Small Business is not a Startup business

Here is an article we just wrote for small business marketing and information:

Small Business is not the same as a Start Up Technology business

I was reading a not so great article today in the Seattle PI, Seattle’s second best paper, don’t get me started on the lack of quality of it’s journalists. I would write their editor in large, but why waste my time. I just choose not to buy the paper. Gosh, they erk me, I have been known to mention their biased towards their friends business before to friends, Seattle is a very small town you know, everyone seems to know everyone. But, I do congratulate them for their blogs and forward thinking, not their journalists quality of writing. The article today in the business section, down right makes me think that they along with most corporate types, simply don’t understand small business. They think a small business is the same as Start Up, why do we care? We actually care about helping small businesses with their marketing, and helping them to make more money. We do this through our barter and trade exchange network of ITEX, which has 22,000 small business customers. This woman writes an article titled “What you need to know to start a small business”. She has investment banking background, not any small business experience. She wrongfuly talks about selling your company down the road, looking beyond your product, and not being in love with it. She does not understand small business, but rather does know the Seattle Technology start up scene. These types of businesses, not a get rich quick scheme, but the greedy high tech entrepreneur types (oh–I am just teasing, I use to be one of them), that want to grow big or have a make a quick buck by selling their hot start up.

Small business people do make more money than the average salaried corporate types, and usually they have 3 times the Networth. Wow, I did learn something from her article, yippee. She has good points, but misses the boat completely on small business, which is NOT THE SAME AS STARTUP HIGH-TECH. Folks we are biased, we actually make money via Bartering and the ITEX Trade Exchange Barter network, and actually helping small businesses have success.

Do follow her advice if you are looking to start an Internet Company. But if you are a small business owner or want to start a small business, read other sources for more credible business sources. If you are one of the 23 million entrepreneurs, that have a solution to a problem and want to start your own business, go to your local SCORE office at the local SBA.gov branch. There are amazing resources there that would help any small business. Who is a typical small business person, and how do they get to be worth millions? First thing, go read “the millionaire next door”, than read “Small Giants”, they will give you the profiles of the best small business people and businesses. Recently, I started to write about small business marketing, bartering and ITEX barter Trade exchange, why? To help by sharing my Internet Marketing 2.0, SEO, and blogging experiences and strategies for small business marketing people.

So who comprises of the average small business, and what types of business is an average small business? Folks, I don’t mean to be hard on this Seattle journalist, I think most of us Entrepreneurs do want our high-tech or not, small businesses to be a huge business. We all need to focus on growing a profitable business small or large. Too often greed misguides us all to want to be a billionaire, but a true entrepreneur never looses sight of the problem they are trying to solve. The problem we are trying to solve is to help 22,000 small business make more money with Barter. Even though there was no professional barter network thousands of years ago, people have been trading for goods and services for centuries. Now with the ITEX Barter dollars they can do it with ease, with a large selection of choices, and with ease of a process that works for thousands.

In this series of small business blogs, we will try to uncover what it takes to succeed. And who the average small business person is, and what does he/she do, and how do they make money and be a success. Most importantly, we will share with you the best strategies for small business marketing. We all know that our local Restaurants, dry cleaners, specialty retailers are a small business. But what about the local accountant, attorney, the real estate agent, and the website developer, they too are small businesses too right? Our friend’s at ITEX barter Trade exchange have 22,000 small businesses as members, and they know a thing or two about small business marketing and success, and their people will share with us proven strategies for small business success.

In fact, the main charter of the ITEX barter network is to help small businesses succeed, via small business marketing and developing small business networking opportunities. So we will try to profile a few successful small businesses that do that. We will discuss the most important issues facing a small business, barter or not. We will look at marketing, accounting, sales, operations, and Human Resources and Legal Issues.

Do you run a small business? We want to hear from you. For our purposes, we want to call a small business a business with less than 200 people, maybe a retaurant that has 50 people or less, not a chain. Any business with revenues of less than $10M, usually 1-7 people, independantly owned and operated by one or two people.

So as we start the new year, do come back and visit this blog back again, we will be discussing “how to start a small business”, and hopefully doing it in a series of blogs. First thing first, call your State Incorporation or small business office and get their incorporation and small business guide. This is usually the best place to start, along with visiting your local SBA branch or sba.gov website. We of course promote Bartering through our cashless trade exchange network @ ITEX, Bon Voyage!

Posted by Admin in Small Business Marketing

Barter = Small Business networking

Small Business Barter Network

To grow your business you need to connect with others, trader barter or not, you need to get the world out and promote your business. How do most small business do that? They usually join small business networking groups such as Chambers of Commerce, BNI, and La Tip. No man is an island, we need each other to grow our small business and live a life of our dreams.

A few years ago I belonged to a small business networking group called La Tip. It’s basically the same as the bigger counter part, BNI (Business Network International), well I don’t know if it’s bigger–I think it is, based on what I have heard. Surprisingly, a lot of small business marketing people don’t know about these networking opportunities. The ITEX barter network is basically a similar opportunity to grow your business. Small business networking is nothing new to small business people, they have networked in their local communities to promote their business.You may have heard of groups like Chambers of commerce and Rotary? Each city has one, and these groups are a perfect system of referrals and business card & trade exchanges. BNI and La Tip maybe be a modern phenomenon, but small business networks have been around for a while. I am sure they have been congrating and bartering and trading for goods and services and growing their business via bartering items, either through discounts and trade exchanges, or just simply favors.

