SuperMedia blog

A new partnership between small business lender Kabbage and UPS will help more businesses secure more credit and lower interest rates via shipping data. The move is good news for small businesses at a time when lending has become hard to come by.

Typically, says Kathryn Petralia, co-founder of Kabbage, it takes a FICA score of 720 to secure lending from banks. The company, which lends to online businesses with bad credit, has ...

New online job sites are helping small business employers find short-term job seekers for a variety of jobs. Unlike traditional online job sites which work to match employees and employers for part-time or full-time work, the new job sites have a primary focus on specific temporary tasks which need to be completed.

The models of these new job sites, known as peer-to-peer job sites, focus on fostering connections between small business employers with local job seekers who are looking ...

The Kauffman Foundation and LegalZoom have released results from the first ever Kauffman/LegalZoom Startup Confidence Index, and according to the survey results startups are feeling optimistic about the 2012 business year.

The nationwide survey was conducted in January 2012 and results were compiled from 800 respondents. Out of those who responded to the survey, 60% ran a small business from their homes and 69% were over 40 years of age. A first of its kind, the Startup Confidence ...

Google Wallet is back in business after a hacking incident last week highlighted security issues with the mobile payment service. The hackers, which were able to access user PIN numbers, briefly rattled the users of the service that enables point-of-sale and online purchases via mobile phone. Google Wallet temporarily disabled a feature that allowed purchases to be made via pre-paid cards – the types of transactions that were in danger – and now the feature has been ...

The September 2011 America Invents Act put into law the most comprehensive changes in the patent system in over 60 years. In an effort to streamline the process through which inventions are transformed into viable businesses, this patent reform is aimed at increasing the likelihood that patents will be issued, speeding up procedures, and providing stronger incentives for potential start-ups to file and grow their businesses. The changes prompted by the America Invents Act are expected to be ...

U.S. small businesses are moving away from overseas manufacturing in China in favor of domestic American manufacturing companies. There are several factors driving this shift, many of which are cost-driven. Prices in China have gone up in recent years due to rising labor costs, an increase in transportation costs, and currency shifts, meaning that this is no longer necessarily the cheapest option. In addition, with the continuing uncertainty of the U.S. economy, by ordering domestically small ...

The health care act signed into law by President Obama in 2010 that will implement in 2014 is forcing health-insurance companies to look outside their comfort zones in business-to-business marketing.

OptumHealth and Fitbit partnered to create an app that coaches and follows consumers. For consumers, the law guarantees health insurance and the power to choose and switch plans. However, for health insurers, the law creates heightened competition, the opportunity to find ...

In its recently released 2011 annual report, the SBA Office of Advocacy takes a close look at how small businesses are faring across the country at the state level. Among the metrics collected and analyzed in this survey are: total number of businesses per state, store openings/closing, business foreclosures, and demographic information on the small business owners out there today. It’s important to note that within the framework of this study, a small business is defined as those firms ...

In the midst of a tough economy, billion-dollar corporations are not the only ones having to sell. According to a survey by BizBuySell.com, sales of small businesses (those with annual revenues of about $350,000) have increased 8 percent, from 1,106 in the second quarter of 2010 to 1,198 in the second quarter of 2011. This increase marks the highest number of small businesses sold since the fourth quarter of 2008.

Sales Prices Decrease in Spite of Selling ...

Despite the recent downturn in the economy, studies show that small business owners have managed to keep a positive outlook. In fact, according to the 2011 Year-End Economic Report by the National Small Business Association (NSBA), 75 percent of small business owners are confident about the future of their companies.

Hopeful Stats for Small Business Owners

Within the past six months, the number of business owners who are expecting a recession decreased by 30 ...

Anyone who has tried playing Angry Birds on their phone or computer knows how difficult it can be to master the wildly popular game.

Yet a small company from Seattle may be well on its way to doing exactly that.

SwaddleDesigns recently picked up the first-ever license with Rovio Entertainment, the creator of Angry Birds, to sell a variety of baby products featuring the familiar Angry Bird characters.

Swaddle was created in 2002 by Jeff and Lynette Damir. The married ...

