What a difference a year makes!

A year ago, my annual “Top 10 Trends in Small Business” was full of ideas spawned by big changes in technology and the Internet, with things like smart phones and SEO dominating the list.

This year?

While the Web and technology certainly make an appearance, it will be no surprise that many of the dominant trends right now relate to the economy.

And, while I will note again that this is not a prediction column, I should report that my #4 trend last year was eerily prophetic: “2008 looks to be a year dominated by the ripple effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis: A sluggish economy and probably a recession. For the small business, the effects are substantial . . .  the overall belt-tightening means doing business all around will be more of a challenge.”

This year, the economic prognostications are even worse, and small business trends generally reflect that. That said, it’s most certainly not all bad news. There is a lot of good going on out there, and plenty of opportunity for those who seek it.

Top 10 Small Business Trends, 2009

10. Money doesn’t grow on sprees: In this era of belt-tightening, reduced budgets, unemployment, and fear, it is easy to see why one of the most obvious trends out there affecting small business is the desire of consumers and customers to save a buck, spend less, and get a bargain.

Even high-end brands are feeling the effect of this trend; the lavish Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas for instance, a resort that usually commands at least $300 a night, has lately been offering rooms for about half that amount.

Taking advantage: If people are looking for a bargain, give them one. Discount poplar products. Bundle services for less. Negotiate.

9. The O-conomy: The election of Barack Obama signifies many things, but for our purposes here, a main one is that government spending and budgets will be headed in a new direction, and it would behoove the smart entrepreneur to get ready to take advantage of these new priorities.

The stimulus package that Congress will pass in early ‘09 will budget plenty of money for all sorts of infrastructure projects – everything from the traditional – roads and bridges – to the new – green businesses and high tech.

Taking advantage: Google ‘bidding on government contracts’ and learn how.

Government largesse – it’s not just for Halliburton anymore.

8. Green goes mainstream: Last year, coming in at #3, was “Green is the new black” – being green was trendy. In 2009, it is expected. Yes, people are looking for a bargain, but an increasing number also want their product and service providers to be environmentally conscious. And green consumers in particular will almost always be willing to pay a premium for organic, sustainable, green products.

Taking advantage: At a minimum, make sure your website indicates your green commitment.

7. The solo-preneur takes flight: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November, 2008 “employers took 2,328 mass layoff actions involving a total of 224,079 workers.” In addition, “the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.”

And the unemployment rate is only going to climb higher, and higher.

According to Thomas Frey, the Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, “As a general rule, 7 percent of the recently jobless will attempt to start their own businesses.” Frey says that “the most popular form of startup will the Empire of One, one-person businesses . . . .”

Taking advantage: “Look for rapid growth of support structures, management systems, and outsourcing options.”

6.  Opportunity abounds! As Warren Buffet says, “You should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.” Many things are on sale right now, especially stocks and real estate.

Taking advantage: If you buy at these historically low prices today, it is doubtful that you will regret it tomorrow.

Tomorrow: The Top 5.

“The main goal of the company was really to do wholesale as opposed to retail,” Lizzio said, “but to make something that’s really tailored to the consumer would imply that we really want to get into that retail mentality.”

Two years later the Bethesda Flea Market, hosted by the Montgomery Farm Women’s Cooperative, would become Lizzio’s testing ground. While selling five to ten handbags would have sufficed, her stand sold 15 handbags on the first of three days she spent there.

“It was just a good way of really seeing how people react to the designs that we were trying to start with,” she said.

Shoppers across the United States can now visit more than 2,000 flea markets, with each of them hosting hundreds of vendors. And while they are typically known to house antiques and vintage wares, flea markets have also slowly become promising venues for aspiring wholesalers, with any sort of merchandise.

Over the past year, the number of flea market shoppers has grown by 2.3 percent, while the number of vendors has grown by 1.2 percent. And with the number of sources for antiques and vintage wares dwindling, now more than two-thirds of vendors sell new merchandise they get from various suppliers, said John Schoen, executive director of the National Flea Market Association.

According to Schoen, the industry flourishes a little during an economic downturn because today’s flea market shopper and vendor are both looking to save money. “Shoppers say, ‘I’ll be going to the flea market because I can get what I want for my family, for a lot less money.’”

Meanwhile, vendors are likely selling at flea markets for supplemental income. Jerry Stokes, National Flea Market Association founder, stands convinced that the flea market provides the cheapest, easiest way to start a business, being “the landlord for the entrepreneur vendor.”

The Pasadena City College Flea Market – which regularly hosts over 450 vendors – charges $70 to $100 for space ranging from 17-by-16 to 17-by-32 square feet. Meanwhile, the San Jose Flea Market charges anywhere from $20 to $75 for a space approximately 17-by-20 square feet.

“If a person is going to get into a business, they have to rent a storefront. They gotta get a license, they gotta get the overhead, they gotta have a lot of money to start up,” Stokes said. “But a [flea market] vendor, they can rent a booth and they can be in business.”

