A Local Shopper's List Lift's Online Entrepreneurship

It's been said that for every $100 spent locally, $68 stays in the community compared to $43 contributed by national chains. (*Source: Civic Economics – Andersonville Study of Retail Economics.)

NMU Graduation Walk - Click for Credit

Even before I graduated from NMU with a Bachelor Degree in Entrepreneurship back in 2015, I had this intense interest in creating a business model around the idea of a local Marquette Place. A digital hub of information that locals can trust and rely on. I wanted to make a community destination online that would provide residents and tourists alike with interesting updates, original content, events and networking opportunities. And I did it! I built an entire website with multiple features to attract new members, partners, visitors or guests. I built a beneficial local business model that other locals could also use to be successful with me. #TeamMQT??

Click to View 'MQT247' 2012 Slideshow

Fast forward from 2015 to now. Oftentimes with significant risks to my own health and wealth, I have invested countless hours, sleepless nights and much of my personal income into what I imagined my American success dream to be as a creative businessman from Marquette, Michigan. Even as it is one of my own internal driving forces, Entrepreneurship is inherent to our great nation since the founding fathers and is still essential to nurturing strong local communities today.

Many local leaders are Entrepreneurs of their own crafts, trades or services who have earned the respect of their neighbors through perseverance and persistence. Whether a friend or a neighbor, any passionate people can become experts in their niches using their collective knowledge and experiences to a profitable advantage. Combined with vested interest of locally owned businesses and loyal consumers, shopping local is undoubtedly a win-win.

For example, a new local business may open with the intention of bringing previously unavailable goods to the market. By doing market research using demographics and other tactics, a new business owner might pick items or a service that other local businesses don't already carry or provide. This gives you, the customer, not only more choices of products but also the additional opportunity to choose to shop local. Your dollars are like a reward to the local business/owner for doing their homework to bring you what you like and want to buy.

Notwithstanding the previous facts, spending locally instead of not channels the tax effects locally. Our local business district is required to collect taxes so that local services can be funded and other municipal resources to locals can be created and maintained. These important services in turn create higher-paying jobs like governmental staffing, police officers, firefighters and other essential professions. And it's these jobs that make Marquette a secure and ideal place to live and raise a family in 2022 and beyond.

"It's a Marquette life, for us, it's a Marquette life for us..."

Do YOUR part. Help reinvest in Marquette today because Marquette business owners want your business! They NEED your business! Yoohoo...who knows? Perhaps buying from that local business will benefit a local charity or community cause. After all, local businesses are statistically known to donate at more than twice the rate of chains.

Furthermore, to be precise about the impact of when you shop local, environmentally speaking, shopping local helps reduce packaging waste in the local landfills (another blog post for another day). Shopping local also helps reduce fuel consumption and transportation costs, too. Remember that whole "reduce, reuse, recycle" campaign?? Well, when you shop local you conserve energy AND resources. By shopping local first, we are even putting less expectations (stress/strain) on the supply chains (that actually do have a limited capacity at times- ie holiday shipping, flu and allergy season, etc).

To tie all of this into what MY local business is about, it's that idea of choice that you have as a consumer. The knowledge you now have and can share about and act on this business model to promote a local non-local referral business. As a digital ad agency that features internet brands and other online retailers that you can't find in Marquette, Michigan, I am providing an option for local customers to make their dollars still work locally even though you've chosen to shop online. As an affiliate marketer and a digital agency owner based in Marquette, I want to continue nurturing my community through reinvestment of local dollars EVEN IF they're spent online. So my solution to the problem of locals shopping online at non-local stores is to provide referral links to those non-local stores so that locals shopping online can now contribute locally by shopping online.

32 Non Local Brands to Shop at SearchMarquette.NET as of 1/13/2022

That is why I want to introduce my recommendation of the concept of SearchMarquette.NET to the great "Queen City" of the North. I want to be able to provide THAT online resource to consumers who simply want to or HAVE to shop online for whatever reasons. I want to present to our neck of da woods a unique business model that makes 'non-local' online shopping a beneficial experience to my site members, visitors and local community. By using my site and the associated affiliate links you are supporting a local small business owner who lives in Marquette, Michigan!

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The more you shop online using my all-in-one referral service website, the more successful, knowledgeable and experienced I can become in this field to provide a better overall service for local shoppers looking online. The links I can provide are offered as is and different online retailers have specific criteria for joining their affiliate programs. The more you use my links to shop, the more online retailers I can affiliate with and provide links to my site visitors and local shoppers ;)