they’ll be able to discover what they’re getting every month if they subscribe.
6. Offer User-Friendly Features And Design
Some factors that can help grow a company’s SaaS are user-friendly functionality and the software’s design. It’s essential to keep those two things in mind while creating new products or upgrading old ones because they may affect the number of people who want to use your product.
SaaS businesses shouldn’t focus only on the value of what their product is offering but also the user experience they’re providing. Therefore, it’s a must to ensure user-friendly functionality.
Design and aesthetics, which include the look and feel of the website or app, also impact the number of users. This is because when a person finds something visually pleasing, they naturally want to keep exploring it.
7.Keep Customers Happy And Satisfied
Both you and your customer will be much more successful in using SaaS as a tool if both parties know that it can work for the long term. For this reason, you should be focusing on ensuring your customer’s satisfaction in every interaction.
To have a customer sign up and make their first payment for the subscription shouldn’t be your only goal as a SaaS business owner. You want to retain those customers so they can experience the full benefits of your software and keep on paying the monthly fee. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to increase their retention rates.
Once your customer signs up, you want to make sure they have the information they need to navigate their first few months effectively and without any significant issues. To keep them happy, see to it that they have the best experience possible. This means responding quickly and efficiently whenever a customer requests help of any kind. You can also try following up with them to solve their problem as soon as it’s identified.
Make it a habit to continuously develop and improve your product and listen to your customers’ suggestions, too. Consider their feedback and apply what might work for them to your product. Don’t be afraid of change. Embrace it and make sure you’re constantly evolving with the changing needs in your industry.
8.Find Your Niche
Many SaaS businesses are starting to figure out their nicheâ€â€what they specialize in and how they can get a competitive advantage. This is important because it would help reduce the competition and, ultimately, let your business grow more quickly without any hindrance. But be careful not to overextend yourself when doing this, or you might find yourself spread out too thin.
Some popular niches are education, business management, and manufacturing. If you’re unsure where to start with your niche, try looking at competitors and see if you can either do what they’re doing better or provide something new and different. You can also research to see what’s currently in demand or what you could provide that would add value for the consumer. For example, many people in the education niche try to find out what online teaching methods work best for their learners. You could find this competitive advantage by surveying your audience about how often they’d like a course taught live versus recorded (or vice versa).
It’s also crucial to stay updated on what’s happening by following the competition as well as new trends, innovations, changes, or improvements that other business leaders are making. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can spot an opportunity for improvement when it comes to something that’s already out. Remember that your niche should focus on something that solves problems that people are currently experiencing. This tip will ensure that your SaaS business will be able to provide a meaningful service.
Final Words
The demand for SaaS businesses is growing, but the competition gets more challenging as well. Therefore, if you want your business to stand out and grow, you need a robust strategy that includes finding your niche, building a brand, and developing an effective marketing plan with appropriate distribution channels.
Also, a successful SaaS company invests in content marketing and offers incentives to people who sign up. They should also constantly improve the features they offer and their software design so users will stay happy. If you take these measures, your customers will stick around even when new competitors enter the market.
Liam Brown is an SEO specialist. He has been optimizing marketing content for over five years. He imparts his knowledge and skills in SEO through guest posting. He loves hiking, fishing, and boating during his leisure time. He has a bulldog named Vance.
Can you imagine a legitimate business without a website today? Neither can we.
Yet, a staggering 46% of small businesses don’t have a website. On the other hand, almost 90% of people are internet users in countries like Canada and the US. See the discrepancy there?
If you still don’t have a website for your business, it’s very likely that you’re missing out on a lot of customers who are looking for you online. We get it. Building a website can seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be.
Traditional website building is time- and resource-consuming. Modern website builders, on the other hand, are not. Let’s take a quick look at why a website builder is the way to go if you want a quick and affordable website for your business.
Why Should You Move Your Business Online with a Website Builder?
Most small businesses who don’t have a website yet keep postponing it not because they don’t know about the advantages of an online presence. They simply think that building a website it’s expensive. And they are write for the most part.