According to a recent national study from Louisiana State University and Baylor University, the presence of small businesses in communities actually contributes to the health of residents in those communities. Drawing from data collected from several national databases, Dr. Troy Blanchard from LSU and Drs. Carson Mencken and Charles Tolbert from Baylor looked specifically at 3,060 counties and parishes in the U.S. in terms of population, health, business, and housing, and how these factors ...

It was two years ago that President Obama sought to jumpstart the country's export figures, aiming to at least double the total value of U.S. items exported by local companies over a five-year period.

So far, small businesses in the country are making progress toward that goal.

Preliminary figures show that 35 percent of all exports in the third quarter of 2011 were by small companies. Those small companies, defined as entities with fewer than 500 workers, accounted for ...

David Marcus, PayPal’s VP of Mobile, tells AllThingsD this week that it’s still pushing ahead on its mobile payment strategy. Currently the Sam Jose, Calif.-based company is demo-ing its latest technology at Home Depots in the area, and other testing has reached as far as Singapore.

The race to create successful mobile payment applications is also being pursued by credit card giants, Google and wireless carriers. But if today was any indication, security still remains an ...

Small businesses are raking in savings on time – and money – by creating their own do-it-yourself mobile apps. Even better, some small businesses are now encouraging employee ingenuity by promoting the creation of DIY apps targeted to find specific business solutions for today’s online and mobile shoppers. DIY apps are also being created by small business employees and owners to find time saving solutions for record keeping purposes.

A survey released by AT&T in ...

Wells Fargo has just released the quarterly results for the Small Business Index, and the news is good for small businesses. According to the Small Business Index survey, small businesses have the highest optimism reading than they have had in the last 3 years.

Highlights from the Small Business Index report include:

• Optimism jumped to an index score of 15 during the first quarter of 2012. This is an 18 point gain from the index score of negative 3 for the fourth ...

According to a new survey from the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority, a substantial percentage of small business owners believe that large corporations and wealthy Americans are not contributing their fair share of the tax burden. This directly counters the belief of many that all businesses adamantly oppose raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Rather, many small business owners instead support recent propositions to raise tax rates ...

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is offering start-up advice for budding entrepreneurs in a series of interactive web chats designed to provide a forum where small business owners, or those planning to start a small business, can discuss relevant issues with industry leaders and other experts.

February's chat, "New Year, New Business: How to Start it Right" will be hosted by Janice Washington, a successful business consultant and former business owner. Ms. Washington is ...

If you work from your home, there are a number of tax deductions available to lessen the tax burden for you, as well as other self-employed small business owners throughout the country. Here are 12 tips that everyone who is self-employed should look into, according to www.bankrate.com.

1. Home Office - The key to deducting a home office is to be sure you don't also include other parts of the house used by the family. A home office should ...

Ethnic food, like Thai or Cuban, is becoming more popular, and increasingly, people are finding out about it thanks to food trucks, which are cruising more and more American streets.

The food truck movement is helping ethnic street cuisine make its way into more and more neighborhoods and into the mainstream, allowing these new flavors to enter brick-and-mortar establishments in increasing numbers. Two well-known examples of this are Chipotle's test concept, Shop House, and the ...

By the end of 2012, online retail giant Amazon is set to open its first brick and mortar location in Seattle. Unlike the online site that offers virtually any product under the sun, the local retail store will focus primarily on books. The store will also carry a wide array of accessories for its popular line of e-reader, the Kindle.

While this may seem an odd move for a company with Amazon’s online success, they seem to be following the lead of such companies as Apple and ...

A National Federation of Independent Business poll of 2,155 small business firms revealed that SB hiring was flat for January 2012, with SBs posting numbers slightly better than December but far from the levels needed to support a strong recovery and resolution to the nation’s unemployment woes. Furthermore, when taking into consideration December’s traditional seasonal slowdown, experts see any uptick as insignificant.

According to the NFIB poll, the numbers came in as ...

Since 2008, union membership numbers have been the decline. Now, membership rates have begun to level, indicating they either cannot go any lower or the labor market is at the verge of turning around for union members. The Center for Economic Policy Research, a think tank of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, claims the membership numbers leveled off in 2011, after losing 1.4 million memberships between 2008 and 2010.

The public sector led the way in the decline of membership by losing ...

Good news for small businesses this week as the Federal Reserve reported that small business lending has rose in the fourth quarter by a large margin. It its survey of senior loan officers in the banking sector, the Fed found that small businesses made the largest leap within a quarter since 2005.

