Local isn’t easy, or even worthwhile. Chris Devore, Seattle-based co-founder of Judy’s Book, wants to remind entrepreneurs to stay away. In a new blog post, Devore gives three top reasons NOT to do a local + Online startup:

1- There’s no money in it
2- It doesn’t scale
3- It’s too obvious.

“ Combine expensive, high-touch selling, small budgets and high churn rates, and you have a perfect recipe for persistent negative margins,” says Devore. “There are literally millions of business opportunities that (are)…. better than the best local business I’ve ever seen.”

It’s a good blog post with sound reasoning. I suspect Devore, one of the most passionate entrepreneurs out there, has a major local project up his sleeve and will be socializing it at ILM East in Boston March 26-28.

We’ve been having a lot of fun putting together the ILM West conference December 12-14 in San Francisco.

As noted in our Webinar yesterday (slides here), the conference has really come together with cutting-edge speakers, important research, and the introduction of several great sessions, including a major focus on SoLoMo (Social-Local-Mobile) on Day 3.

You already know about our keynotes and lead speakers, which include Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, AllThings D‘s Kara Swisher, Entertainment.com CEO Dean Debiase, Cox Target Media CEO Michael Vivio and Dex Media CSO David Sharman.

Some new adds to the program include a special session on targeting local consumers and merchants with Yahoo’s targeting manager Jeff Minich, and LocalYokel Founder Dick O’Hare. We also have a great panel on the next wave of Deals with CBS Local Media President Ezra Kucharz, Belo Interactive GM Joe Weir, Thrillist VP Mike Rothman and Local Offer Network CEO Dan Hess.

And then there is our deep dive into verticals, featuring an A list group of vertical executives, including eBay U.S. Classifieds GM Larry Illg, Avvo CEO Mark Britton, Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney and Trulia CEO Pete Flint

We’ll also have in-depth sales interviews with Yodle CEO Court Cunningham and Google Global Channels Sales head Todd Rowe. And a great look at best practices for working with Facebook featuring Trada CEO Niel Robertson, Oodle CEO Craig Donato and Kenshoo Local GM Sivan Metzger.

And that’s just the tip of the ice-berg. This is a major, two-and-half day event full of learning, networking and insights. There is much more to come. You can register here.

It is an article of faith that small businesses drive the U.S. economy, acting as incubators of innovation, and leading all forms of employment growth, especially for immigrants determined to raise their living standards. I’ll always remember New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani citing New York’s surging immigrant base as the source of the city’s booming economy in the late 1990s.

Now comes the contrarian view of New Yorker writer James Surowiecki. “The fetishization of small business continues apace,” writes Surowiecki. “Some of the support derives from the real virtues that small companies offer – diversity of choice, connection to local communities –(but) the truth is that, from the prospective of the economy as a whole, small companies are not the real drivers of growth.

“One can see this by looking at the track record of the world’s economies,” he says. Small business-driven countries such as Greece, Portugal, Span and Italy are basket cases. “The countries with the lowest percentage of workers employed by small businesses are Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the U.S. – some of the strongest economist of the world.

“It reflects a simple reality: small businesses are, on the whole, less productive than big business,” says Surowiecki. “Big businesses are able to enjoy economies of scale and scope. Big businesses are also better able to make investments in productivity-enhancing technologies and systems.”

Anticipating arguments that small businesses retain their vital role because they are the ultimate driver of innovation, Surowiecki points to a recent study by Erik Hurst and Bejnjamin Pugsley. “Only a tiny fraction of small business owners have any interest in becoming big-business owners, or even in bringing a new idea to market,” he notes. “Most are people who simply want to run a small company, do work they enjoy, and have some control over their own financial lives.”

Facebook has become an important marketing channel to SMBs, according to InfoGroup’s quarterly Small Business Marketing Outlook. Twenty percent of those surveyed said Facebook was extremely/very important, and 24 percent said it was somewhat important.

Twitter’s important, too. Twenty-four percent said Twitter was either somewhat or very important. Local coupon sites were also cited by 26 percent as somewhat or very important.

In general, 31 percent expect to boost their budgets over the next 12 months. Fifty-seven percent expect their marketing budgets to remain flat. Ten percent expect a dip in their marketing budgets. Sixty percent also said that their website was the most important marketing technique, while 50 percent said email marketing was important.