Building a website the traditional way requires:
Market and marketing research to know what would appeal to your customers.
A UX/UI team to create your website from scratch.
A copywriter to populate it with text.
A maintenance team to help you whenever you need to change something to your website.
In other words, you need an entire team of experts with IT, digital marketing, SEO, eCommerce, and research expertise. If you choose to go the traditional way, of course.
What if we told you that there is a better way to get your business online and that the two things you need are:
15 minutes to spare
$0 to get started.
Does this sound like a better deal? If so, meet your new favorite solution: website building with BOWWE.
How to Move Your Business Online with BOWWE, the User-Friendly Website Builder
BOWWE is a website builder created by developers with over 12 years in the field. Their 12+ years in the field, plus the community’s knowledge can successfully supplement your need for market research. On BOWWE, you can create stunning websites using templates that have already been heavily market-tested, so you know they work from the very beginning.
This way, you will save a lot of time. There are hundreds of templates you can choose from and, better yet, you also have some pre-defined categories.
To get started on BOWWE, all you have to do is create a free account, choose your template, and start building your stunning website. The interface is super easy to use – just drag and drop the items you want to add to your website. You need zero coding skills, zero design experience, and zero IT knowledge.
This means that you don’t have to pay for expensive maintenance teams in the future, either. The plug-and-play interface allows you to make changes easily, by yourself whenever you need to.
BOWWE is more than a website builder. As soon as you’ve finished creating your website, you will find countless tools to help you promote it online, connect it with social media profiles, make your first sale, and even come up with a strategy to get your customers to come back.
Why is BOWWE better than working with online developers or solutions like Shopify, Magento, WordPress, or Wix? Well, a few reasons come to mind:
You can create websites much faster (15 minutes, on average).
Your website will perform better in speed tests.
SEO-friendly: thanks to the code behind our website builder, your website will rank in SERPs fast with minimal intervention on your side.
It takes less than five minutes to operate a change in the intuitive dashboard. You don’t need an expensive developer to help you with anything.
All websites created with BOWWE are responsive and work seamlessly on any device, fixed or mobile.
BOWWE websites can be easily integrated with other solutions.
Publish your offers faster than your competitors. With the one-clickpublish feature, BOWWE allows you to publish your offers with a single click on your website, on social media, and even on third-party websites.
Build as many pages as you want.
High-end security ensured by the BOWWE super-secure servers and the highly skilled security engineers in the team.
Don’t need an entire website? No problem! On BOWWE you can create anything you want: an online portfolio, a landing page, an online CV, a micro page to help you get customers through social media, and more. The world is your oyster!
Ready to meet your customers where they spend most of their time – online? BOWWE is here to help you do just that quickly and effortlessly. Check templates here to see how your website could look like and get started on building the website your business deserves. It’s completely free to get started, so what have you got to lose?
Project co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund under the Intelligent Development Operational Program 2014-2020.
Project:  “The internationalization of the company and promotion of the BOWWE brandâ€Â. Priority axis 3 Support for innovation in enterprises, Measure 3.3 Support for the promotion and internationalization of innovative enterprises, Sub-measure 3.3.3: Support for SMEs in the promotion of product brands – Go to Brand.
Adriana Tica is an expert marketer and copywriter, with 10 years in the field, most of which were spent marketing tech companies. She is the Owner and Founder of Idunn. In October 2019, she also launched Copywritech, a digital marketing agency that provides copywriting, SEO content writing, and strategy services to companies in the tech industry.
There are several key steps to build the best social media marketing software in 2021. Good social media marketing can transform brands, drive traffic, and generate conversations. With so many valuable advantages, digital advertising products built for social networks are more in-demand than ever before. As an experienced software developer, there has never been a better time to design, develop, and deploy your own software solution. This way, you can maximize your earning potential and challenge yourself with a constant learning curve. To help you get started, read on to learn about how to build the best social media marketing software in 2021.
