Any small business owner who recently tried to secure a loan will tell you it isn’t easy. Now data clearly shows the broader effects of this struggle.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the 10 biggest banks in the country that issue small loans to businesses lent $27.8 billion less in 2014 than the industry’s 2006 peak, according to the Journal’s analysis of federal regulatory filings. (1) This decline has forced many small business owners to turn to higher-cost funding sources.

The response is similar to that of individuals who are turned away by banks and then resort to expensive and risky alternatives. For businesses, these may be nonbank lenders, often in the form of online companies that require little or no collateral but that charge much higher interest rates than banks. While not all of these lenders are predatory, the space is still largely unregulated. For small amounts, some business owners are turning to nonprofit microlenders or crowdfunding to try to fill gaps, though both have serious limitations.

But many businesses are simply turning to credit cards when they cannot secure traditional small business loans. According to the Journal, small business spending on credit and charge cards will total an estimated $445 billion in 2015, compared to $230 billion back in 2006, when conventional lending was readily available. (1)

It may be more profitable for banks, but this solution is bad, and probably unsustainable, for business owners. As Robb Hilson, a small business executive with Bank of America, told The Wall Street Journal, “If someone wants to buy a forklift, it doesn’t make sense to put it on a credit card.” (1) Yet many small businesses have little other choice for now.

This result is not surprising. Large banks generally find small loans unattractive, partly because of their relatively high costs and partly because of tighter regulatory requirements. A Goldman Sachs analysis earlier this year cited the reduced availability of credit as one of the principal reasons small businesses have faltered in the wake of the financial crisis while large enterprises have largely recovered. (2) As regulators cracked down, it became uneconomical for banks to serve clients other than the most creditworthy. Startups seldom make the cut.

My own experience mirrors others. Even with a 23-year-old business that operates across the country, banks want hard collateral before they will make substantial loans. And when the chief assets of a business consist of loyal customers and really smart employees, the only available collateral is personal real estate. And even real estate was not enough at the first bank I approached; geography came into play too. If banks find our established firm too risky to make unsecured loans, many smaller or newer enterprises do not stand a chance.

With big banks out of reach, small community banks should have been ready to step into the gap, eagerly courting new customers. But that has not happened, largely because the number of such banks continues to decline. This trend predates the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, but the regulations sharply accelerated the community banks’ loss of market share.

This is not to say that all community banks are in immediate danger of going under. To the contrary, recent data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggests that those that have held on have expanded their lending and narrowed the profitability gap with larger banks.

While this is good news, it’s not enough to fill the gap in small business lending. And it seems unlikely to do so soon, since new bank establishments have dropped nearly to zero, thus cutting off a supply of lenders who are eager for new customers. According to an FDIC report from April 2014, there were only seven new bank charters total from 2009 to 2013, compared with over 100 annually prior to 2008.

The small banks that have survived have largely done so by being just as risk-averse as the big banks with which they compete. Regulation has simply made it foolish to act otherwise. But this leaves all small businesses except those with established history, sterling credit and substantial collateral without the means to secure the capital they need to make their enterprises grow.

Small businesses are crucial drivers of new jobs and new products for our economy; their credit struggles are probably a significant reason this economic expansion has been sluggish by historical standards. We have made it unattractive for big banks to serve small businesses, and small banks are not ready to fill the gap. We all pay the price.

Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

Finding a legitimate home based business opportunity isn’t always easy with all the hype and fluff that’s out there. However, there are a lot of great, legitimate opportunities and in this article I’m going to give you some tips on how to find them.How To Tell If A Home Based Business Is Legitimate or NotWhen you are looking for a home business opportunity, there are a couple of specific things to look for that will help you decide whether or not it’s legitimate. Those two things are the cost of the program or opportunity, and how much time is needed in order to succeed. Let’s start with the start up cost…If you did a search for home businesses on the Internet, you would be overwhelmed with the number of sketchy opportunities you’d find. There are pretty easy to spot too. Most of them with a start up cost in the $25-$50 price range, and all of them promising to make you thousands per month on auto-pilot. If come across an opportunity like this, run the other way.Don’t fall for these sales pitches: “New unique software generates $20,000 per month with only 3 clicks of your mouse, all on complete auto-pilot.” If you are looking for a legitimate home based business opportunity that can generate you a full time income from home, avoid low cost programs or opportunities with unrealistic claims. They may sound appealing but trust me they will just take your money.Another thing you should look for is how much time an opportunity claims you will need to work in order to be successful and earn an income. If you come across an opportunity that claims you only need to work 10 minutes per day or 3 hours per week, it’s probably not that legit.It does take hard work and dedication in order to be successful in the home based business industry. If you can’t, or aren’t willing to devote at least a couple of hours per day into your business, you are going to struggle. Any opportunity that tells you that you can be successful and make tons of money just pushing a few buttons, without doing any work, is not a legitimate home based business opportunity.