Unlike cash or check transactions, merchants are charged for each transaction when you use plastic. In July, federal laws went into effect to shrink debit card fees. But even before the law was enacted, merchants were seeking to limit transactions by reducing the amount of cashback that consumers can get and taking other actions.

For example, the Walgreens drugstore chain cut their limit down to a maximum of $20 cashback in the spring. Many small stores have minimum purchase amounts for credit card transactions to compensate for the cost. Some small businesses like independent doctors, dentists and restaurants are offering cash discounts for those who pay without using plastic.

The credit card intercharge fees can eat away at the profits for small business owners. Fees cost merchants $62.75 billion last year, according to the Nilson Report, a newsletter that tracks the payments industry. This was up 29% since 2005 and is due to both increasing fees and more merchants using credit cards and debit cards to pay.

In addition to encouraging less expensive spending behaviors from customers, merchants have changes in the law to look forward to. As part of the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law, debit card fees have dropped 75% starting just last month.

Several retailers have banded together to incorporate ShopRunner, a competing service to Amazon Prime, into their ordering process.

With Amazon Prime, customers can purchase a membership through Amazon and receive unlimited free shipping for their purchases. This has scored big for Amazon in the sales department. Retailers have felt the bite in their wallets.

In order to get some of those dollars back into their pockets, retailers such as Goldman Sachs, Borders, Barnes & Noble, GNC, Dick’s Sporting Goods and a host of others have decided to use the ShopRunner service. With ShopRunner, the retailers have something just as enticing as AmazonPrime to offer retailers.

Customers of any of these major retailers can purchase a membership to ShopRunner for $79.00. For that price they can receive unlimited two-day shipping on their purchases. They will also receive free return shipping of those purchases as well.

Retailers feel confident that this program will increase their sales and put them back into competition with Amazon. They are all hoping for a share of the $140 billion that is spent on ecommerce each year in the United States. With ShopRunner, they’ll be able to stay competitive in the online retail market.

Now, Reback has his eyes on Google, who he says is the new dangerous monopolist of this decade.

His latest clients are the Adam and Shivaun Raff, the London-based husband-and-wife duo behind comparison shopping portal Foundem. The Raffs claim that their website was downgraded by Google and then became the subject of extortion as Google attempted to draw more money in order to give the couple’s site a higher ranking. They allege that Google then put the spotlight on its own shopping portal in their place.

Reback claims that “Google is the arbiter of every single thing on the Web, and it favors its properties over everyone else.” Google counters by saying that its aim is to provide the best search results possible for each user, contending with its rivals (like Microsoft’s Bing) in the process.

Many agree with Google. The Open Internet Coalition’s director, Markham C. Erickson, says that Google doesn’t want to be a “player” in Washington. It only wants to educate lawmakers on what they’re doing and be left alone to let users in the marketplace decide. “Once you’re big,” concedes Erickson, “you’re not cute anymore.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already begun looking into Google’s affairs, questioning its board-level relationships with other tech giants like Apple. Likewise, the FCC has also considered Google’s prominent advertising share online and in mobile venues, though with competition from Apple and Microsoft, that look seems to have diminished.

With “Net Neutrality” a hot topic in Washington, it’s no doubt that Google will continue to be the focus of many more looks and much consideration from lawmakers and regulators.

Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell, Acer Inc. and Sony Corp. are popping up with their own rivals to the iPad even before the product’s launch in March. This move seems especially peculiar considering that H-P actually announced its own tablet a few months before Apple revealed the iPad. H-P held back and waited for Apple’s announcement before moving forward with getting its tablet, called the Slate, ready for sale.

The reason behind other computer companies allowing Apple to go first in this segment may simply be that consumers are accustomed to Apple’s status as a trailblazer and are willing to embrace new technology that they had trouble finding purpose for when it was presented by other sources. Several tablet products are already available, but they have been selling poorly.

