BusinessWeek's article The Rise of the Homepreneur covers the growing role home-based businesses are playing. The article references our research report on homepreneurs, which is based on data from the Network Solutions Small Business Success Index. The report is available here.

Some of the key findings include:

• Home businesses employ over 13 million people.
• Nearly 6.6 million home businesses generate at least 50% of the owner's household income
• 35% of home businesses generate $125,000+ in revenue; 8% more than $500,000.

The Small Business Success Index project is an excellent resource for understanding small businesses. The project is a collaboration between Networks Solutions (an Emergent Research client), The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and the marketing research firm Rockbridge Associates. 

The Success Index is a longitudinal study designed to track small business competitiveness and success over time. They've done two survey waves so far, one early this year and one over the summer. They are going to continue with this cycle going forward. 

In addition to being the only source I'm aware of for survey data on small business competitiveness and performance, they also collect a mix of other data on small businesses. 

We're looking forward to studying the new Small Business Success Index data as it becomes available. Having someone else do the hard work of data collection - and then letting us play with it - is great fun for us. 

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