Every business strives to be better than average. It is the American way. So, what is “average” for a business? I wanted to identify some benchmarks of what “average” is… so I went searching on Google for facts about businesses and this is what I found.

1. Average annual sales are $4 million. The average business has $4 million in sales. According to the US Census Bureau (2007 data published 2009) there are 7.2 million businesses in the US. The two largest sectors of these businesses are retail (15%) and Professional services (12%).
2. The average annual revenue of a small business is $3.6 million according to Entrepreneur. The average annual revenue of a small business with a website is $5.03 million. (entrepreneur)
3. The average business has no employees. Although the average across all businesses large and small is 16 employees. About three quarters of all US business firms have no payroll. Most are self-employed persons operating unincorporated businesses. So the average business has no employees. This is according to US Census information.
4. The average small business doesn’t have a website. According to a WebVisible and Nielsen Online study, only 44% of small businesses have a website. The percentage increases with the size of the business. Of businesses with revenues of $10 Million to $500 Million in size, 84% have websites.
5. The average small business operates at a loss for the first three years of its existence. (from wiki.answers.com)
6. The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40. (kaufman.org)

Totaling up numbers to come up with averages may give a distorted view of what is actually going on, but they are fun to look at.

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