Identify Your Audience
First and foremost, identify the target audience for your social media marketing software. Start off by conducting basic market research. This will help you strengthen your position, minimize investment risk, and spot emerging trends. At the same time, these tactics facilitate strategic planning, which is absolutely essential to stay ahead of the competition. Next, define your user pain points and purchase path. Once you clearly understand these elements, begin gathering demographic data regarding your target users. Specifically, you want to collect detailed information on consumer location, behavior, and income level. Certainly, identifying your audience is an important first step to build a custom social media marketing software.
Outline Essential Features
Next, outline the core features that your social media marketing software will contain. At a minimum, your software should contain basic features for post scheduling, social listening, as well as monitoring. In addition, build out advanced content curation, reporting, and analytics capabilities. Simultaneously, consider integrating automation for likes, favorites, and shares. Other important features to consider include multi-channel management and keyword research. In fact, some software engineers even reserve space for advertisement planning and organic follower tracking functionality. Surely, outlining your essential features is a pivotal step to successfully build a social media marketing software.
Set Up Your Tool Stack
Once you have your features fully-planned, set up your social media software development tool stack. There are several tools that will help you drive productivity, efficiency, and flexibility across your SDLC. For example, many development teams leverage container registries as a single access point to manage, organize, and control your Docker images. Using a container registry, you can optimize access control, scan for potential vulnerabilities, and then make patches as needed. In addition, you can implement these tools to require authentication of users, as well as for software images. Indeed, configuring your tech stack is an important step to build your social media marketing solution.
Promote Your Software Product
Now, you are ready to promote your custom social media software product. Start off by creating an interesting video that showcases your core features, value proposition, and company story. Of course, this establishes user trust, builds brand authority, and demonstrates your system benefits. Then, consider offering new user giveaways, such as free trails, freemium discounts, or branded swag. You can even incentivize potential customer by not requiring credit card information for sign-ups. To further entice users, write useful content, create visual infographics, as well as digital explainers. Absolutely, social media marketing software promotion is vital to build a successful product in 2021.
Develop Your Monetization Strategy
At this point, it is time to develop your monetization strategy. One of the most popular ways to monetize your products is the freemium pricing model. This requires you to provide a basic version of your product for free, but charge users for additional services, functionality, or digital goods. In addition, you can always charge a flat, one-time fee for the sale of your applications. You can charge users extra for specific value-adding features, such as tech support. Following these processes, you can better understand market opportunities, the size of your sector, as well as your value potential. Of course, this will help you maximize profitability and sustain a market competitive edge. Definitely, developing a monetization strategy is important to build the best social media marketing software in 2021.
There are a few important steps to build the best social media marketing software in 2021. First off, identify your product’s target audience. Next, outline the key features that your software product will contain. Once you have done so, set up your development tool stack. Now, you are ready to promote your software product using the best marketing strategies and techniques. At this point, it is time to develop your monetization strategy. Follow the points highlighted above to learn about how to build the best social media marketing software in 2021.
Many people lost their jobs in 2020. Unfortunately, not all businesses were able to stay open at full capacity and this meant that lay-offs were inevitable. Now that things are opened up again and businesses can operate with all the staff they need, more job opportunities are available than ever before. If you’re looking to go back to work or those unemployment benefits are running out, here’s what you can do to get ready.
Create an Online Resume
Leverage sites like LinkedIn to create a resume online. Stay active on the site as well. This can help potential employers find you or give you job suggestions in the industry you need. It also shows future employers that you are tech-savvy and have the skills needed to function in a post-pandemic world. An online resume is one tool you can use to help you return to work in 2021.
Update Your Resume
If your resume is still showing only everything from before 2020, it’s time to freshen things up. Whether you want to break into a new industry or get a job in the industry you were in pre-pandemic, it’s important to have a resume that reflects all your pertinent jobs and skills. Take time to update your resume and make it reflect the things you accomplished in 2020. There are ways to still stand out even if you were technically jobless. Don’t be afraid to get creative and include tasks that may seem mundane. It helps to show that you’re motivated and ready to get back to work.