Microsoft is also reportedly working on a two-screen tablet, though details have not yet been announced. As has become usual, perhaps the best rival to the iPad is whatever tablet is backed by Google, which in this case is the Dell Mini 5, which will go on the market this year using Google’s Android software.

NBC covered the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and averaged 24.4 million viewers, a 21% increase from the Torino games. Perhaps even more interestingly, the top 40 cable networks saw their viewership drop by 7.2% overall during the time the Olympics were being covered.

CNBC managed to increase its viewership despite the lousy cable climate by covering the Olympics themselves, carrying a number of niche events like curling, which sparked a bizarre media interest this year. With just over 100 hours devoted to Olympic coverage, CNBC avoided the fate granted to networks like CNN, which fell a whopping 54% during prime time.

Other channels that took a major hit during the Olympic coverage include the Discovery Channel, the Hallmark Channel, TV Land, Spike TV, VH1, Comedy Central, Travel Channel, Bravo and Lifetime.

One of the outliers was the USA Network, which, though it did not gain a lift from its 41 hours of Olympic coverage over 17 days, managed to win the month with 2.95 million viewers in prime, thanks in part to their popular shows on WWE wrestling and NCIS repeats.

And they weren’t far wrong – Google has been losing money on the video viewing website ever since that acquisition. They’re hoping their new ad policy turns that revenue stream around.

Salar Kamangar is the brains behind the new ad-revenue emphasis on YouTube, the same man behind the AdWords system that has been so successful for the search engine itself. He has been pressing YouTube to put more online ads on their videos and to promote more content from media companies, as opposed to allowing users to upload (usually illegal and bootlegged) copies of the same videos and TV shows.

The new ads are coming from such media giants as Time Warner Inc., including CNN and the Cartoon Network. They’re also bringing in Disney’s ABC and ESPN and many other studios are waiting in line to get involved in the new ad emphasis on YouTube as well.

Putting more professional shows online, sponsored by their parent companies and backed by ads, allows the users to get what they want (full-length shows and videos) while the studios get revenue from the new ad streams. The set-up is similar to already-established systems such as Hulu, which only hosts media that has been bought from the parent companies.

YouTube will still host that homemade video of the cat playing piano, but you might just be able to get a full-length episode of your favorite TV show – in better quality, with a 30-second commercial spot at the start.

An explanation of growth. Much of Arizona’s growth can be attributed to the population growth. Look closely at the numbers and you’ll see in recent years circulation had slipped. But looking at the Arizona Republic today and you’ll find that it is working on the circulation numbers as hard as it can. Keeping those numbers up just isn’t as easy as it used to be.

It’s all about the Sunday edition. Papers focus their efforts on the Sunday edition – which is where the majority of ad revenue comes from.

“Every Sunday in the paper, in this Super Sunday timeframe that we’ve been working on, we’ve made it special – to give the customer something different, whether it’s a special package from the news  content side, or whether is was a special promotion we worked on with an advertiser,” said John Zidich, president and publisher of the Arizona Republic.

“Were basically looking at the cost-analysis of every unit of circulation.”

So the Republic has managed to squeeze out a narrow circulation increase as other publications continue to struggle.

I find it interesting to analyze businesses that are thriving during difficult times, since understanding the dynamics of those businesses can often help spur ideas that might improve your business or lead to new product ideas that appeal to consumers in a depressed economic environment. Savvy direct marketers with the right products also have the potential to thrive in this environment, since consumers will be spending more time at home watching TV and online and more DR inventory should become available as general advertisers cut back.

Peter Koeppel is Founder and President of Koeppel Direct, a leader in DRTV direct response television, online, print and radio media buying, marketing and campaign management. With a Wharton MBA and over 25 years of marketing and advertising experience, Peter has helped Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and entrepreneurs develop direct marketing campaigns to increase profits.

Peter started Koeppel Direct in 1995 and has built it into one of the leading infomercial direct response media buying firms in the U.S.

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