NR Market Watch

It has been along time since the typical family all sat around the television, with a bowl of popcorn, fixated on every word and image. We flip, zip, fix a sandwich, check the paper, and increasingly we check e-mail and surf the Internet. A new study finds 42% of the public surfs the Internet while watching television, 29% talk on their phones, and 26% are texting or sending IMs. You can read more of the Deloite study results at Mashable.

As we head into the New Year there is much speculation about how 2011 will turn out for our area. I for one am cautiously optimistic about improvement in revenue for small businesses this year. Nationwide trends are indicating that many citizens are recognizing the positive impact of keeping money in their local economy by doing business with independent, locally owned businesses.

In addition there is much discussion about generating more revenue by adding value to our natural resources here rather than sending out raw materials. This line of thinking will invariably bring about additional small business opportunities whether through support of manufacturing businesses or the manufacturing opportunities themselves. An example might be container manufacturing that Umpqua Dairy could use for their retail milk sales instead of buying the packaging from outside the area.

An excellent article out of smallbiztrends.com highlights many of the events that are occurring throughout the nation in three different categories; Local, government and economic development. Highlights include:

Local Movement

• Local Foods: Farmers are the next stars.
• Shop Local: A focus on building better business.
• Local Travel: Meaningful tourism is more engaging.
• Mobil = Local: Connecting is good for business.

Government

• Government Budget Crunches: Small towns take a big hit.
• Health Care Reform: Some support for rural access.

Economic Developments

• Economic Outlook: Strong ag. prices boost rural prospects.
• Rural Sourcing: Small towns capture jobs from outsourcing.
• Ag. Exports: Global trade is a rural issue.
• Entrepreneurship: A rural boom in sole proprietors.

For more information on any of these points, click on the link above.

Tim Allen

Owner – Roseburg Rental

Vice President – Think Local Umpqua

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2010. That’s about 29 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 383 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1062 posts. There were 10 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 9mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 6th with 223 views. The most popular post that day was OMG, ten minutes sealed in a coffin – ‘motivating’!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were mail.yahoo.com, facebook.com, nrtoday.com, mail.live.com, and en.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for how to sell shoes to customers, umpqua regional medical center, peak earning years, selling shoes retail, and how to sell shoes retail.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

OMG, ten minutes sealed in a coffin – ‘motivating’! January 2010

Success at retail, selling shoes and hitting goals May 2009
3 comments

Oregon ranks 47th in job growth; wood products decline continues February 2010
1 comment

Lacuna opening Roseburg manufacturing plant – 100 employees June 2010

C&K Stores (Ray’s) opening grocery in Yachats March 2010
1 comment

WATCH OUT FOR FAKE BCS TICKETS AND TRAVEL PACKAGES

From: Oregon Attorney General

For Oregon Duck football fans, 2010 has been a dream season with an undefeated record and a trip to the championship game. But if you hope to cheer in person at the 2011 Tostitos BCS National Championship Game in Arizona, don’t let a con artist turn your dream into a nightmare by selling you counterfeit tickets or bogus travel packages. Below are some tips offered by the Oregon Department of Justice and Attorney General John Kroger to help consumers avoid purchasing fake tickets:

• Scammers often use the lure of cheaper tickets to take consumer’s money. Be suspicious of any offer that seems too good to be true, because it probably is.
• Purchase tickets from a reputable ticket distributor.

• Do not purchase tickets sight unseen unless you are using a reputable ticket distributor.
• If using Craigslist, meet the seller face-to-face in a public place. Ask questions about the seats and seller. Get reliable contact information from the seller in case the tickets are counterfeit.
• Confirm that the section, row and seat on your ticket corresponds with a location in the stadium.
• If possible, use a credit card or account-to-account transfer service such as PayPal. If the tickets you purchased aren’t delivered, not as advertised or counterfeit, you can dispute the charge.
• Never wire money or give out personal account information to individuals you do not know.
• Purchase tickets before going to the game. Scammers use color printers to create very real-looking tickets and will try to sell them to desperate fans outside of the stadium for quick cash.
• If you purchase a travel package, contact the airline and hotel directly to make certain the reservations are legitimate.
• Verify that any travel agent you are working with to book a travel package is a member of a recognized trade association, such as the American Society of Travel Agents.

Attorney General John Kroger and the Oregon Department of Justice are committed to protecting Oregon’s marketplace and keeping scammers on the sidelines. If you or someone you know has fallen victim to a fake ticket scam, please call the Consumer Hotline at 1-877-877-9392.

If providing quality leadership for your organization is high on your list of priorities I think you will want to move quickly to take advantage of  this online Leadership and Influence Summit.

It is available until Nov. 30th with a free registration and features great speakers. I’ve long appreciated the book,“ Influence, the Power of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini and he is one of the speakers.

More than 30 speakers are available on-demand with commentary about leadership and management. Each segment is six to 20 minutes long.

I’ll be sitting at the computer tonight!

Since Facebook is such an easy way to provide additional commenting opportunities we’ve added a new FB page for nrmarketwatch.com.  Here is the url: http://www.facebook.com/pages/NR-Market-Watch/

You can also do an FB search. Either way I hope you will give it a try and use the like button to continue receiving.

We’ve also had a Twitter feed for some time which you can access here:

https://twitter.com/#!/nrpub

Also don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter – you’ll find the link on the right hand side of this page. Incidentally, you may find the newsletter blocked by your spam filter so check your junk file if you do not receive the newsletter and then add to your contacts, or mark not junk.

That’s it for the tech talk today. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment here at this site or on our new FB site.

Mark

The headline pretty much says what needs to be said, but Tim Berry’s blog at Bplans.com is worth the read anyway. He has many other great tips on planning, starting and growing your business.