Brush Up On Your Skills
If you haven’t already, there are tons of ways to dust off your skills. Whether you take a Udemy course or do something on LinkedIn Learning, there is no reason why you can’t better yourself. If you’ve been fully out of work, these courses can help show potential employers that your skill set hasn’t atrophied this year. If you’re looking for work among the masses in 2021, updated skills are critical. Many people have turned to freelancing, and gigs like UberEats just to get by, but if you’re looking at getting back into the professional world, you’ll need to show you still have what it takes.
Prepare For Background Checks
Many companies require background checks for employment. Whether you’ll be in a role with access to computer programs, financial data, or sensitive customer information, a background check helps employers weed out criminals who may not be right for the role. Make sure you have all your addresses available, former names, and even your previous jobs. Background checks will look at all of these things and more. Additionally, some places may require a credit report, so gather together the things you need to help them run this check.
Be Honest About Struggles
Let’s be honest, 2020 was a hard year for everyone. Be ready to share some of the struggles you had during the pandemic whether it was figuring out how to get work done with your kids around, taking jobs that weren’t your favorite to pay the bills, or simply managing stress during a turbulent time. This will help employers see how well you operate under pressure and that you can come up with solutions to problems.
Ask the Right Questions
Now more than ever, businesses are considering work from home options permanently. However, some companies are wanting people to be in the office. It’s important to ask about the expectations for hours, flexible work environments, whether you can work remotely all the time, and more. Additionally, you can also ask things about the precautions your potential employer is taking to continue to reduce the spread of COVID and other illnesses at work. Ask them what their cleaning policies are. Discuss if they are limiting the number of people in meetings and what the ventilation is like. These are just some of the new questions to think through post-pandemic.
Finding a new job in 2021 won’t be as challenging as it was in 2020. There are many places hiring now, and with more places opening up, it’s creating an influx of jobs. It’s important to prepare for job hunting by getting yourself online, sharing the work you can do, and being transparent about the challenges you faced in 2020 and how you overcame them.
Mobile training is the newest buzzword in the marketing training environment today. There’s no denying that the world has already developed a culture of mobile dependency over the past few years. Rather than being viewed as a distraction, L&D leaders have embraced it as an opportunity to provide quick and engaging learning content to their marketing teams, who are constantly busy with their daily responsibilities.
However, it is not enough to simply transform e-learning courses and modules into PDFs and make them mobile-accessible. To make your mobile training effective, you need content that is short but concise  and that’s where microlearning comes into the picture. By making learning mobile-friendly and easily digestible, learners can freely take their courses anytime and anywhere to their ultimate convenience. It is the perfect solution for busy marketers, who barely have enough time to spare for training.
Getting started with Mobile microlearning
Mobile microlearning apps such as EdApp can help you get started with your mobile marketing training. With their advanced authoring tool, creating micro lessons is just as easy as dragging and dropping your content into their ready-made interactive slides. If you don’t have many resources on hand, they also have a comprehensive e-learning content library filled with editable courseware  completely free to all users.
Here are some of their free marketing training courses to check out:
EdApp’s Digital Marketing course will walk your marketing team on the key principles of digital marketing, including its history, advantages, key channels, as well as its competitive edge over traditional marketing. Here, they will learn some tips and ideas on how they can utilize digital marketing to grow their audience and establish a strong presence in an ever-evolving marketplace. It also covers some basic digital marketing terms or lingo that they can significantly use in this field.
As you’ll notice, this course has been broken down into four microlessons, each having content structured into small chunks focusing on only one particular area to prevent information overload. The topics are also put together using lay-friendly terms, ensuring that your team will be able to follow easily.
Learning the concepts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how you can increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your website is also vital for marketing teams. This free training course will equip your employees with a primer on the key advantages of investing in SEO and a 5-point SEO action plan that they can use to increase their search visibility online. It has also included some successful case studies on how this marketing technique has influenced the growth of various organizations, which your team can use as motivation to strengthen their SEO strategy.
