By Tanya Benedicto Klich

Think your business has to “make it” in the Big Apple or Chi-Town to pull in big dollars? Think again.

Top lines thrive in small cities, according to a report released today in a partnership between personal finance site NerdWallet and Entrepreneur Media. In the study, analysts reviewed 463 cities with populations from 50,000 and 100,000 to find some of the best climates in the country for entrepreneurship.

The analysis looks at business environment, reviewing average revenue per business, the number of businesses, and the percentage of businesses with paid employees. Researchers also studied economic factors like annual income, housing costs and unemployment rate data from the U.S. Census.

Careful review of these factors drove cities like Alpharetta, Georgia, with a population of approximately 60,000 to the top of this list. Other top small cities include Redmond, Washington and Wilmington, Delaware.

The takeaway for entrepreneurs? Keep your costs to operate in mind. While the average revenue per business among the top ten largest cities by population (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose) is $1.4 million, that metric was nearly 3 times higher for the list of top ten small cities (shown below), at $4 million.

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