Well, if you are into shipping or your business is related to import exports, then it is good to pick up some shipping and payment terms that will help you get an idea of what your customer or supplier is saying. Now today I am going to hand you the meaning of EXW or Ex Works in a silver platter. So if you intend to be in international business and import exports, then do pay attention.

Ex Works simply means this:

If you decide to buy 10 million dollars worth of plastic widget from me, and you prefer to arrange your own transport, then I will quote you my plastic widget, Ex Works or Ex Factory. Quoting you Ex Works means that the price you get from me only includes the price you pay for the finished goods I have produced in my factory. The transportation costs and other expenses related are actually yours to bear. So if you buy ex factory, you need to factor in other costs involving transportation mostly, before taking that figure as your net cost.

So when the full quantity of plastic widgets are completed, then you just simply arrange your own transportation and have the goods delivered from my factory, warehouse, or site.

Simple isn’t it?! Sometimes, when a buyer is hurrying you for price estimation, quoting EX WORKS will help to give them an estimated price and costing reference for their projects. You should always let them know that your price is EX Works and not Delivered, FOB or CNF which I will go through with you later on.

Ex Works pricing is also more accurate as an indicator of the product’s price in any region as your perception of the local price of that product is not affected by the transportation cost.

In some cases, customers want you to quote Ex Works because they are not so sure about the status of their projects yet. By the time they want to buy, the transportation costs may have fluctuated beyond their current estimation.

So always be very clear in your terms and conditions when quoting your customer or buying from a vendor. Don’t surprise your customer later with a much higher price when you factor in the transport. If transportation is going to cost a bomb, be sure to let the customer know in advanced. Don’t ever surprise them especially if the goods being dealt actually command very little margin. Also, as a buyer, it is your responsibility to find out what are the potential transportation charges that are likely incurred so you need not be surprised or get a heart attack when you find out that transportation just inflated 60% to your total cost. It could happen to you.

OK folks, remember, EX WORKS or EXW is buying based on a price quoted to you without transportation or delivery to your site. It just means you buy at a price where the manufacturer has the limited duty for producing and placing the finished goods at his factory or warehouse, and then you collect it with your own transporter.

Why pay for viral marketing when you can get it for free? Paying for something that you can get free seems rather ridiculous, doesn’t it?

There are so many tools out there that can bring traffic to your website without you having to pay a dime. If you do have applications that you pay for, such as widgets, you can use these free methods to bring people to the site where they can use these widgets. The most common is the email list opt-in widget. It is not just a form, but it helps you keep track of your numbers.

You also have such methods as email marketing and social networking, which are free. You can bring people to your site to use your email opt-in widget to sign up for email updates. You can use article marketing to do this, you can join email groups, and you can also post on forums. Once they are there, you then send out really interesting emails that they will pass on to their friends. Before you know it, your email is spreading like a virus and your traffic is booming.

Other free methods that you can use include vlogs and blogs. You can even place your widgets on your blogs and on your vlog profile. Anywhere that you can embed videos, links, and audio players, you want to embed them. You can literally have your own ring of marketing methods that compliment each other. Because of this, they continue going round and round without stopping.  

But one thing to touch upon is article marketing. Article marketing is a way in which you talk about your niche, but you include a hyperlink to your website in the resource box that is included with the article. This is something that is entirely free and can lead people to your site so that they will sign up for your email updates and/or newsletters.

There are so many free viral marketing methods out there that you can use so that you can bring the traffic to your site. Everything goes hand-in-hand when you market, so make sure you use everything that is available to you. When you do that, you have free viral marketing gone wild on your hands.

MySpace is one of the most popular social networks on the internet with over 100 million users and a rank of 6th place on Alexa.com. Because of the ability to greatly customize profile pages many sites have been created to help MySpace users create custom pages with graphics, name generators, photo album scrollers and many more widgets.

I am going to concentrate on one particular widget in this article and that is the countdown clock widget.

Countdown clocks

A countdown clock widget allows you to countdown to a certain day, for example Christmas day is on the 25th of December, so you would enter that date in the countdown widget and the widget will then display a count down in days, hours, minutes and seconds till the 25th of December. There are a number of different types of countdown widget available including birthday, wedding, vacation, public holidays and many more. The most popular countdown timer widget at the time of writing this article is the Pregnancy countdown timer with over 3000 searches a day. Pregnancy countdown timers are used to countdown to the date your baby is due and work just like any other countdown timer.

To look for countdown clocks for your MySpace profile go to Google and search for MySpace countdown timers, there will be many to choose from with different designs, text fonts, animations, colors and sizes, when you have found one that best matches your profile layout enter the widget code in the section you would like to place the widget.

Sharing music

Another great feature of MySpace is the music sharing facility, this enables you to search for a band on MySpace and then select a song to add to your profile page, when a visitor looks at your profile the song will play in the background automatically if it is set to do so in the options of your profile.

Bands can also set up profiles for there band and upload there music in mp3 format for users to add to there profile, this is a great way of getting your band noticed.