For the past ten years, Stokes has worked to create representation of the flea market industry. Since founding the association, he has created a number of online resources for flea market vendors, including Vendors Only and Find a Flea Market. Suppliers of anything from closeout apparel to sporting goods have also begun noting that they sell to flea market vendors – or, like AAA Flea Market Supply, work solely with them.

Meanwhile, Lizzio and a number of jewelry designers she met in Bethesda have since moved on to wholesale efforts, thanks to the responses they received.

“Just staying in your community is sometimes the best way to begin something,” Lizzio said, “and the flea market just presented itself as a pretty good opportunity to do that.

Bartering is a tried and true (and ancient) business practice. It is still commonly used in many countries in every day business interactions. For whatever reason, it is not as common in the U.S. but this doesn’t mean it should be forgotten altogether!

If your small business is still afloat but you find yourself short on cash, give bartering and honest look. There are many barter exchanges which you can join and here’s how it works:

Step 1: Research the barter exchanges. Like I said there are a lot out there so do some research and pick the one you think will best suit you based on other members and how much you want to pay to join. You can find lists of these exchanges at nate.org , irta.com or itex.com .

Step 2: Join your chosen exchange. There are a wide variety of membership fees out there. Some have a one time fee of $800 for new members while others charge a much lower monthly fee in the $10 to $30 range. In addition to the fees, there can also commissions involved which, if you are a low-margin business, would make bartering a money losing venture. Run the numbers and find out.

Step 3: Barter away! You will receive "barter cash" for your and work you do/goods you offer which will be good only within the exchange you join.

Keep in mind these important factors (compiled by BusinessWeek.com ) when getting involved in a barter exchange:

Joining an exchange does entail costs, including fees and commissions. If you run a very low-margin business, those commissions may make bartering a money-losing proposition. Every business will want to limit its barter business to 5% to 15% of total revenue so that cash flow remains at healthy levels, says Ron Whitney, executive director of the International Reciprocal Trade Assn. (IRTA), a Rochester (N.Y.) nonprofit that promotes barter. And if you are bartering one-on-one, be careful. Misunderstandings can arise if you don’t have a formal contract. Then there is the IRS: Barter deals have to be treated like regular cash sales in federal and state filings. If a business owner uses barter services for personal reasons, the cost of the item is considered compensation on your income.

If anyone has tried this, I’d love to hear how well you think it works?

I have beef with Twitter. To me, it’s an oddly socially accepted and encouraged form of stalking where the "victims" volunteer themselves.

Aside from the creepy factor, from its inception I have never really understood how thousands of people #1 care so much about what other people are doing that they would subscribe to and check instant updates via a personal feed, and #2 that said number of people actually believe that that many OTHER people care enough about their minute happenings so much that they’d consistently update these feeds.

Twitter’s usefulness has long been debated and I have clearly chosen sides. But I can’t argue with the fact that Twitter’s traffic numbers have nearly doubled in recent months . Looks like more and more people from my side are hopping the fence to join the other "volunteer victims" and "stalkers"…traitors…

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on Twitter. But I really don’t see how it can keep up it’s stamina? Sooner or later, it’s going to loose steam right? After all, not everyone can keep up with everyone to that degree all the time and still make actual useful contributions to mankind…can they? Heck, I have enough trouble keeping up with my MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts!

Here’s how I see Twitter succeeding: in the business world. While people can really care less what their best friend ate for lunch today, they might really care what lunch specials their favorite restaurant is having. And while they might ignore that their little brother just beat Grand Theft Auto 4, they might really want to know that Best Buy is putting the game on sale for the next 12 hours for 50% off (that would REALLY be worth "tweeting" about don’t you think?).

If that’s the future of Twitter, sign me up. Otherwise, count me out.

Do you think businesses will be Twitter’s savior or am I completely off my rocker?

Going global is a huge step. It’s an important one in every business’s growth. Considering the fact that times are what they are, it could mean the survival of your business. So before you step off into the global market, consider the following factors Entrepreneur.com has put together as a sort of "Pre-Going-Global-Checklist":

1. Get company-wide commitment.
2. Define your business plan for accessing global markets.
3. Determine how much you can afford to invest in your international expansion efforts.
4. Plan at least a two-year lead-time for world market penetration.
5. Build a website and implement your international plan sensibly.
6. Pick a product or service to take overseas.
7. Conduct market research to identify your prime target markets.
8. Search out the data you need to predict how your product will sell in a specific geographic location.
9. Prepare your product for export.
10. Find cross-border customers.
11. Establish a direct or indirect method of export.
12. Hire a good lawyer, a savvy banker, a knowledgeable accountant and a seasoned transport specialist,
13. Prepare pricing and determine your landed costs.
14. Set up terms, conditions and other financing options.
15. Brush up on your documentation and export licensing procedures.
16. Implement an extraordinary after-sales service plan.
17. Make personal contact with your new targets, armed with culture-specific information and courtesies, professionalism and consistency.
18. Investigate international business travel tips.
19. Explore cross-border alliances and partnerships.
20. Enjoy the journey.