Contributing to this trend, Citibank recently announced a 30-percent increase in its small business lending, while J.P. Morgan Chase reports an increase in 2011 by 52 percent. Biz2Credit, an ...

For most industries, new technology is typically a good thing, especially considering that it makes accomplishing once-complex tasks much easier and more efficient. However, such technology also means that new businesses are getting off the ground with nearly half as many employees as they did a decade ago. According to some analysts, this change, which actually began before the economic recession, may be permanent.

Statistics Yield Difficult Times for Employees Looking for ...

As more small and medium-sized businesses are falling prey to a seemingly endless sea of hacker sharks eager to make businesses their lunch, many smaller firms are opting to outsource their data storage and software operations. While large companies have used IT service providers for years, smaller firms are realizing the cost-effectiveness and service benefits of jumping on this bandwagon.

Cloud Computing Benefits

Cloud computing—running operations ...

Small businesses aren’t scaring easily in 2012 if a recent National Small Business Association report is any indication. Today it released its 2011 Year-End Economic Report, revealing that more business owners are optimistic about their future. The number of those more confident rose from 64 percent to 75 percent in six months and is the highest percentage reported in three years.

Sixty-six percent of business owners expect a flat economy for 2012. While this sounds dismal at ...

Citibank announced this week the launching of an innovative program aimed toward driving capital to small businesses, particularly those located in inner city areas that are considered to be economically distressed. Partnering with merchant bank Next Street, Citi plans to create what they are calling the Next Street Opportunity Fund: a $30 million funding entity set up specifically to lend capital to high-performing small businesses.

Contributions for this fund will come primarily ...

The U.S. Small Business Administration has recently released an updated report to a 1998-2010 study on the share of GDP which small businesses contribute to. The conclusions from this in-depth review shows that while small businesses have lost a portion of GDP, they are still an important part of the U.S. economy and account for a significant quantity of the total GDP. This recent analysis, by economist Kathryn Kobe, also highlights positive small business trends which may help to improve the ...

The Small Business Authority has recently highlighted 3 loan programs in a recent Forbes edition. These 3 loan programs, available to small business owners, include the Flexible Term Lending Program, the Fixed/Floating Rate Program and the Conventional Real Estate Loan Program.

The Flexible Term Lending Program, available for small business owners in multiple industries including retail, wholesale and manufacturing, offers loans from $50,000 to $5 million with 7 to 25 year terms. Loan ...

According to the latest Federal Reserve figures released on January 30, 2012 (in the January 2012 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices), loan demand from small businesses in the U.S. is at its highest level since 2005. This uptick results directly from a growing number of the nation’s banks seeing a spike in demand for small business loans toward the end of 2011. In fact, the Fed’s polling demonstrated that 26.4% of banks experienced a moderately stronger ...

Yesterday The New York Times reported new-vehicle sales across the U.S. were stronger than expected in January, signaling what could be the best year for the auto industry since 2007.

According to a report published by Reuters in December of 2011, auto industry gains for the last quarter of the year may have reflected a change in the mindset of potential buyers, a trend that may in part explain the figures released yesterday. Jesse Toprak, an analyst for TrueCar.com, ...

According to a recent study by Borrell Associates, the average local website’s unique visitor count overstates the number of actual people who have visited the site by a factor of about 3.6. The number of local people is overstated by a factor of 5¹. This means that, in many cases, the actual number of consumers in the market reach visiting a website is actually only a fraction of what a unique visitor counter states it is. However, business owners ...

A January 25 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Immigrant Policy Center has indicated that it’s time for the U.S. to ease up on current restrictions on immigrants who plan to open businesses in the U.S., and to instead create and implement a separate visa program for these potential entrepreneurs. The report effectively states that immigrant entrepreneurs both create jobs on a local level and strengthen the economy—and in fact, it credits foreign entrepreneurs as ...

DFW Airport, Texas (February 1, 2012)

After six years as a Google AdWords Reseller Partner, SuperMedia has become one of Google AdWords’ Premier SMB Partners, Google’s most prestigious partner affiliation. Media Consultants will be able to identify SuperMedia as a Premier SMB Partner affiliate when talking to their clients about how Google AdWords are used as part of the overall Superpages Network.

