Running your own business is hard work.

Sometimes it’s nice to remember that your hard work creates a lot of ancillary benefits, not the least of which is the collective contribution of small businesses to the economy.

The SBA posted a Valentine’s message a few days ago Ten Reasons to Love Small Business that touches on some of these. (via ACCAbuzz)

A couple of my favs:

• Small businesses make up 99.7 percent of all United States employers.
• Small patenting firms produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.
• Home-based businesses account for 53 percent of all small businesses.
• Small businesses are 97 percent of America’s exporters and produce 26 percent of all export value.
• The latest figures show that small business creates 65 percent or more of America’s net new jobs.

Let’s keep the economy humming!

Denise O’Berry at Just for Small Business recently summarized a Marketing Experiments pricing report.

What do you charge for your products? How do you determine the best price point to get the maximum revenue? Should the price be low so you can make your money on volume? Or high to get the best return on each item? Those are the questions many entrepreneurs would like to have answered. It’s tough to figure out what is the best price for a product because there are so many variables involved.

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Diana Figueroa argues in the t.i.p.s newsletter that as long as they’re providing real service to their customers, small businesses will always have the loyalty advantage over big conglomerates.