For explanations of these factors click here .

The earthquake tragedy in China is only the most recent example of how harmful disasters can be. Not only are they costly in human lives and sheer destruction but also in the number of businesses that will never open their doors to customers again. Disaster can occur on a smaller scale as well such as burglary, fires, hardware crashes and many more.

A White Paper produced by HP and SCORE reveals that about one-third of all respondents to a survey in the paper said they backup their data rarely, if at all. Most of the rest did it less than monthly, and yet 70% of small businesses that suffer a major data loss will go out of business within a year.

We can’t prevent disasters from happening but we can do our best to prepare for the worst. Here are some ways to minimize the loss your business could incur in case something should happen:

* Of course, the easiest and most obvious preventative measure you can take is simply to backup your data , and not just in the same location, but remotely.
* Important documents should be kept in a fireproof safe.
* Software should be utilized to prevent computer worms and viruses from destroying your hard drives.
* Create a plan to keep things running if something should happen. Assign roles and responsibilities as a part of that plan and walk through them with employees. Then keep the plan updated.

Insurance is also another key factor in salvaging a business in the aftermath of a disaster. Check out Small Business Insurance and Why You Need It for more advice.

Okay, don’t freak…there was no Part I so don’t go looking for it. Well, there sort of was…this is simply an addendum to my previous post Oh So Textual! *Text Message Shopping Has Arrived* .

When you bought your cell phone did you ever imagine that one day it would allow you to pay for things? No seriously, your cell phone as a form of currency? Yeah, neither did I. But now you can. I know! It’s nuts!

Ok, so here’s how it works (courtesy StorefrontBacktalk.com ):

Step 1: You download an applet on your phone. Said applet would be associated with a payment method, a password, and possibly another form of authentication.

Step 2: The retailer would have a piece of compatible software installed in their POS system.

Step 3: You shop in the store as you normally do, picking out items for purchase. When you’ve selected you bring your items to the cashier.

Step 4: The cashier scans the bar codes of your items and tells you the total.

Step 5: You enable the mobile payment app, type in your password, and punch in the exact amount of your total.

Step 6: If all goes well up to this point, the app will display a bar code that the cashier would then scan with the same bar code wand as they used to scan your products. The bar code would include the exact amount, a date/time stamp and expire within 60 seconds in case you want to abandon the purchase.

Here are some of the other things it would do:

• Update the credit limit—or bank account balance—that the consumer could still use. According to the patent holder/inventor, Bob Lovett, "The merchant’s scanner also outputs a barcode containing the product’s price. The cell phone’s camera makes a copy of the barcode and then converts it to dollars and updates your remaining balance. This will alert card holder when an account is overdrawn."

• The phone’s payment data would include the consumer’s age which would theoretically accelerate purchases of age-restricted items (alcohol, cigarettes, fireworks, adult-themed magazines, etc.) as well as establish retailer due-diligence and enabling such purchases to go through self-checkout.

And here’s the kicker for merchants:

• This type of payment system will allow for cheaper handling of micro-payments. Merchants would keep a record of the small transactions in a spreadsheet and when the banks are least busy, they would send the spreadsheet to them for processing. It would cost around five to ten cents as opposed to the twenty-five they pay for Visa transactions.

Yeah…that’s awesome.

For the rest of the the StorefrontBacktalk.com article, including the reaction of the National Retail Federation and others click here .

The "lose profits now to gain future profits" philosophy applies when you offer free shipping to first-time customers. This offer gives customers an opportunity to buy a product risk-free (when it comes to shipping). You carry the burden of shipping costs for their first purchase to hopefully gain a repeat customer for life. You should only offer free shipping under these terms if the following apply:

a. You are able to afford the shipping costs on first-time purchases. This will only work if your products are lightweight and small in size. If your products are heavy and will cost a lot to ship, you should consider another type of offer.

b. You anticipate your customers to shop with you frequently, at least once every few months.

c. You plan to follow up with your customers to encourage other purchases through promotion, email updates, up-selling, etc.

Free Shipping with a Purchase Valued at $_____ or More

You can also offer free shipping with the purchase of products priced at certain dollar amounts or with combined purchases that reach that amount or more. This will work great if your profit margin is enough to cover the costs of shipping for your higher-priced products. This free shipping offer can encourage higher-priced purchases and encourage buyers to place more items in their shopping cart.

Free Shipping During Special Sales and Events

Another way to leverage free shipping is to offer it only during special sales and events. These might be special holidays, end-of-the-year sales, incentive sales, etc. There are numerous ways to incorporate free shipping offers into any sales event.

Cover All Bases

When offering free shipping, promote it carefully. Be sure to specify on your website the details of your offer and any stipulations of the offer. List the requirements one must meet to receive the free shipping. Also, mention your policy on international shipping. If the customer will be charged for shipping on additional items they purchase, be sure this is stated in your offer as well. Write a disclaimer to include on your site. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

Free shipping offers can dramatically increase your Internet profits, so get creative with free shipping ideas and watch your online business soar.

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