What’s great about this 6-part course is that each lesson is enhanced with a few quizzes and gamification features, transforming your training into a fun and engaging activity, rather than just a boring chore that they are required to take.
EdApp’s Embracing the Startup Mentality course is designed to encourage both the startup teams and the battle-scarred employees to embrace the startup mentality and ignite a unique sense of passion for achieving greater business success in the future. In this course, you and your team will learn about the vital importance of a startup mindset and how you can apply this theory to practice. They will also discover some unwritten rules for making agile decisions like a startup pro, alongside some pointers to remember if they made some bad choices.
The biggest advantage of this course is that it comes fully editable – meaning, they are yours to edit or rebrand. If needed, you may also combine it with other marketing courses to increase the value of your mobile training.
If you have no technical experience creating mobile marketing training, we highly recommend putting your first lessons using the EdApp platform. This app is built with a range of powerful tools and interactive features such as its authoring tool, Spaced Repetition, Rapid Refresh, and Gamification, all geared at helping you design and deploy beautiful, engaging, and effective training courses. Get in touch with them for more information.
What’s your worth, as a brand? The answer is intrinsically linked to your investor relations performance. This platform governs how you communicate key financial details about your growth to customers, investors, and shareholders. It’s one of the best ways to retain current investors and grow your shareholder base.
To ensure you’re framing your data the right way, you need to find an industry-leading investor relations tools and services provider. These companies offer a full suite of IR technology that helps you boost investor engagement.
What does this technology look like in practice? Here are some IR tools that can help you gain traction in capital markets.
An Engaging IR Website
The importance of your online presence cannot be understated. Your website might be one of the first impressions a prospective investor has of your company, so it’s crucial you create a well-designed, results-driven platform.
An intuitive website also helps retain current investors. The best IR websites will communicate your story, goals, and value proposition seamlessly, so your shareholders can stay updated with any changes in your direction.
Virtual Events
Software that allows you to host virtual events builds on the firm foundation of transparency created by your website. Your virtual events take communication one step further by coordinating global meetings and presentations to your shareholders, allowing you to share timely and accurate information during earnings, AGMs, and other critical gatherings.
These virtual events can also help supplement the need for in-person roadshows, allowing you to reach potential investors stationed all over the world without leaving your home office.
An IR tool provider can coordinate fully branded events, multi-presenter video streaming, conference calls, interactive polling, Q&As, downloadable resources, and browser agnostics  all backed by 24/7 support.
IR CRM Software
Another communication keystone is CRM software. This particular tool in the suite of IR tech aggregates your analytics, monitoring software, and relationship management in one platform.
The best IR service providers understand your CRM must be scalable to your needs, so you should look for a company that provides made-to-order services over a one-size-all approach. It should also come with nimble AI targeting that helps you predict your shareholder’s behavior.
IR Surveillance
You can maximize your high-performing website, virtual events, and CRM platforms with IR surveillance. This gives you insight into your shareholder movements in real-time rather than having to wait for glacial quarter-end reports.
An IR tool and service provider understands you need to move quickly to stay ahead of the curve, so it prioritizes critical insights and analytics about who’s driving your stock price. This information puts you in the driver’s seat, giving you the ability to make informed business decisions that reflect the needs of your shareholders.
Knowing what motivates your shareholders can also help you target new ones while responding to activist campaigns.
In the end, an effective approach to IR doesn’t involve just one strategy but four. Remember this as you search for an IR tool and service provider. After gaining success, some companies sell their programs separately, but you’ll want to find one provider that offers a full suite of IR tools in one place.
If you are importing goods into the U.S., whether a large or small quantity, it can be intimidating, mainly when figuring out what bond type to acquire for merchandise. If you’re a one-time importer, a single entry bond can get your shipment through the border without much cost or hassle. However, there are circumstances where a single entry bond won’t work. Among the many issues to consider as an importer, finding the proper Bond for your business is essential.
