As the backbone of the economy, small businesses continue to be a source of dynamism, growth and innovations. Small to medium-sized businesses constitute 90 percent of total enterprises in most economies. In the US alone, there are more than 27.5 million small businesses and employ more than half of all US workers.

Source: BusinessDay

Thinking of closing down your business? Read this before you quit
Recently, I have repeatedly found myself in the company of veteran self employed professionals or business owners who feel they have come to the end of their entrepreneurial journey.
awovi

Business Rx: What to watch this year for small business
The fortunes of small business are not solely tied to the local markets in which they operate, but are also affected by national and global events. Keeping a watchful eye on the big picture is key to remaining nimble in such uncertain economic times.
Washington Post

How Many Customers Did You Lose Today?
But genuinely, one of the most vexing dilemmas for senior executives is being plugged in to what is actually going on in the front lines of their business.
Harvard Business Review

Weight Watchers For Small Business: Silver Lining Helps You Set Financial Goals
The majority don’t raise any kind of venture money or angel investment — most small business owners probably don’t even know any venture capitalists. Owning a small business is tough.
TechCrunch

Make Sure Your Tweets Are Being Seen!
Getting information and ideas out to the masses is what social media and networking is all about, particularly if you are in business, but is anyone reading what you have to say?
FamousBloggers.net

Do Small Businesses Really Need the SBA’s Help?
I’ve sometimes heard from business owners that “nobody” uses the SBA’s 900 field offices known as small business development centers or SBDCs. Turns out that’s just not true.
Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur Relationships With Technology Can Damage Productivity And Personal Lives
Business expert says that small changes in the use of common technologies can make entrepreneurs more productive and sane.
Gaebler.com

Ask an Expert: Content is king, entrepreneurs
Oh, how some small business owners long for the days when all they had to do was run their business and not worry about their computers, systems, mobile technology and Internet presence.
USA TODAY

Sick Days as a Home Business Owner
It’s really hard to take a sick day when you own a business. Sometimes, though, you have no choice.
PlantingMoneySeeds.com

BUSINESS TIPS: Don’t quit amid fear on plans of success
This seems to happen often in a small business. It’s easier and feels better to deal with the urgent tasks that can be done today, rather than the bigger important issues that don’t give us immediate gratification.
San Angelo Standard Times

10 Tips For Starting a Service Business
You can see the request here on the right, posted to me on Twitter. I decided it’s a good subject for a blog post here, and I went on my own first as a service business and survived that way for 12 years before Palo Alto Software finally established itself as a product company.
Bplans.com

How To Embed YouTube Videos and Podcasts To Keep Readers on Your Blog
Using multimedia like video, audio and presentations are a fantastic way to promote products and get your point across to your audience.
Basic Blog Tips

3 reasons SMBs should care about Internet censorship
Summary: There is a lot more at stake than ‘just’ freedom of expression, so the small business community — especially those with a technology bent — need to stay abreast of this issue.
ZDNet (blog)

Five Profitable Businesses You’ve Never Thought Of
How are you going about making money? What if you could make money with some of your craziest ideas? Here are five of my favorite off-the-wall businesses.
Business Opportunities Weblog

Building a Business is Worth the Time
Make no mistake. Creating your own small business is hard work. But as you’ll see, there are rewards. Here are some tips, tools and trends to think about while taking the time you need to build your small business.
Small Business Trends

Why You Need Google Rating Stars and How to Set Them Up
There are WordPress plugins that will make ratings widgets appear on your posts and pages and allow  users to rate or vote on your content.  This shows engagement on your site, and if you’re lucky, those ratings will get picked up by Google and other search engines.
DDIY.com

No easy road: Running a small business takes time, time, time
Running a small business can be a tough proposition in a good economy, much less a difficult one. Three local, successful small business owners give their views on what it takes.
MyWebTimes.com

The Hidden Costs of Social Media
Marketing tactics including networking are an important part of marketing your brand. However in one way or another you need to ask the question of what is the return you are getting for your efforts.
M4B Marketing

