Small business is driving economic growth
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PeoplePerHour.com data reveals that small businesses are recovering and investing in growth.
PeoplePerHour.com – the UK’s marketplace for small businesses services – today published findings from research into its 40,000 registered members that reveals UK small business activity and investment is growing rapidly.
PeoplePerHour.com conducted an in-depth analysis of 374 small and micro businesses – with between 2 and 20 employees, and an average annual turnover of £290k – that have been active users of the website for at least 12 months. These companies’ activity levels on the site now were compared with those six and 12 months ago.
Of those businesses analysed:
- 80 percent are posting at least twice the number of project work on the site now than six months ago
- 73 percent are investing more in technology and web development
- 65 percent are investing more in marketing
- The overall annualised spend on freelance services is up by 56 percent
PeoplePerHour.com – recently dubbed as a ‘barometer for business’ by CNN – estimates that this will translate into an extra £6 billion spend for the UK economy in the next 12 months.
In 2008 there were just over one million businesses in the UK within the bracket surveyed. On average these businesses spend £21k per annum (or seven percent of turnover) on outsourced services according to data from PeoplePerHour.com’s 40,000 user base.
The findings echo those of a recent survey of 5,000 small businesses conducted by Barclays, which revealed that 60 percent were confident about the future of their business and 42 percent were feeling ‘more upbeat’ than six months ago.
PeoplePerHour.com’s founder and CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou believes this new data is a useful indicator of recovery. “Our analysis is objective as it compares data of companies who’ve been using us before and after the recovery,” he says. “There is no doubt that business activity is increasing quickly. We believe that the micro-business sector will be instrumental in driving economic growth in the next 12-18 months.”
Despite the general sense of optimism, 75 percent of respondents said they will refrain taking on any new employees in the next six months, preferring instead to remain flexible through the use of casual staff and freelancers.
For example, Simon Brown – a registered user on PeoplePerHour.com – runs CameraTrails, a business that runs short photographic courses in London. He says: “I’m very optimistic for 2010 and have commissioned project work for branding, web development and PR work through freelancers I’ve found on PeoplePerHour.com. This has resulted in cost savings of up to 90 percent.”
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PeoplePerHour.com Background Information
PeoplePerHour.com has led the UK’s online working trend, connecting businesses with skilled individuals to get work done remotely.
The site serves the UK’s small business sector and has over 40,000 registered users growing at 15% per month, of whom 70% are micro-businesses (five or less employees) and 20% are between five and 20 employees.
The company started in 2007 and has been grown consistently, unabated by the recession. This growth has been fuelled by companies’ need to drive down costs and find more innovative, cost-effective and flexible ways of getting jobs done.
Main service categories on the site are IT& Web, Graphic Design, Telesales, Marketing and PR, Copywriting and Translation services.
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