As a Premier SMB Partner, SuperMedia has been recognized as ...

Alex Palmer, a sales and marketing reporter, notes in a news article that visitors to consumer package goods (CPG) e-commerce websites spend 37 percent more in retail stores than customers who do not visit those websites, according to a recent study by comScore, Accenture and dunnhumbyUSA. In addition, visitors to CPG websites complete 41 percent more transactions than non-visitors, according to the study.

The study also found these brand websites are being underutilized for building ...

Time is ticking to file your 1099 forms, which must be postmarked today to make deadline. One of the most notable of the forms is the 1099-MISC, needed when you pay your contractors more than $600 for the year. If you haven’t filed yet, use tax software and get your forms ready to go, then submit electronically. Take the time to do it right, however, as revised 1099s are extremely inconvenient, especially for contractors who have ...

If there is one thing that remains true about American entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners, it is that they are certainly a hearty and resilient bunch. Despite difficult economic times for the past four years, the private sector has continued to push ahead toward greener pastures. However, even though many business owners maintain a positive attitude for dealings in 2012, others remain uncertain. Following are some of the improvements—and challenges—that small businesses ...

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced that it would maintain short-term interest rates near zero for the next 18 months in an effort to spur economic growth. This move comes after a two-day policy committee meeting and the subsequent publication of the committee's plans and predictions. The Fed admitted that the economy has expanded moderately recently, but cautions that jobs remain scarce, the housing sector is still depressed and Europe’s economic woes could undermine domestic ...

Will Price, CEO of Flite, writes in his article, "Lessons Learned and 2012 Predictions for the Ad Industry," at Direct Marketing News, that the state of the ad industry in 2011 was "tumultuous." He notes that there were "deep agency cuts," along with little growth, but that tumult can be good for the industry.

He maintains that relying on click-through information is a "clunky, vague metric" that really doesn't give high-quality information to business owners. He states that agencies ...

According to a new CNNMoney article, the Obama administration's rejection of the proposed Keystone pipeline project has some small business owners crying "foul", while others are applauding the move.

When the first line of the proposed 1,179-mile TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline was built in 2010, small businesses in the Nebraska towns of Steele City and Fairbury reaped the benefits ...

Small businesses can't afford to make huge marketing mistakes, but they often do. Here are some marketing mistakes to watch out for.

Don't fall in love with your products or services before you make sure there's a real market for them. Even if your friends and relatives urge you on, do your homework and research your business ideas to make sure there's a real market for them before you invest your time and money in them.

Do you think you have a product or service that will ...

As just about everyone knows, stress is a part of everyday life. In small doses, it can even be a motivator in a workplace environment, since a little anxiety can encourage creativity and keep everyone striving to do their best. However, constant stress can ultimately do much more harm than good, both in and out of the workplace. In fact, three out of every four American workers describe their work environment as overly stressful.

Three Dimensions of ...

Last year, Google announced that 20 percent of searches done on the site were “related to location” and began populating the organic results with businesses listed in Google Places. For small business owners that serve specific geographic areas, the importance of getting found among those results cannot be overstated.

There are a number of ways local businesses can target customers in their local markets. They include participation in social media like Twitter, Facebook ...

Attending business conferences and conventions is a great way to build and nurture relationships, keep up with current trends within your industry and generate new sales.  It can also be a drain on your bottom line. In addition to the actual cost of the event, you’ll also have to pay for hotel accommodations, transportation, meals and miscellaneous expenses that inevitably arise.

If your business is also an exhibitor or sponsor of the event, you’re also looking at ...

If your business is on the move, and even if it's not, rising gasoline prices can spell trouble. Mobile businesses are clearly feeling the heat, but almost any business will be impacted by hikes at the pump. Earlier this year, the United States Energy Information Administration projected that gasoline prices could exceed $4 per gallon during the summer months. That unhappy projection is becoming a reality. If your business is transportation intensive, these cost cutting tips will help you ...

Facebook’s introduction of the “Like” button has revolutionized online advertising. It has also opened the company up to yet another lawsuit. The class action suit, which was filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court alleges that Facebook misappropriated the names and images of minors for commercial gain without parental consent.

The suit, David Cohen v. Facebook (case #BC444482) seeks financial restitution from Facebook and third-parties that earned revenues ...