A Difficult Time for Small Businesses

Screaming into the void.

Things are changing, and not in a good way.
 
A very bad and honestly crippling way has to do with the newer restrictions from search engines.  This doesn't benefit the reader OR the creator.  Only the billionaires who control the information.  All of our good intentions (and in fairness, marketing efforts) have been swallowed up by the tech companies, and will be resold to us. In the meantime, their massive data centers will suck up the electricity, foul the air, and destroy fresh water for an eternity.

For over 20 years I've posted on this blog, sharing information, feelings, and observations.  At one time, you could educate yourself about anything online.  Enter it into the search bar and up will come hundreds of blogs and websites offering the information/recipe freely.  From there, it was up to the reader to ascertain what information was reliable, and what other methods of information gathering would be beneficial.

Now, the search default is "AI mode" which will obscure all original sources of information, giving only the AI generated conglomeration of words that have been compiled without the aid of a human being.   We are out of the equation.  Some of us remember fighting for net neutrality in the last decade.  The joke's on us because there was never any intention of allowing us to have any say over our own work.

It took centuries for the Library of Alexandria in Egypt to be destroyed, eventually burned to rubble.

  

The vast and valuable repository of information that is the internet has been destroyed and made inaccessible in just the blink of an eye.

I won't stop, although my sharing of information has been cut back pretty much.  This old dog isn't going to try to learn new tricks.  Game, set, match.

A second real problem has to do with shipping.  
The other day I was reading comments on a product advertised on Facebook.  One comment talked about how high the shipping was, and how the company was using shipping to make money.  
They couldn't be more wrong.
This morning I shipped two packages and lost about $3 on each of them.  I can't bring myself to increase the shipping (yet), and the prices of the articles are fair, and it feels wrong to increase them to try to recoup some of the losses.
And this has been the problem for years.  All of the prices go up, and the small business is squeezed between the big businesses and the customer.  This was one of the biggest reasons my sister closed her soap company.  Every single ingredient has increased, some by as much as 600%, yet the price of a bar of soap can't go to $30.  In fact, we first sold soap for $2 a bar in 1993, and in the end, over 30 years later, it was $5.50 a bar with the margin getting smaller and smaller.  
Amazon trained people to expect free shipping.  Now they don't give it unless you're Prime, but the mindset has already been put into play.

I just want people to know that we aren't using shipping as a profit stream.  We aren't gouging.  Go onto USPS and look up some prices.  You'll be shocked.  Most of us are eating some of the shipping while using the least expensive options we can find.   

Small businesses really are here to share the things they love.  I can't speak for everyone, but the business owners I know are not ever expecting to purchase a yacht.  Maybe braces for the kid, or a new car in 5 or 10 years, but never rich.  I wish people knew how hard we try to make it work for everyone involved.