If you’re a home-based or other small business opportunity or franchise owner, chances are you’re among the growing number of individuals just like you who are using mobile applications (or apps) to run your company. And why wouldn’t you? Mobile apps are helping small and medium-sized business owners to save time, reduce costs, increase productivity and revenue, serve their customers better and even operate more efficiently.

But hiring a professional programmer who can design an app specifically for your business needs can be very expensive. Fortunately, a growing number of alternatives are out there that will enable you to build just the app you want, oftentimes free-of-charge in return for placed advertising. Today, what would have once cost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars and taken weeks to develop can now be done in a matter of days, even hours, and at little or no cost to you.

No wonder the mobile apps industry is skyrocketing!

In fact, 70 percent of small business owners reported they used mobile apps in 2011, according to a recent Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council report entitled, “Saving Time and Money with Mobile Apps: A Small Business “App”ortunity.” In addition, small business owners reported they save more than 5 ½ hours a week each in precious time thanks to their mobile apps, which adds up to an estimated 372.8 million hours saved each year. Annual employee time saved was estimated at 725.3 million hours, representing about $17.6 billion.

With numbers like those and given the fact that small business owners agree the Internet is their “most valuable business tool,” a number of companies now specialize in the development of affordable and oftentimes customized mobile apps. Appsbar, MyAppBuilder, AppsGeyser, Mobile Roadie and Socialize are just some of the companies that you can turn to for apps designed to manage everything from marketing your products and services to improving your internal productivity… and everything in between.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t you owe it to your bottom line―not to mention your sanity―to explore what companies like these have to offer you and your business?

For more information on how and why small and medium-sized business owners just like you are using mobile apps as an innovative business idea to change the face of how they do business today, you can click here to access the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s full report now!