Why Do You Need a Customs Bond?
All imports valued at over $2500, or $250 for Chinese goods, must be accompanied by a Customs Bond. This is a standard requirement of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to release your goods.
Why do you need a bond? The fundamental purpose is that the Bond serves as a guarantee – or financial contract that U.S. customs will receive the taxes, fees, and duties upon importing goods into U.S. trade. They also ensure compliance with all relevant state regulations. The difference between a single entry bond and a continuous bond is that the former provides this guarantee for one single import transaction. Every further individual consignment must have its own customs bond.
Another question that comes up is whether an importer can decide not to secure a U.S. Customs Bond. The answer is no. International carriers, importers, warehouse operators, and even secure area operators must obtain an import bond.
What Is a Single Entry Bond?
A Single Entry Bond or Single Entry Transaction Bond (STB) is a Customs Bond for a one-time shipment through a designated U.S. port. Occasional or one-time importers use this Bond with low-cost value goods. However, higher-cost shipments usually require a Continuous Bond.
Once a Single Entry Bond has been secured, the goods must pass through the agreed port of entry. Importers cannot decide to change up where or how their shipment arrives after it is put down in writing.
Both Single and Continuous Bonds meet all federal requirements and provide the guarantee for an import transaction. The bond value varies according to the commodities’ import regulations. If no PGA is required, the bond value will be the commercial value × 3. If a PGA is required, the bond value will be the commercial value + duties & taxes. Single Entry Bonds can be written at a minimum value of $100.
How Do You Apply For a Single Entry Bond?
The Single Entry Bond application process is not complicated; however, specific details are required. An essential thing to note is the type of item you’ll be importing and the total bond amount you’ll need. Again, this is based on the value of the goods plus duties, etc.
Other Important Data to Have On-Hand Includes:
Importer’s name and address
Importer’s federal tax I.D.
Port name
Country of origin
Value of merchandise
Making It Easier
eezyimport empowers importers to become self-filers. Cutting out intermediaries saves time and import costs. Importers can choose eezyimport’s fast and efficient DIY Self-model (self ISF or Entry filing) or DIY Broker model. eezyimport’s platform also offers competitively priced Single ISF customs bonds and Single Entry Customs bonds. The company aims to boost businesses by making importing a cost-efficient and straightforward process!
The sudden occurrence of the COVID pandemic was shocking to people all over the world. It was immediately understood that there would be both short- and long-term effects. It’s not different for the world of software development outsourcing. If your company benefits or is planning to start benefiting from outsourcing, read the article and find out how you can get the most out of the deal in this new reality.
When the pandemic hit, everyone was afraid how it was going to affect every fabric of life, including the world of software development outsourcing. Companies were afraid of a looming economic crisis that would leave them without their sources of income. Outsourcing vendors feared that it would in turn decrease demand for their services.
Luckily, most of the pessimistic predictions did not come true. However, the COVID pandemic still changed a lot for both clients and providers of software development outsourcing. Let’s take a look at 5 big changes.
More Projects to Do
Surprisingly (or not!), the pandemic ended up increasing the demand for software development services! Stuck in a new economic reality, in which people were not as eager to leave their house as before, the companies needed to digitize their businesses quicker than ever before. Many investments planned for years to come were sped up. Many other businesses reinvented their business models in order to fit into the new internet-driven market. With that, outsourcing vendors experienced a spike in the demand for their services.
Do (Faster!) or Die
The companies were pressured by the new circumstances to change themselves as fast as possible. This meant that their new software projects emphasised the time-to-market and were full of hard-to-meet deadlines, crunches and stress. It was hard on the outsourcing vendors as well. Those that were able to meet those needs and proved their quality would prosper in the COVID pandemic.
Project Planning for Long-Term Cooperation
Many outsourcing vendors decided to hold many meetings with their prospective clients prior to engaging in a project. The scope of these meetings involved not only the project, but also the general rules of cooperation. The time spent on these issues suggests preparation for a much longer cooperation in the future. There’s more!