As deals verticalize, we’re intrigued by opportunities for B2B plays. MarketSharing is offering deals tailored for SMBs (office cleaning discounts, office copier repair, etc.).

Now, Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, has launched a pilot with Local Offer Network to provide up to 70 percent off professional health practitioner “consumables,” such as medical gloves, hand santizer gel, respirators etc. Daily deals and multi-day deals are being offered.

“It boosts the purchasing power of medical, dental and veterinary practices of all sizes,” says LON CEO Dan Hess, who suggests that such “unique product and experience,” niche deal offerings are becoming one of the next big waves in the deals space. More generally, bigger ticket items are also coming on strong in the consumer market, such as medical procedures. “If all else fails, promote a deal with a laser in it,” he jokes.

Local Offer Network provides a white label deal platform, aggregation and syndication network services. The 17-person, Chicago-based company operates in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia, and publishes about 7,000 deals a day. The company also produces and recently re-launched Dealradar, a personalized deal aggregator now in 130 markets.

It isn’t well remembered, of course, but Apple had made an early stab at being an online service: EWorld. The successor to AppleLink, it licensed the platform from AOL, syndicated a lot of content, and made some stabs at leveraging the huge Apple community. At a time of forced cutbacks in 1997, and uncomfortable being tied to AOL for technology, Apple gave up on E-World,.

At that time, it seemed to retreat from media and community — our world — to a world that focused on technology innovation. But that was, of course, before it came full circle with iTunes and then its ingenious App Store, which enfranchised thousands and thousands of content entrepreneurs.

A couple of summers ago, there I was in the middle of Yellowstone, miles from anywhere, on a horse back riding adventure. I was enjoying the solitude and nature’s delights. And the lead cowboy pulls me aside, and pulls out an iPhone. He had something to show me: a beautiful Yellowstone app he had created in the off season.

Apple gets criticized for creating a new walled garden, perhaps rightfully so. But I suspect that the legacy of Steve Jobs will ultimately be about his technology of freedom, and his pursuit of excellence. All of it, of course, “designed in California.”

Fresh on the heels of the sale of Backyard, a local offers company to Pixelfish, entrepreneur Steve Espinosa has assembled a new team to develop “Appetizer,” a new mobile-centric service that enables restaurants to offer instant deals via push notifications.

Using the service, which costs $9.95 per month, restaurants can also add menu items and contact information. They can also customize the app to fit their branding.

The company has raised some initial funds and is now raising $300,000. “By leveraging the information from the Social Graph, we can build out the boring part of app instantly,” notes promotional literature. “The small businesses can then focus on bringing back customers through deals, specials, rewards and events.”

We’ve been focused so much on Deal a Day, that we sometimes forget that Deal a Day is just part of the mix when it comes to successful SMB promotions. Seth Gardenswartz of SpaBoom, a provider of promotion services for spas and restaurants, held a helpful Webinar last week that stressed the six “common elements of successful promotions.”

The first common element is “brand strength,” which might be measured in non-traditional terms, such as positive reviews. The second is the “quality” of the offer. The third is the offers “integration,” and whether it is effectively communicated across all mediums.

The fourth element is the level of “engagement” with the audience. The fifth is the promotional “reach” of the offer – not only the size of the list, but its effective segmentation. The sixth and final element is the offer’s “persistence,” and whether its effectively part of everything else that the merchant is promoting.

Gardenswartz’s webinar highlights three successful Spa promotion case studies, each focusing on different parts of the promotion spectrum . The Bella Spa in Merritt Island, for instance, scored $10,000 off a Mother’s Day gift certificate promotion, with 225 purchases averaging $125. Seventy-five percent of the customers were new.

One of the keys was that it encouraged people to spend more by providing a $20 gift certificate with a $100 purchase, and a $45 gift certificate with a $200 purchase. Usually, when a buyer meet a threshold, they aren’t actually incented to spend more, says Gardenswartz. The gift certificate promotion provided value without discounting.

