Moonlighting Entrepreneurs Take the Night Shift
A growing number of workers aren't letting their current jobs get in the way of their entrepreneurial aspirations. New research has found that workers with part- or full-time jobs are turning to e-commerce as a way to launch their entrepreneurial careers.
The majority of those employees are working either on their lunch breaks or during the evening. Overall, 80 percent of those online retailers worked on their stores during lunch breaks, while more than 30 percent of retailers also spent some time working at night. Nearly half of online retailers were working at midnight while 25 percent were also working at 3 a.m.
For the research, e-commerce platform Bigcommerce examined 20,000 of its stores in the United States. The research took place over a three-month period during 2013.
[5 Steps to Quitting the Job You Hate to Start the Business You Love]
"The data paints a new picture of the modern- day entrepreneur," said Eddie Machaalani, co-founder and co-CEO of Bigcommerce, which conducted the research. "Through daily conversations with our clients and monitoring this trend over recent years, we understand that many of these small business owners are pulling long hours to run their business and work a full- or part-time job on top of that, but these numbers provide us with hard stats and evidence."
Some of those stats help to illuminate entrepreneurial activity across the country. Workers in the South were the most likely to try to moonlight as entrepreneurs. Thirty-three percent of Southern workers led by those in Florida, Georgia and Texas worked on e-commerce sites in their spare time. Additionally, 27 percent of moonlighting entrepreneurs were based on the West Coast. Twenty-four percent of part-time entrepreneurs were based in the Northeast and 15 percent in the Midwest.
"Opening an e-commerce business is relatively easy in today's marketplace," Machaalani said. "These days, all you need is a few minutes, a credit card and an Internet connection to get a fully operational online store up and running. These passionate entrepreneurs show that it's possible to start and grow your own business while also maintaining an additional source of income."
This story was provided by BusinessNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow David Mielach on Twitter @D_M89 . Follow us @bndarticles, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on BusinessNewsDaily.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