Understand My Business Context!
It’s clear in the way companies and vendors work now that the ability to understand the business circumstances of the client company is more important than ever before. It means that the developers on the vendor side should well understand to whom the software is marketed, what needs it solves and how its target market works. All of that is vital for producing quality software products in the long run.
What do the two last changes have in common?
New Way of Building Outsourcing Client-Vendor Relationship
They both have to do with the new way companies and vendors are cooperating today – they are putting more emphasis on creating a lasting long-term relationship that may involve many projects done together over a period of many years. A cooperation like this is likely to only improve over time, as the mutual understanding of each other’s businesses increases. It also spares the client the time to search for a new vendor each time they start a new project.
Simply Put – Get Involved!
As you can see, the post-COVID reality is not so bad for the world of software development. But it does require some adjustments. Creating a long-term relationship with your vendor is great but it means that you should be even more careful and selective when making your choice regarding your software development outsourcing vendor. But this is a topic for another article. Good luck in making the most out of this new reality!
I am Rimsha Outreach Specialist. Providing Link Building Services all over the world for the last 2 years.
Losing data is a common problem of almost all users and we keep on finding ways to recover the lost data. There are many methods to restore the deleted files from the SD card, flash drive, or a corrupted hard drive. The most reliable method is run data recovery. We will review one of the best data recovery software; iBoysoft Data Recovery, its pros, cons, and other features, and whether you should buy the premium version of this data recovery software or not.
The Features of iBoysoft Data Recovery:
iBoysoft Data Recovery is the data recovery software that can recover deleted or lost data from any type of storage device. It has the following key features.
It performs deep scans in the operating system to find the lost document or file.
It can recover deleted file, partition loss files from corrupted, formatted, unreadable Mac hard drives, external hard disk, SD card, memory card, USB drive, etc.
This software has a key feature that allows the user to preview the document before restoring it. This can help the users to view the lost file and reconfirm the file before recovering it.
The tool is easy to use and any person can use this software even if he/she has never experienced using this software.
The data recovery software has different installations for Mac/Windows. So the users can use this software easily on different operating systems to recover the lost data.
What Are the Pros of iBoysoft Data Recovery?
There are pros and benefits of this data recovery software.
1. Recover 1GB data:
iBoysoft Data Recovery gives a 1GB data free trial version. It means you can recover 1 GB of files, documents, photos, and videos from this software.
2. Works on the Latest Updated Operating System:
This data recovery software can work on the latest version of Windows and Mac. iBoysoft Data Recovery for Windows is compatible with Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP and Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/2003. And its Mac version supports from macOS 11 to Mac OS X 10.7.
3. Easy to Use:
This software is very easy to use and any beginner with no technical experience can use it because all the instructions are very clear on the screen and it is great for users of every type.
4. Safe to Use, Protect Data Against Viruses:
iBoysoft Data Recovery performs protective and safe scans on the file to recover lost data. This recovery is not pirated, it has proper authentication which builds trust in this software. The users can use this software without any fear to lose personal or important data.
5. Great Customer Support:
The customer support of this tool is very supportive, attentive, available 24/7 and answers all the queries of customers in a few minutes.
The performance of iBoysoft Data Recovery is excellent in different file lost scenarios that occur like deletion, partition files, system failure, power failure, corrupted system, etc.
What Are the Cons of iBoysoft Data Recovery?
Although this tool also has some drawbacks and low points that are described below.
1. Does Not Operate on Linux:
This data recovery software operates on Windows and Mac efficiently but unfortunately, the software does not work on a Linux operating system.
2. Time-Consuming Process:
T iBoysoft data recovery software performs deep scans but it takes a lot of time took hours to recover a single file. The overall performance of this file recovery software is good but the scanning time of it should be decreased.