The Spa also was able to leverage a very strong 5,000 person newsletter and 904 person Facebook marketing list, which it goosed prior to the mother’s day promotion with a $75 sweepstakes. “That gave them more people to talk with,” Gardenswartz notes. The heavy load of clicks for the sweepstakes also increased the spa’s prominence in the Facebook newsfeed — an increasingly important part of the equation that is often often overlooked.

Another spa, Cloud 9 in Gainesville, Florida, focused largely on adding Facebook fans with its sweepstakes, which was worth $250 in services. Clud9 started with about 1,900 fans. They had 1,346 people enter the sweepstakes, who invited a total of 4,857 to become “fans.” At the end of 8 days, they had 3,977 total fans. They have added around 600 since then. If you multiply that count by 130 — the average number of friends each Facebook user has — you’ve got quite a viral list, notes Gardenswartz.

While the first two case studies focused on social media, the third promotion focused more on email – many spas aren’t really going to be oriented towards social media. The unnamed midsized market spa provided a $25 Groupon-like deal for $50 of services, and gained $9,600 in website traffic –$5,000 in new sales. The price was deliberately set low to encourage more buyers (and extra spending.) The average purchase from this spa was $29.

From the spa’s point of view, the best thing was that the spa did not use Groupon, so it netted an extra $2,335 (after SpaBoom’s $1 per sale fee was deducted). Instead of Groupon, the spa relied mostly on its 1,467 person email list, which has been used carefully – the spa sends out just 12 emails a year. The appeal of the offer got a high 18 percent click thru rate, he says.

HopStop, a directions portal that competes in the segment against an ever-building Google Maps, today announced its plans to fight the Big G, including new markets, content partners and features. The 20 person site, which gets about 1/3 of its traffic from destination and SEO traffic, and 1/3 from affiliate partners, has added 20 markets and is now serving a total of 57 markets (including 4 markets outside of North America: London, Paris, Moscow and St. Petersburg).

The company’s partnerships – new and old — include hourly car rentals from Connect by Hertz with integrated driving directions; real time booking capability via Limos.com; daily deals from Groupon; local events from Zvents; and business reviews via Yelp.

According to CEO Joe Meyer, the revenue model with each partner varies, and includes CPM, CPC and affiliate sales. The company is operating profitably and not actively raising funds, he adds.

HopStop has also added new social media tools, including a feature that enables users to share travel plans with friends. Other features include walking directions and intercity travel via Amtrak and bus routes.

Meyer says that the company’s biggest defense against Google and other competitors is its passionate. social media- driven user base, with 37 percent of users using the site 25 times a month or more. Seventy-two percent used the site within 24 hours of their last use. (We provided a full profile of the company in May 2010.)

NBC’s local websites for its 10 owned-and-operated stations have effectively lowered the average age of users from 44 to 33, boosted the average time spent on site to 12 minutes, and grown its user base to 10 million unique visitors, according to NBC San Diego Director of Integrated Media Sean Monzet, who was speaking at San Diego Interactive Day yesterday.

Monzet says that NBC’s big strategic move a couple of years ago was to remake its sites from TV station promotional websites to NBC city sites, reflecting a broader mission. A number of verticals have since been launched, including The Feast (a dining/lifestyle site); The Goods (a group buying site launched last month); and The 20 (top special interest stories).

Local properties also are encouraged to build their own, unique content franchises. Soundiego, a local music site, was launched in early 2010 and features six bloggers. It is updated three to five times a day and is San Diego’s largest local music site, says Monzet. Other local verticals include PropZero (a politics site); a site for The San Diego Padres, and a travel destination site called “Worth the Drive.”

Social media has played a big role in NBC’s growth. Twitter followers are up 300 percent and Facebook friends are up 100 percent since July 2010. “Everyone is on Twitter,” notes Monzet, who adds that staff members are awards karate style “belts“ ranging from white belts to black belts for their prowess on Twitter. Each of the stations’ vertical sites have their own social media accounts, he adds.

On the hyperlocal front, the San Diego station has partnered with The Voice of San Diego, a local nonprofit news organization. The two organizations now produce a couple of weekly segments, and are working to cover specific stories and topics, says Monzet. The arrangement has gotten national attention. Under terms of the FCC’s agreement earlier this year allowing NBC and Comcast to merge, every NBC owned and operated station is required to develop similar arrangements.