Choosing the best package forwarding service can be a little bit tricky. There are many different factors that make a big difference between package forwarding services on the market. Let me explain to you what can be tricky while choosing a package forwarder and
Pricing
Pricing is the most important part, most people are concerned about. An offer of all package forwarders seems to be the same. You are going to pay for shipping via a specific 3rd party carrier, so why you should choose a package forwarder that ships for more than the other, right?
The most important part about pricing is, that you need to find a package forwarder with clear pricing. It’s common, that most of the package forwarders advertise no processing fees, free consolidation, etc. But how can these package forwarders earn money then? It’s simple. They hide all these fees to the shipping costs. So even you find a package forwarder that advertises no fees, it’s not true at all. I recommend choosing a package forwarder with clear pricing, so you can see what you are paying for.
Reviews and Real Experience
This is the most important part. Package forwarder MUST be trustworthy! You are going to send valued packages to a package forwarder, so you must be 100 % sure that packages are going to be handled carefully, professionally, with no delays. There are hundreds of reviews on websites such as Trustpilot, Sitejabber, etc., but the problem is, that most of these reviews are FAKE. If you see a package forwarder with thousands of positive reviews in a short period of time, no activity on social media, choose somebody else. Scammers are everywhere and fake package forwarders are pretty common. On the other hand, if you find a package forwarder with most of the positive reviews, sometimes some neutral review, in a long period of time, you can be almost sure that the package forwarder is legit.
I recommend finding a real experience written by some blogger. For example this review on howitravel.co. It’s a well-known blog written by Jordan Bishop, Forbes contributor, and digital nomad. You can find there a full user experience with one of the best package forwarders (Planet Express), including photos and delivery process.
Summary
Overall, if you want a reliable package forwarding service, search for real user experience, reviews on websites such as Trustpilot, and compare pricing. Last but not least, search ideally for a package forwarder with a sales-tax-free warehouse.
Amazon is the biggest online store in the world. It has branches all around the world, but the original branch in the USA is still the best. It offers the biggest variety of products for the best prices. The only problem is, that Amazon USA does not ship internationally. Only a small amount of sellers are able to ship worldwide, but thanks to package forwarding, it is easy to shop Amazon USA and ship internationally.
First of all, you need an address in the USA where you can receive packages from Amazon. The ideal solution is a package forwarding address. See my previous tutorial about how to get a US package forwarding address.
Once you have the address ready, just go on Amazon and shop anything you want. Moreover, you can save on sales tax when you use a sales-tax-free warehouse address, for example in Oregon. Once a package forwarder receives your packages, you can forward them worldwide and get truly international shipping when shopping Amazon USA.
International shipping is not that complicated as it seems. There are many services that can make your shipping experience easier, and what is the best – it can save you a lot of money.
The key how to save on international (and domestic too) shipping is called a volume discount. Based on a volume of packages you send, carriers offer volume discount, so more packages you send = better discount you get. If you do not ship much, it is not possible to get any discount and you have to pay the full price. But there is way how to get a volume discount, even you ship just a few packages a year. Just use the package forwarder!
Package forwarding is a service known for years and used especially by international shoppers, who shop in the US and forward packages worldwide. It works as an advanced email, but instead of emails, you send packages. The best part is, that package forwarders ship a lot of packages, so you can take advantage of their volume discount. See a step by step tutorial on how to use package forwarder to send a package to your friend and save on shipping thanks to the volume discount they offer:
- register and get a virtual address from a package forwarder
- drop off the package at their location, or send the package to them
- send the package worldwide with the best shipping rates
You can also find useful tutorials on how to ship a package to some specific countries below. You can also find there detailed information about import tax and customs clearance.
Do you know that a lot of products are much more cheaper in the US than in other countries? For example Apple iPhone. In 2017 price of iPhone 7 is $1.115 in Brazil which is one of the highest price in the world! On the other hand you can buy it in the US just for $815! There is an idea that you can buy your iPhone in United States and then ship it to your home country, for example Brazil. The problem is that a lot of US shops like Apple, Amazon, Bestbuy and so on don’t ship their products internationally but with Planet Express you don’t have to worry about it.
Planet Express is Mail and Package Forwarding Service. After sign up you get your own US address where you can ship for example iPhone from Apple store or any other packages from US shops. Then you can just forward your package anywhere in the world with one of shipping methods that Planet Express offers. They have clear pricing without any hidden fees so you can easy calculate if shopping in US shops pays of.