Four tax-related New Year’s resolutions for a small business owner
Many small business owners are looking over their yearly ledgers and see a substantial tax liability. Spending money on new equipment, massive upgrades and employee bonuses might not be feasible for small businesses.
Redlands Daily Facts

Tips to help get cash for your small business
Around half of small companies can’t persuade their bank to cough up the cash they need to start up or expand. Many are refused because the banks are cautious, even though they should be helping kick-start the economy.
Mirror.co.uk

The Big List: The Best and Worst Startup Stuff In 2011
It’s time to review the past year, so without apology for personal taste, here’s my list of the best (and a few of the worst) of 2011.
OnStartups.com

3 Things You Should Know About Small Business
Streamlining government agencies is good for small business.
TheStreet.com

Managing Finances for Business Success
According to the US Small Business Administration, only one out of every two new start-ups survives after the first five years of business. That means that half fail, many times due to financial missteps.
Sacramento Bee

Women Professionals Rate 6 Biggest Mistakes Made When Marketing to Women
Women small business professionals from three countries were polled to find the top 6 mistakes made by businesses when marketing to women.
San Francisco Chronicle (press release)

Ralph Lauren, Danny Meyer and Whole Foods Offer Business Advice at NRF
Standing out from big business presents a large challenge to many small-business owners, but those who are able to do so can experience large returns.
BusinessNewsDaily

3 Successful Small Business Cause Marketing Campaigns
When a large business rolls out a cause marketing campaign the consumer can’t escape it–there is a barrage of print, TV and web ads, but how is a small business to get the word out?
American Express OPEN Forum

Are you ready for an unusual way to raise capital? Jorian Clarke joins Jim Blasingame to reveal a website that makes your creative idea available to the public who vote their acceptance by donating money to your plan.

Source/Listen: The Small Business Advocate

A waning property market will put a number of small businesses at risk, according to Oxford Funding CEO Rob Lamers. Small business owners, particularly of start-ups, often secure finance using the value of their homes, but the tepid sector may cost businesses vital funding.

According to the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, for the fifth weekend in a row, demand remained subdued at auctions in Melbourne over the past weekend. The clearance rate was 59 per cent from the 829 auctions reported last weekend, compared to the same weekend last year which saw 990 auctions held and a clearance rate of 72 per cent achieved.

Source/Read More: PRWire.com.au

Bootstrap financing is one of the greatest and least expensive routes an entrepreneur can explore when raising capital. It utilizes unused opportunities that can be found within your own company by simply managing your finances better, and you will not need to rely on anybody else’s help to generate this much-needed cash for your small business.

Because you will not owe any interest on this new money, you can keep your overall business budget down to a minimum as well because there will be no high interest fee attached to the new funds. Your company will also be worth more because less money will have been borrowed and any equity you happen to have in your company will not have to be relinquished. Your business savvy will also greatly increase because you now have to be a lot more creative when it comes to financing your fledgling business.

Source/Read More: How-To-Raise-Capital.com

Being self-sufficient doesn’t mean you don’t need a hand every now and then. We’ve compiled the best bootstrapping strategies of experts we’ve interviewed and companies we’ve written about recently, so you can learn from their successes.

Source/Read More: Inc.

You’ve committed the cardinal sin of owning a business: Poor cash flow management. In this challenging economic environment, your debt-saddled customers are taking their sweet time paying their bills—when they pay at all—which translates into you falling behind on paying yours. You’re over-leveraged. There’s no more wiggle room.

Source/Read More: American Express OPEN Forum

The state of small business financing has been a mixed bag lately, as Joel Libava previously wrote about on Small Business Trends. But slowly, things seem to be improving. Last month, The New York Times reported that more small businesses are seeking—and getting—bank loans. And in a new study by Capitol One, 85 percent of U.S. small businesses surveyed say they are able to access the financing they need—up from 70 percent at the same time last year.

But what kind of capital are these businesses getting, and is it helping—or hurting—them in the long run? A new survey by MultiFunding LLC, a firm that helps small companies find financing, sheds a slightly different perspective than most surveys on the issue.

Source/Read More: Small Business Trends