Conclusion:
The iBoysoft data recovery software is a great way to retrieve and recover the lost data. Every system and software has benefits and shortcomings. The premium of this version can recover a large amount of data and premium and advanced features to recover the boot system. It offers a money-back guarantee in case if you are not able to recover it, that’s why it’s worth buying the premium version of this software.
Katrina Yuan is a tech lover who digs IT trends and helps others with practical tips and solutions. Until now, she's been writing and sharing tons of related articles.
Are you still stuck on the fence about buying Instagram Followers? Let us map out the pros and cons before you decide.
What started out as a way to share a cache of poorly timed, or perfectly curated, vacation photos has become one of the best ways to market your business. Instagram has over one billion active monthly users. That’s nearly an ⅛ of the entire world population.
The Instagram users are global, coming from anywhere and everywhere, and because the platform deals more with visual content than it does anything else, posts aren’t limited by language or culture.
So it can be pretty easy to see how a social media platform dedicated to disseminating pictures of your chunky cat, grandmother’s 80th birthday, or a brand new baby has become the go-to hub for internet breakout of small to medium online business.
Through advertising campaigns and cross-functionality with other platforms (like Facebook), Instagram has become a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for your business.
Pros and Cons of Buying Instagram Followers in Canada, in Australia, or Anywhere Else, Really.
But how exactly do you get your business to stand out above the thousands of Canadian businesses that are already utilizing the power of Instagram marketing? Well, you produce excellent content, interact with your customer base, and get a lot of people to follow you. Which can definitely sound much easier than it is. As a new business, just starting up, snagging a good follower base is hard. It takes time, dedication, and near-constant engagement.
Or… you could simply buy Instagram followers to get things started quickly. Buying Instagram followers can be a really useful way to give your business a boost on the social radar, helping to build authority quickly, and continue to amass real followers. But there are some things you’ll need to know before you start handing out cash for accounts.
If you do decide to purchase some, make sure that you compare the best websites to buy Instagram followers in Canada before you make a final decision. The Canadian business that is #1 on Google right now is called buymorefans, their website looks good but I never tried it myself.
Are you looking to buy Instagram followers from Australia?
If you are an Australian citizen currently living here and you are reading this blog post, here’s a similar list of the best websites to buy Instagram followers in Australia. It seems like the same company called buymorefans is selling followers in Australia as well.
Pro: It’s a Quick Way to Grow Your Following and Improve Your Brand Image
Only having a handful of followers can be just as detrimental to your business reputation as having thousands of fake ones. So purchasing Instagram followers that already exist can be a quick way to get your new platform off to the right start.
But don’t forget, if you’re going to have a large number of followers, you’ll need a hefty dose of content to go along with it. Purchasing followers immediately after opening your account is one way to tell the world that you’ve bought and paid for those accounts. So make sure that you’ve got a good amount of content to go along with those genuine followers.
Con: Authority Can’t Actually Be Bought
Having a decent stack of organic followers when you first launch your Instagram profile or Instagram account can help to instantly bump up your brand credibility. This can be a huge help if your business doesn’t have the time necessary to organically build an initial base- which can take months, if not years. But it doesn’t stop there, you’ll need to ensure you snag some organic followers, as well as fake accounts and bots, won’t be able to engage with your posts, and content that only has a scant few likes, but is backed by 6k followers is usually a bad sign.
Pro: It’s Basically Social Media Marketing 101
When it comes to marketing, herd mentality has always been considered a foundational principle. As humans, we tend to enjoy patterns and like to follow the pack, especially when it comes to products and services. This is because of the mindset of “If everyone else is enjoying it, we probably will too.†This is called social proof, and it’s very important if you want to reach your target audience and grow your engagement and brand image.
This is why we spend hours stalking Amazon reviews, searching for the products that seem to be the best value and well-loved by all. Instagram also works off of this principle, as the more real followers you have, the more that you will be likely set to gain. A solid follower base suggests brand and customer loyalty. Ensuring that more potential clients will be interested to know what all the fuss is about.
Mike Johnson is passionate about social media marketing and online marketing. When not at work, he enjoys... talking about work.
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