Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

Last month (April 2008) the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business held hearings on the so-called underground economy. Its definition of “underground economy” is so broad, it may surprise you.

When I first heard about the hearings, I assumed the phrase “underground economy” related to the practice of hiring workers under the table and paying them in cash. After all, that’s the traditional definition of “underground economy.”

This paper from the Mises organization defines underground economy quite specifically: ‘There is a bustling and shadowy world where jobs, services, and business transactions are conducted by word of mouth and paid for in cash to avoid scrutiny by government officials. It is called the “underground economy,” which is as old as government itself. It springs from human nature that makes man choose between given alternatives. Facing the agents of government and their exactions, man will weigh the alternatives and may choose to go “underground.” ‘

read more

Those of us who spend a fair amount of time online love our shiny new toys. We seem to always need something new to try out. And one of the shiniest toys these days is Twitter.com.

But the question I get from other entrepreneurs and business owners is, “why”? Why bother with social media tools like Twitter in the first place?

Well, today I came across a good business reason for using Twitter. read more

For a number of years the price of technology to run our businesses has been dropping quite dramatically. Let me give you three general examples:

- Computer hardware — Computers far more powerful than the one with the Pentium I chip that cost me $2,500 a number of years ago, now sell for a little over $500. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices of personal computer equipment have dropped 10% to 28% each year since 2000.

- Telecommunications — The prices of making phone calls are much cheaper, too. VOIP providers now offer unlimited calling plans within the U.S. and Canada for affordable flat monthly rates. Competition from non-traditional providers, including cable companies and eBay’s almost-free Skype service, has pressured the established telecom companies like AT&T to come out with bundled services to give the VOIP and cable companies a serious run for the money, especially in big metropolitan markets. Small businesses are beneficiaries of all this competition, in the form of lower prices.

- Software – Prices for business software also have come down in price, dropping 3% to 9% each year since 2000. And that doesn’t even tell the full story. You now can find free alternatives on the market in many business productivity categories, thanks to the open source movement. Software-as-a-service options also make powerful software available at hard-to-believe low monthly prices. And as competition heats up in some segments, some vendors such as Intuit are giving away introductory versions of their feature-rich proprietary software for free, to snag you as a loyal customer with the hope of some day in the future “upselling” you to a higher level package as your needs increase.

So what’s all this talk about inflation rearing its ugly little head? read more

Yesterday’s startups starting on a shoestring might have considered subletting a small suite of offices, getting some second-hand furniture, hiring a part-time secretary and receptionist, and outfitting the office with a couple of computers, a network, a fax machine, a copier and a phone system.  Oh, and don’t forget making a trip to the office supply store to buy lots of stuff to write on or with.  And definitely don’t forget the coffee machine and other paraphernalia of an office.

But things have changed.  read more

First it was blogs. In the world of small business, people started going nuts over blogs a couple of years ago.

Business owners and entrepreneurs and those who work in small businesses found the benefits of blogs enticing. Who could resist the allure? We entrepreneurs discovered that blogs gave us self-publishing that was almost as easy as creating a Word document; a do-it-yourself way to improve your search engine position; and a way to connect with customers and prospects more authentically in a marketing-saturated world. read more

Not so long ago I was a video naysayer.

Oh, online video sounded great if you had a “video-worthy” consumer product, such as T-shirts with funny logos. But not for the typical small business in the mainstream in the United States — the retail establishments, manufacturers, medical professionals, engineering firms, CPAs and others. The chances of those kinds of businesses getting any traffic or new customers with video seemed remote. Or so I thought.

But — I have changed my view. One reason is that Google has integrated YouTube videos aggressively into the regular search results. Now there’s identifiable value from videos. By creating a video and hosting it on YouTube, it gives your business an extra shot at getting listed on the first page of the Google search results. Your company’s Website AND its YouTube video could both appear high up in Google. read more

As if running a business wasn’t challenging enough, now you have to worry about your business getting trashed at voting websites and in blogs.

Imagine that you’ve dedicated years of sweat and toil and shoestring budgets just to build a business. You love your business.

You take joy in serving customers. You pride yourself on your business’s customer service. Fact is, most of your customers are satisfied. Some are ecstatic.

But let’s say one customer isn’t satisfied. You and that customer had “issues” that ended with you or the customer saying goodbye. Now that ex-customer has his or her revenge – going out to Yelp.com or another site and leaving a scathing review about your company, its products or services.

Worse, when prospective customers and the public go to Google to research your company, what do they see? That bad review appears on the first page of the search results.

In effect that one dissatisfied customer has a megaphone to spread his or her feelings about your company all over the world (or at least all over the World Wide Web). read more

The online marketing landscape has become so complex that cutting through the “noise” is now one of the biggest problems small businesses face. Sorting out WHERE and HOW to spend our limited time and resources is increasingly the challenge.

So Many New Choices

Part of the problem is that we are bombarded right and left with new choices.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has taken on a much higher profile as the number of indexed Web pages balloons and it gets harder to be found in search engines like Google. The search marketing industry is now in the multi-billion dollar range. Not only is search growing, but it is increasingly being broken down into distinct specialties, such as local search, paid search and mobile search marketing.

Affiliate marketing has become big business, too … a more-than $6 Billion a year industry.

Blogs, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and every manner of social media site are discussed ad nauseum. Yet, many businesspeople do not have the time it takes to investigate these social media sites. Most people have only the vaguest idea what these sites do or how to use them — perhaps just a nagging sense that the sites are somehow “hot.” ‘Better not be left behind,’ you think.

OK, It’s Complex. So What Do We Do? read more