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How can a small business stay in afloat in this economy? Competition has gotten brutal.?

I come up with new ideas to expand our services, advertise them and a competitor uses the idea themselves and uses their bigger budget to advertise to a wider audience. This have happened on several occasions. I offer a service that none of my competitors offer, days after I offer it, they take the idea and spam the local papers, and other advertising venues and use my company's ideas to make money. With the economy as it is now, I do not have the budget to advertise and rely mostly on web advertisement. For example, I'll post a service on Craigslist, someone will flag it and post the service as their own. The last time, four different people copied my posting then flagged me. I don't know how much more of this my business can withstand. And no, a micro-loan from the SBA is not an option, and grants no longer exist, even for vets and minorities.

How can I survive this?

5 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Stop giving away your ideas. The key to success in a small business is a good product, excellent service and price. If everyone is selling a similar product then you have to excel at the other two. If your service is good enough you can get away with charging a little more.

    Concentrate on developing a customer base, that is really the only answer to long term success in any business. If you have better ideas, use them on your current customers and build from there. Your existing customers are the answer to your problems, use them.

  • Competition is fierce, but small businesses definitely have numerous significant advantages to larger competing companies.

    Try to leverage these advantages and let the components of your small business that your competition cannot offer YOUR customers help the business grow.

    Good luck!

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  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    I understand what you're saying approximately severe expenditures, yet on an analogous time i'm left asking 2 questions. a million) What do you plan that could desire to alter to alleviate your pressures? cost Controls? greater government information? bigger taxes and redistribution of wealth? 2) Am i in my view in charge for subsidizing your income short falls? Or am I splendid in asserting that in case you do no longer make sufficient funds that it will be incumbent upon you to the two income further coaching to strengthen your pay? Or attempt to alter jobs right into a greater worthwhile place? i do no longer blame every person for his or her financial subject, different than in situations the place i'm in my view conscious that the guy is inflicting their misery with the aid of sloth. i'm additionally no longer attempting to be rude or insensitive right here, yet own duty is being lost in this united states with this style of entitlement thinking. existence isn't ordinary and no person ever reported it would ordinary. The shape does not assure happiness, or prosperity in existence. It guarantess the splendid to existence, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Your are alive, you're loose, so the common theory at paintings right it is the pursuit of happiness. each and each human beings is in charge for making our very own way interior the worldwide. a thank you to regulate severe expenditures isn't with the aid of government regulation, it relatively is thru marketplace forces. whilst the inhabitants can not handle to pay for products and centers, expenditures are oftentimes decreased, otherwise the agencies that furnish them can not stay in agency. even with the indisputable fact that, government intervention interior the loose marketplace in basic terms approximately constantly produces disastrous consequences. kill_yr_television: the subject inclusive of your style of thinking is that i understand too lots of people who've triumph over the proper form of hindrances your are speaking approximately to strengthen into powerful in existence. One actuality I even have had proved to me returned and returned is that individuals create their very very own self pleasing prophesies. no longer every person should not succeed in existence and a few will fail even even with the undeniable fact that they paintings no longer ordinary. even with the indisputable fact that, one element i understand for particular is that if a individual shares your approach they are in basic terms approximately actual dommed to failure devoid of question.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    you need to find a way to certify or patten your ideas so when someone uses your idea they will be stealing it. also by owning your idea you have the possibility of selling or renting your idea to the major companies.

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

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