By Dustin Choy
For WisBusiness.com
A Milwaukee designer is trying to do his part to help out fledgling businesses in the down economy: he’s created a Web site, newbusinessmilwaukee.com, that offers free advertising for start-ups in the Milwaukee area.
The creator, Tom Story, launched the site about one month ago and currently features more than 30 new Milwaukee area businesses.
“The Web site’s mission is to help people that are looking for new businesses, and help new businesses by finding people who are looking,” said Story.
Story came up with the idea because he was having a problems finding new businesses online.
“The problem is, most businesses are too new to be found,” Story said. “Google has not indexed them; it can take 30 days for Google to find them.”
According to Story, there are a lot of resources out there for finding existing businesses, but for people interested in new businesses, sources like the yellow pages are too outdated.
Story tries finding new businesses in newspapers and local Web sites. Aside from his own research, Story uses Twitter and personal contacts to spread the word about his site.
Story is currently not running the site for profit, but already has plans for expansion: newbusinesschicagoland.com and newbusinessnewyork.com are in the works, and newbusinessbozeman.com is being run by his cousin in Montana.
The site newbusinessfrontier.com serves as a starting point for all of these supplemental sites. The webpage offers a map of current “newbusiness” locations, with links to the individual sites.
CometBranding.com is currently one of the businesses featured on Story’s site. Al Krueger of CometBranding.com came across the site via Twitter and posted a profile for his business.
“It’s been helpful,” said Krueger. “I have noticed traffic from the site to CometBranding.com, which is always good for building awareness and for potential new customers.”
Krueger also praised the site for its easy and simplicity and recommends the site to other small businesses looking for free coverage.
“The site is very well done and a great visual and interactive take on something that could be really boring (business directory),” he said. “It’s a nice spot to get additional exposure, which is always good.”
Small businesses can post their businesses on the site by filling out an online form. Once posted, the company profile as well as a thumbnail of its logo will appear on the site’s main page.
When the mouse pointer is on a certain logo, the brief description of the business will popup on the screen.
“The best feature is its simplicity,” Story said. “On rollover of the logos, the user can quickly get the jist of the new business and click to go to their website.”
Offers have come in regarding advertising on his site, but Story is hesitant to run ads until the sites are networked across the United States.
“Having ads all over will deter traffic,” he explained. “If I have a network across the U.S. then I can run network ads, which bring in much more money than small local ads.”
To this point, Story has been very pleased with the feedback he’s received about the site.
“There have been a lot of positive comments, especially from people in marketing and PR firms,” he said.
