Like this article? Read more by John Wyckoff:

Harley, Short Sellers and Franchisees

BMW's Ad: No Respect

And be sure to check out John's website, MYOB-2 for special reports and other resources.

"One of my favorite hobbies is smashing stereotypes. And one of the most egregious sets of stereotypes around, from my perspective, are the stereotypes about microbusinesses -- specifically, the stereotypes that arise because people make assumptions about what microbusinesses can and cannot do, based on their size.

For example, while it is true that most microbusinesses make relatively little in annual average revenues, it is not true that all microbusinesses make relatively little nor is it true that those that do make relatively little do so because they are microbusinesses.

That's why it makes me particularly happy when I come across a company like the Valorem Corporation.

The Valorem Corporation is a veteran-owned, Laurel, MD (USA)-based firm, and is young enough that owner Kyle Haycock couldn't even make a guess at its average annual revenues. It was just incorporated this past March, and Haycock has just hired three new full-time employees.

He needed to do that because he has just landed a six-month contract with the Department of Defense, worth half a million dollars.

So much for what microbusinesses can't do.

Valorem is in the business of supplying linguists and intelligence analysts to the federal government. It is a line of work that Haycock is very familiar with because he has been doing it for the past decade. In fact, that is pretty much what gave him the idea to start this business. According to Haycock, Valorem was formed specifically to be a government contractor.

That means that his business is not likely to stay micro. But it also does not mean that he has to wait until his business "grows up" before he sets out to do what he set out to do.

* * *

Even with all the advantages of being well-versed in the needs of his prospective customer, having all kinds of contacts among the procurement officers he needed to deal with, and a very respectable record of past performance working under other circumstances but performing the same services, he still had three-fourths of a year of administrative tap-dancing to deal with.

Valorem, unlike most microbusinesses, was formed and designed strictly to serve the federal government. For a microbusiness owner who may want to sell to the government but who may also want to do something else, the kind of single-minded tenacity displayed by Haycock can only come at the expense of other business. And, for most microbusinesses, losing current customers because of that single-minded pursuit when you don't even know that you'll win the contract is a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to federal contracting."

"Over the past decade, virtually every traditionally disadvantaged group made gains in absolute terms. Take, for example, families headed by immigrants who entered the country in the 1980s. The poverty rate for such families dropped sharply, from 26.6% in 1995 to 16.4% in 2003, the latest numbers available. Similarly, a combination of welfare reform and tight labor markets helped drive down the poverty rate for female-headed households with children from 46.1% in 1993 to 35.5% in 2003. That may not seem like much, but it beats the total lack of progress in the previous decade. And a new book, Moving Up or Moving On: Who Advances in the Low-Wage Labor Market?, uses a new set of data to look at the wage history of a group of low-earning workers from 1993 to 2001. Adjusted for inflation, those people saw their average earnings more than double over those nine years."

"My main goal with the blog is to gain key phrases and report to e-marketeters how I did it. I decided to start a blog to research how blogs are spidered and catalogued by search engines."

"As an experiment, I submitted my posts to a place called 'My Best Posts' through a web site at Zealous.org. I spent a good chunk of time submitting my posts to drive extra traffic to the blog. I subsequently logged in to add another post. Much to my dismay, my posts were all gone! They deleted all my posts and would only say that my posts -- all of a sudden -- didn't fit in with their goals. So now, rather than reporting that this site is a good resource to help you get the word out about your blog, I'm recommending you stay from using them because there's no guarantee your own hard work won't suddenly disappear with no notice, just as mine did!"

"In 2002, John Wieber started worrying about his business, which sold refurbished computers through Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. Although he was earning $1 million a year in revenue, profits had started to slip as competitors flocked to the site. EBay also raised its fees, further cutting margins, and fraud was becoming a problem.

So Mr. Wieber revamped his Web site and began selling through other online companies, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Last year, his sales neared $5 million, but his eBay revenue grew at a much slower pace, making up only a quarter of the total. It will likely fall still lower. Of the auction site, where he got his start, Mr. Wieber says: 'Too many sellers, not enough buyers.'"