A professional smalll business barter network can actually help grow sales and promote your business. It all depends on which items you Barter, and how other small business owners can benefit from it. But almost anything can be a barter item, your product or services, it all depends on the size of the Barter Network. You have to have a large enough pool of Barter items to buy from. So that you are not stuck with trading for chickens for your doctor and medicinal services, and you happen to be a vegetarian. Yesterday I spoke with a Video production business owner in Seattle, when learning about the ITEX Barter Network, he was all exicted about Bartering. He asked if they needed a Video Production business to be part of the 22,000 small business Barter network. Are you kidding, why wouldn’t they, ofcourse I said. The cool thing is he can sell his Barter for services, buy selling his services, at ITEX Barter Network, anf get the ITEX barter dollars, which he use to buy things he needs either for his business or personal needs, just like real dollars, but they are Barter ITEX dollars. Enjoy David, and see you in the Barter Network!

Barter is the best small business marketing strategy

Bartering is the Small Business Marketing Strategies

We wrote this blog for our Barter network site, because we truly believe that Bartering is the best Small Business Marketing strategy. For the longest time, I wanted to grow one of my small businesses to be a large company. I never really was satisfied with being small, I think a lot of people and businesses are not. But millions of small business owners are laughing being content and making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. How do they do it, and what is wrong with being small anyway? Nothing at all, and they are small because they choose be best, rather than big.So what does being a small business have to do with best marketing strategies. A ton, I feel that to be competitive, small business marketing is what makes the difference. If you can’t compete on size, you compete with creativity, and creativity is the hidden secret edge of all small business marketing. Creativity just means thinking out of the box, and Small Business Marketing is most often the place I see it. And, the companies that make it, do that well, well some times they Barter too:-). All seriousness aside, companies that are successful from small business to big, usually have creative marketing ideas.

As mentioned before, think of a unique name for your brand, your product or better yet do all of the above and help your customers in a unique and memorable way, and they will come searching for you! How and why? When your brand becomes a house hold name, such as MySpace, people search for you on Google and other places. And, that is the goal of any brand development of small business marketing.

*As mentioned this Free blog is brought to you courtesy of our sponsors: ITEX the Barter Network, and Silver Cross Jewelry by Jill Brahms, and infrared heaters by Greenisbetter.org, better than Edenpure Heaters.

Barter network and Trade Exchange Network

Barter Items

Posted by: Admin in Small Business Marketing - Edit

Our friend and adviser Steve White is the CEO of ITEX Corporation, a small business Barter and Trade Exchange Network. Before we tell you the full scope of this blog, you may be wondering, some thing. So what is a Barter or Trade Small Business trade exchange network? Yes, you guessed it, that is what we intended to write this Barter blog about, No pun intended.

Barter has been around as long as humans have been trading or doing business. Before, there was big business, I am sure you remember there was small business. In today’s complex business environment, we can’t even talk about big business, small business have unique needs and so that would be where ITEX Barter a Trade Exchange network fits in. ITEX is a professional Barter network that helps 22,000 professional business trade their goods and services. How does a Barter Network work, and is this good for your business? If you want to grow your small business, we think you should definitely use a professional Barter network.

If you are a small business, there is no doubt you probably have traded your products or services for others. We often do this not only to barter items that we don’t want, but to reach new customers, to reduce costs, and to grow our small business. We have blogged recently about how barter items can within a trade exchange network can actually help us find a product for our home. But, the key here is to not do this lightly or look at it in a small way. Bartering for your small business, can actually help you grow your business in a significant way, but, a big but that is on the size of the Barter network you belong to.

If you just Barter or trade with another person your choice of getting a product you really want is low. But if you barter with another small business part of a large trade exchange network such as ITEX you get to choose from 22,000 other product/service providers. So how does all this work? You become a member of ITEX and get started with your Barter dollars. Does it cost anything? Well, yes a small membership fee gets you started and makes sure it’s a professional trade exchange network. The small fee also makes sure that the Barter network and all small business follow a legal and official federal law for taxes etc.

So join ITEX today and start to trade your Barter items through the professional trade exchange network.

Reason #2 to use Barter Exchange: Sell products to new customers

	Sell your products and services to a growing network of ITEX Barter Site members who need what you have. This is a great way to open new markets, build new relationships, and grow your small business. We will help you sell your products and services on the ITEX Barter website or offline directly to other members. This is just another example of how Barter helps to solve Problems through ITEX Barter for small business owners

Barter and trade exchanges are nothing new to our economy, in fact not only do smart artists and natural healer types do it for their small business. But, in the finance and media world barter and trade has been going on for ever through the soft dollar approach.

Barter Site and Barter Exchange network Announces Barter Blog

What is Barter? Is it legal? Yes, and it helps over 22,000 small business market their products and services via the ITEX Barter Exchange. Barter Items allows you to increase sales via finding like minded people and small businesses that have products and services that you will spend money on any ways. Below is reason #1 why Barter, from a series of the ITEX Barter site, we will do a series on Why Barter coming up.

	Instead of buying the things you need and want with cash, ITEX members make purchases with ITEX dollars - earned by selling their products and services, excess inventory or capacity to other ITEX Barter members. Do you run ads? Do you send brochures other marketing material? Need to hire a consultant, accountant or an attorney? Do you need office equipment serviced? With ITEX, you can acquire all of these services with ITEX Barter dollars. That's just the beginning. Want to take your customers or staff to lunch or dinner? Do you need a hotel room, a vacation or just a massage? Thousands of items can be purchased with ITEX Barter dollars. The CEO talks about why small businesses should join ITEX. Play Video