Small Business and Being a Good Neighbor

A lot of folks try to run on championing small businesses, but I want to know what sort of small businesses we are touting as the backbone of America? Are we touting the sort who exploit undocumented workers? The sort who will ask the worker to 'hold' their check while late fees pile up on their bills? The sort who pay so little their workers need to apply for public benefits? I'm all for small business, but with the priviledge of running a business comes responsibility.

I don't think a small business can thrive without paying attention to the larger community they serve. People say we should give huge tax breaks, and loosen regulations, but if the community then has decaying infrastructure, schools without any books, and poisonous waste everywhere, I don't really think that's a gain at all.

I very much disagree with this post on black entrepreneurship. I live in Memphis, where we have black owned restaurants, black owned hair shops, black owned banks. I also hang out on etsy, where we have etsy artists of color, many of whom are black. I don't think our work ethic is worse than the work ethic of other racial groups.

I come from entrepreneurs. My dad is a landlord. My granddad sold produce on the side of the road. My dad's grandma also used to do that, although she didn't grow all the produce herself. It's not true that there's no history. We've been doing for ourselves since reconstruction.

Personally, I think it's important to support small business because it makes the biodiversity of the business landscape stronger. Since we're small, we don't have stock holders trying to make us water down our product so we can have profit increases every 3 months. We can innovate.

Also, supporting small business supports families and the community. When you buy soap from a mom, you could be making it possible for her to stay at home where she wants to be. You could be supporting a student in their education. I know I don't stack my earnings up in a secret swiss account. I'm out buying from other businesses and pumping up the economy.

One important thing to consider when doing business is moving and grooving with the times. My local local NPR station[WKNO] broke all of these four reasons why NPR is growing. First, there's almost no local coverage. The best we get is maybe some coverage of a $50 opera. Contrast this to MPB which has a whole line up of local shows, including interviews with anyone who has ever thought of Mississippi. WKNO also doesn't use social media well. Their twitter is only a newsfeed, and not of local news. With MPB, there at least some interaction. And of course, the big problem is accessibility. I can pay $300 for a HD radio to listen to Tell Me More or I can switch over to MPB for free and listen. Now, they couldn't have guessed about the recession, but even before, it should have been obvious that being mostly all classical music [on the weekends, instead of something interesting, they have opera. opera. maybe 10 people in Memphis like opera. Certainly something for HD!]

I decided to post about this, because stupid Comcast is TAKING AWAY CHANNELS for paid customers. So I can pay the same amount of money for less channels, including MSNBC, one of my favorites. Just when competition is coming into town. So always focus on the customer's end.

Did the web kill the economy? It's nice to mention etsy here, but they forgot the big granddaddy of the microbusiness- ebay. Before etsy, we were all selling our old stereos, manga, and yes,handmade jewelry, on a low cost basis. Etsy only really allows people who can handmake things to grow their microbusiness- because that is their niche. I'm not saying that vintage and supplies aren't allowed, but the person who fixes old ipods wouldn't be able to thrive there.

As a microbusiness, I pump a lot of money into the economy, buying supplies and services. I'm not hoarding my cash- I'm spreading it around.

The Long Tail is my new obsession. But, I'd like to note that casual games are definitely the long tail of video games. For example, take Chocolitier 2. I've never seen a version in stores, but over a year after it's release, it is still on the top 100 of big fish games'[just one of the distributors of casual games, which are usually distributed by download, although there's boxed versions for the luddites] Yahoo's casual games portal also builds reviews and you may also like into the game download page, which is another part of the long tail. People who are casual game enthusiasts may download several games a week and review them, and this can help the more casual casual gaming fans.

For example, I like time management games[do Y before time runs out!] instead of hidden object games[click on items..to solve puzzles] so I'll trust the recs of other time mangement fans over the recs of hidden object fans, especially those fans who play and review a large variety of games. There are also various websites set up for news[I learned, for example, in this review that there will be a Chocolatier 3 and totally died of happiness] that gather thousands of fans.

In regular game economies, you need hits. The production values of games have gone up. The price of producing the voice acting, CGI cut scenes and long levels of hardcore games must be staggering. If only 1000 people buy your game in the first month, you're likely to lose a large amount of money. However, casual games have much lower production values and are quicker to produce. The distribution also allows producers to wait. If chocolaitier 2 sells 1000 in the first week...but continues to sell 100 every week after for a year, long after a game that sold so badly offline would have been removed from the shelves, there is some profit there. And for the game portals that have hundreds of these games, year after year...there's even more profit.

In today's reads, I'm reading The Long Tail. If you want to create an internet venue, remember it's the folks who only sell a few items a month that keep you alive, it seems. If a million people buy from one person, but two million buy from two million separate people, the second is more cash.