Wisconsin college students successfully launch a Nationwide website and have set date to launch it Internationally.

Wisconsin college students Brett Stapper and Andrew Tarcon are founders of the website that is designed to provide college students with a fast and easy approach to finding an off-campus place to live. On the website students are able to select their state and college and then have the ability to view businesses and other properties available in that area.

The website had been originally launch July 7th 2009 and was only designed to feature properties in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Within a few weeks a decision was made to offer services to colleges and universities nationwide. Home Jotter is now featuring listings in over 500 colleges across the nation and continuous to grow daily.

On October 28, CEO of Home Jotter and Brett Stapper announced plans to launch the website Internationally. The new website is set to launch December 1st, 2009 and will feature listing in Canada, Europe, Australia and South East Asia. Home Jotter will be the first and only website to offer International off-campus housing lists.

Direct Link:  HERE

The media can be a great marketing tool for your business and best of all, it’s free. There are several different media outlets to choose from, but the most useful and popular are newspapers and news stations. Nearly every city has a local newspaper and many cities have a local news channel. Here are the steps that you can follow to get your business in the news:

Step One: Identify something about your company that you feel is news worthy. This can be anything from the founding of a revolutionary company to an existing company that has recently added a unique service.

Step Two: Research your local papers and news stations and identify which is the most popular and which pertains to your story the most.

Step Three: Contact the editor or tip line. The most effective way to do this is to call; emailing is much less effective and will lower your chances of your story being featured. If you live in a larger city, they may not accept calls so you will have to either email or fax. As with calling, a fax will increase your chances much more than email. If you are calling, make sure to be prepared, as companies will receive up to hundreds of tips per week and will not appreciate their time being wasted if you are unprepared. If you are sending an email or fax, write out a press release. Try to keep your press release short and sweet and free of grammatical and spelling errors. If you do not grab the editor’s attention in the first couple of sentences, your story will be discarded. Research the format for a press release and be sure to follow it as closely as possible. There are also companies that you can pay to write your release for anywhere between 1 and 300 dollars.

If you follow these three steps and have a story that interests the media, you will have a good chance of being published. This will prove to be an effective marketing tool which potentially will reach thousands of potential customers at one time at no cost to you.

Direct Link:  HERE

HERE

Or join the HOME JOTTER group:  HERE

The semester is slowly winding down and students are starting to think about their options for the upcoming year.  Whether it be to stay on the meal plan, move out to an apartment or start to wonder exactly what year they will finally graduate, students have a lot to think about. These options are pivotal to college students since so many ask, “What do we really want?” When trying to find just the right apartment to live in for next semester, or next year, there are many websites, phone numbers and people that come to mind. You can look for hours or you can have simple, easy steps in order to find the perfect place to look for apartments and other places of residence.

A new Web site, www.homejotter.com is specifically made for people who need off-campus housing rentals. Though there seem to be many Web sites floating around in cyberspace for rentals, this Web site provides a simple, easy way to get what you need. This Web site was started by Brett Stapper and Andrew Tarcon, two University of Wisconsin System students, who thought that creating it was needed for college students, since they faced the same challenges they saw others needing support with.

“The Web site was started because we realized there was a need. There were only a few other sites at the time offering strictly off-campus housing and none of them were doing a very good job. Currently, the largest off-campus rental Web site in the United States has only around 10,000 properties. Within a few weeks, we will have a grand total of around 70,000 making us the largest by far,” said Stapper, a UW-Eau Claire freshman.

“I was struggling to find a good place to live,” said Tarcon, a UW-Stout senior.  “I was depending on classified ads and Craigslist.com to find property listings that realtors would randomly post. Or I would have to physically drive around looking for telephone numbers of apartments, duplexes [and] condos I was interested in, and that was actually less successful. We all know that the internet should have an unlimited amount of resources for literally anything you wish to find, so why there wasn’t really any successful Web sites for companies to post their properties? Why are they posting their properties on Craigslist and in classified ads? There should be a dependable Web site that lists properties per college that will be especially for college students.”

Stapper already had his foot in the door with business when he started his own advertising business at the age of 16. This experience helped him take the business world to a new level by helping to create this Web site and handling the public relations and other business aspects that it requires.  Tarcon is an applied math computer science major which will lead him to a job in Web design in the future. Tarcon approached Stapper with the idea of the Web site last March and they began to plan their new business endeavor. The site officially launched on July 7, 2009, with their unique requirement of catering only to college students.

“We currently receive around 500 hits per day from all across the country.  Wisconsin is our most heavily trafficked state, receiving around 100 hits per day,” said Stapper.

Stapper and Tarcon want to ensure that the reasoning behind its creation remains in their forefront.

“This site is dedicated to students first and for most. It is for students, by students. Also, we try to make the site easy to operate. If you are a student, you don’t need to become a member to view listings; you can view properties that interest you within a couple clicks of your mouse. We are trying to make our Web site look clean and [as] up-to-date as possible so I believe that also attracts students to our site,” said Tarcon.

For more information or to find off-campus rentals in the area, check out www.homejotter.com.

Direct Link:  HERE

Two former Marshfield High School students are helping college students across the country find a place to call home.

They’ve created a website is called homejotter.com, dedicated to helping students find off campus housing.  At the site, students pick the state of where they’re going to college then the name of the college.

Then, a list of postings comes up of available rental properties.

Creators say they started the site because they know how hard it is to find a good place to live.

And the site has taken off.

Brett Stapper says, “We realized there was a need for people to find off campus housing. So, it started with just Eau Claire and grew into a nationwide website pretty quickly. In just a matter of a few months it great into a nation wide website.”

The web site has postings at 500 different colleges and universities throughout the United States.  Most of those postings came through word of mouth.

The site is free for students to use and it’s free for realtors too.

Direct Link:  HERE