The pandemic is accelerating existing trends.

Covid-19 has initiated some trends and altered the direction of others, but its most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. Take any trend--social, business, or personal--and fast-forward 10 years. Even if your company isn't living in the year 2030 yet, the pandemic has spurred changes in consumer behavior and markets. This is clear in the rapid increase in online shopping, in the shift toward remote delivery of health care, and in the spectacular increase in valuation among the biggest tech firms.

The more disruptive the crisis, the greater the opportunities--and the risks.

In a world in which e-commerce has become a necessity for nearly every retailer, it can seem they have only two options: list their goods on marketplaces run by giant companies, or sell to consumers directly, hoping they will make more on each transaction despite fewer sales. In other words, either join a dominant marketplace like eBay , Walmart or Amazon —which by itself represents 38% of U.S. online sales, according to Digital Commerce 360—or hope they can find customers through advertising and word of mouth.

For many small- and medium-size sellers, a third option has emerged, embodied by the rising star of e-commerce, Shopify . This approach gives merchants access to cloud-based third-party services such as payments and fulfillment, but lets them maintain more control of their branding and customer relationships than the biggest marketplaces offer. Shoppers might not even know they’re buying something from a Shopify-powered retailer, and that’s the point.

In addition to making goods available on sellers’ own sites, these software companies—which also include BigCommerce and Magento—can perform the laborious task of listing merchandise on the giants marketplaces. By becoming hubs for managing sales through multiple channels, including social-media platforms, they represent real competition for Amazon and its ilk, potentially giving merchants more leverage when dealing with those entrenched giants.

Specific PPP provisions of the new law include:

Appropriates an additional $7.25 billion to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for the PPP program

Expands PPP eligibility to include:

~ Additional tax-exempt nonprofits, such as 501(c)(5) labor and agricultural organizations and community locations of larger nonprofits, whose lobbying activities do not comprise more than 15 percent of its activities
~ Internet publishing organizations assigned a North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code of 519130 and engaged in the collection and distribution of local or regional and national news and information
~ Adds COBRA premium assistance as an allowable payroll cost under the PPP program.

Invoice financing is a type of business funding wherein the business sells its outstanding invoices or account receivables (A/R) to financing companies to get an immediate cash flow boost. The financing company takes over the invoices, and sometimes be in charge of collecting customer payments (as in invoice factoring).

Invoice financing is a popular financing option for businesses that have to wait 30,60, or 90 days to get their clients payments.

A survey of small businesses conducted by Appalachian State University in coordination with Selective found that cybersecurity and technology issues were growing concerns for 44% of survey respondents due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, only 20% of survey respondents have cyber insurance coverage.

The findings highlight an awareness gap among small businesses about the risks they face from cybercrime. Twenty-eight percent of data breaches impact small businesses, and phishing attacks account for over 30% of breaches, making them the biggest cyber threat for small organizations.1 Cyber coverage from Selective can help small businesses manage and mitigate risks with comprehensive coverage options and cyber threat education.

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

1 — Google plans to scrap third-party cookies by 2022.

Google announced this past week that it plans to stop the use of tracking cookies on Chrome by next year and— instead— will replace cookies with a profiling system

2 —Recruiting startup SeekOut raised $65M to take on LinkedIn and other talent acquisition companies.

3 —Small business owners adopted new software in 2020 and increased tech budgets in 2021.

The data on business startups and closing show a mixed bag across the United States. Some states have seen an increase in new business applications over the past year (February to February) and some states have shown a decline. The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are among the weakest regions, with Virginia showing a 3.5% decline in year-over-year applications.

Business closings are harder to track month to month because small business operators do not always file documents when they shutter their doors, and it is hard to distinguish between permanent and temporary closings. Closings do show up eventually in tax filings and articles of incorporation.

Staying tuned in to the pulse of your industry is key to becoming a successful entrepreneur. Public groups, online forums and the like are among the most valuable resources for gathering and contributing industry information. But if someone is looking for in-depth insight into their business niche, locating the right groups where this discussion occurs is the first step. T

This month almost 135,000 businesses are showing strain, as the impact of a year of Covid-19 restrictions reverberates.Businesses in the services and retail sectors accounted for almost three-fifths of those showing distress, said Mazars. Sectors allowed to reopen were faring better, with construction and manufacturing businesses making up 7.9 per cent and 6.7 per cent of those in distress respectively.

For some of the smallest businesses that applied for forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, waiting just a few days or weeks would’ve gotten them thousands of dollars more.

But they had no way of knowing what was coming.

The Biden administration in late February announced a slew of changes to the loan program, which offered forgivable loans in return for keeping employees on a company’s payroll, after it reopened in January with $284 billion in funding. Those amendments included an adjusted loan formula that would mean larger amounts for sole proprietors as well as expanded eligibility for small business owners with certain criminal records, were delinquent on student loan debt or were non-citizens.

The Small Business Administration has extended deferment periods for all of l its disaster loans made either in 2020 or 2021, the agency announced on Monday.

The extended deferment includes the SBAs Economic Injury Disaster Loan – or EIDL – program, which many businesses that did not qualify for Paycheck Protection Program loans or other funding used to bridge the losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All SBA disaster loans made in 2020 will have the first payment due date extended from 12-months to 24-months from the date of the note, the agency said. Disaster loans made in 2021 will have a first payment due date extended from 12-months to 18-months from the date of the note.

Every business was considered small at some point in its history. Some go big, but some stay small and do quite well. The size of a business in common measurements (revenue, employees, locations) is less relevant than the size of your customer base and the corresponding loyalty of customers.

Millions of businesses across the country are struggling, yet many are not taking the latest version of government aid: a second round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This is not happening because businesses are better off than they were last year; it is because the PPP still contains structural blockers that are stopping businesses from obtaining the aid they urgently need.

A recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank found that 30% of U.S. small businesses — totaling 9 million — fear they will not make it through 2021 without more government assistance. And yet, many are not applying for aid. The Small Business Administration (SBA) reports that seven weeks after round two of PPP began, nearly half the funds remain, and only 31% of 2020 PPP loans have been forgiven to date.

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If you know what South by Southwest (SXSW for those in the know) is and if you continually wish you...

Just a note to say that this blog has become rather dusty and abandoned over the last two or three years. But I think it's time for me to use it a lot more. At least until Google notices that they still own Blogger, and close the whole thing down.

Hullo. Welcome back.

This is a good place, on the whole, this blog. I started it in February 2001, for American Gods. This was the first entry.)

Here is an Edward Gorey drawing called The Happy Ending, to celebrate the New Beginning.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has urged farmers to significantly cut their use of urea to boost income and soil health, and said his government was constantly striving to prop up rural India with steps such as the ₹1 lakh crore agriculture infrastructure fund, for which he launched the financing facility on Sunday. Modi also released ₹17,000 crore to the bank accounts of 85 ...

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