Creative Use of CARES Funding For COVID-19 Economic Recovery

ShopLocalVGA.com, the online marketplace for Virginia's Growth Alliance economic development region, has provided the platform for five Matching Gift Card Program sales that have gotten $2,706,000 to date into the hands of 266 small business owners and 7,620 shoppers in two rural Virginia counties over the past several months.

Halifax, Virginia, based web and marketing strategy firm Glerin Business Resources originally developed the site in 2014 and expanded it pro bono during COVID to include gift card capability after Tina Morgan, Tourism Director for Mecklenburg County, inquired about running a matching program through the site.

Our CEO, Lisa Kipps-Brown, is the mind behind the history-making crowdfunded NASCAR Xfinity racing team, Our American Dream Team. In early January the campaign exceeded the $200,000 goal to fund the new Xfinity team’s run at Daytona in February, and the team was able to set aside enough to pay for a veteran’s stem cell treatments.

I've told you this before - you should NEVER use a free platform as a replacement for your own business website.

You have no control over your content, like the guy who had used Blogger for 14 years and one day his site was shut down without warning & he lost all his work.  14 years gone! Today the reason was illustrated once again when Facebook went down for a while.

You have 2 choices if you're a service business owner who needs to increase your income

... do more work or charge more for the work you do.

Either is viable, but focusing on doing more billable work can easily put you on a constant high pressure treadmill.

When you concentrate only on reaching a certain total sales goal, it becomes tempting to take work at prices lower than you should just so you can get one step closer to the income you need.

You end up working more for less, and then it becomes a downward spiral.

If you're taking any work that comes along, it costs you in 2 ways:

When most business owners think of selling online, they think of it as a Yes/No question: either they do sell online or they don't.

The reality is that there are so many possible new revenue streams you can create that it's not a Yes/No question.

Recently we launched a new online store for Distinct Impressions that's a great example. DI is an established boutique in historic Downtown South Boston, VA, that sells gifts, fashions, and custom apparel, and offers embroidery and screen printing services. Their e-commerce project now brings in:

• sales through the e-commerce site itself,
• sales through their Facebook page's Facebook Shop tab,
• and sales generated automatically by comments on specific Facebook product posts.