One thing which I like the most is that you can consolidate your packages so if you have for example 4 packages at Planet Express, they consolidate all your packages into one just for $5 and thanks to it you can save a lot of money on shipping. Cool, right? :)
How important is it to have a great idea for starting a new business? I think that the idea is not really important at all. I often hear from people around me about what great ideas I have for business. It might seem like it when looking at one of my existing businesses that it was great idea, but it wasn’t at the start.
I started many of my businesses by accident. When I look back on how I came up with the ideas I can say there was no major thought process behind any of my business venture. I didn’t even have any substantial experience in those businesses when I started.
I knew I would be moving to Nevada and I tried to think of what I could do there. I knew Nevada was a very popular state for incorporation because of the very friendly business climate. So I figured it might be worthwhile to try an incorporation service. I also started another business in real estate, but I will talk about that later. Let’s go back to the incorporation business.
First, I went to Google trying to find other companies offering an incorporation service. I was trying to figure out how they worked, what was their pricing, if a person needed a lawyer to incorporate a business or if I could do it myself, what were the state fees, what forms must be used, etc.
The next step was to start it. This is the most important step in any venture. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen around me, most people never do this step! I decided to offer just one service: Nevada corporation. I didn’t want to start by offering all kinds of company structures and additional services. Honestly, it was too much information at that time so I wanted to keep it as simple as possible so I could handle it. So one service was complicated enough at the time.
After that I decided to create a website. I forgot to tell you that I was really cheap (“didn’t have too much money to spend”) so I designed the site myself. I am not a webmaster or graphic designer. I know very basic HTML so I could do basic table designs or forms which people could fill out and send to my email. That was all that I needed for making my first website. You can see it here in the Internet Archive:
At the start I even used free web hosting. Later, when I received my first order I paid the cheapest hosting company I could find at $25 per year. That didn’t work well so I upgraded to $50 per year when the money started flowing in. The most important lesson was that I tried to do it the simplest way possible. Do you see some genius idea behind this business? Being realistic, these were very amateur web pages done by an amateur who tried to start something.
This beginning led to a business which is processing over 500 orders every month and is one of the top five incorporators in the state of Nevada with sales of two million dollars per year. I added step by step small improvements over time. Today, we have a very unique business with great ideas our competition doesn’t have. But most of the suggestions came from our customers or from what I learned along the way in terms of what needed to be improved.
So if someone tells me that they want to start a new business and the only thing they are missing is a great idea, I just have to say that it is nonsense. No great ideas are necessary. I think the most important thing is to find a way how to start very simply and improve on that way. Instead of writing business plans or doing market research just do what I did. Find a way how to start very simply and don’t invest too much money. You are not risking almost anything just a little bit of your time, but the reward can be great.
by Josh
Back in elementary school I was in a class in which we did a study on dreams. Not just meanings of dreams and facts and the like, but actually ways to remember them. Not only was it pretty sweet to be able to wake up and remember a lot of the stuff you just dreamed, but it was cool to go back months later and check out the dream journal we kept and right then, vividly remember the dreams I had months before.
Hopefully something I’ll be able to do here on a monthly basis is post an “assignment” of sorts. An activity for you to do that will, in some way, provide a better understanding of yourself or your surroundings.
So this months assignment is to remember your dreams.
“How the flip flop do I do that Josh?” Ah, good question. Yes, there really is a methodology to this and yes, if done correctly, it will work.
Step 1.
When you lay down to go to sleep say out loud “Remember your dreams.” repeatedly. Say it atleast 10-20 times. The key here is “out loud.” Doing this trains your brain/memory to do just that…remember your dreams. All dreams are in some way affected by day-to-day thoughts/activities/etc and audibly saying “Remember your dreams.” puts the action into your brain.
Step 2.
After audibly saying “Remember your dreams.”, say it to yourself another 10-20 times. The same reason as Step 1 applies to this.
Step 3.
Make sure you have a notepad right beside your bed and the second you wake up, roll over and start writing. Write as many details about your dreams as you can.
Step 4.
There is no step 4.
That’s all there is to it. Yes, you might feel like an idiot saying “Remember your dreams” out loud, but that’s a HUGE key to this working. It might take a few nights for things to get moving with this and for you to vividly remember your dreams, but after getting in a habit of it you’ll train your brain to do it automatically.
Our dreams are some of the most creative things our brains throw together and being able to remember them can be extremely rewarding.
Good luck and sweet dreams!
Many people forget how routine their lives are. While this is especially true for those, like me, who have a regular 9-5 job, freelancers often get into their own routines, even while being less constrained by hours and location.
Doing the same thing over, day after day, contributes to creative blocks. Some might work through these blocks temporarily (by visiting sites such as this one), but it neglects the root cause of what got them into the block in the first place: routine.