Young men's Web site lists Springfield attractions

College student Jonathan Daugherty is putting his studies to work already. In January, he and partner Caleb Bruner, 24, launched their own Web site, GottogoSpringfield.com.

Daugherty, 26, is pursuing two degrees: an associate of arts degree at Ozarks Technical Community College and a bachelor's degree in organizational communications with a minor in e-commerce at Southwest Missouri State University.

The site was born of necessity, Daugherty said. He and Bruner had been trying to find information about Springfield on the Web with little luck. "There's literally hundreds and probably even thousands of Web sites concerning Springfield," he said, "but not really a central place for them to be listed."

The two decided to create such a site, and the site now lists calendar events, names and telephone numbers, businesses, organizations and other information. Daugherty said that for the most part there is no fee for listings on the site, but he and Bruner do earn money with it by allowing companies to place their logos and Web site links on it for $5 a month. Nonprofit organizations can use the service free of charge.

"I've worked for a not-for-profit organization before and I know how hard it is to have money to spend," Daugherty said. He added that right now working with the site is mostly an educational experience. Making money doesn't hurt, he added, but they put the site online mainly as a service.

Sam Dyer, PhD, teaches Media Resources for Organizations, a course at Southwest Missouri State University, and Daugherty is one of his students. Dyer requires students in many of his upper-level and graduate courses to get public relations work in the community, hopefully with nonprofit organizations. He said Daugherty's and Bruner's site is a natural fit for the course work. Daugherty's project is listed as a for-profit project, which can be more risky, but the help it provides nonprofits is good, he said.

Dyer likes to integrate service learning in his upper division courses. "It's just really a great experience for the students to do that, to try to make the classroom as real-world' as possible," he said. "And the only way you can do that is by getting out of the classroom."

Dyer said that a lot of his students' course work is coordinated through SMSU's Citizenship and Service Learning Center, which puts students to work helping nonprofit organizations. When students choose a for-profit format, as Daugherty has, he allows that as well because hands-on experience is important.

"You can go over cases all you want, but until you actually get out into the community and try to sell an idea to a client ... . I would rather have my students try to sell an idea to a client now and take the risk of failing," Dyer said.

Daugherty said he's found that not using advertising as the driving force behind the site is a good practice. "Many of the Internet sites are advertising-driven, meaning they only put content on there that is paid for, and by offering the free information, we've found that we get a lot of visitors, and we've got a lot of comments from people saying that (the site) is useful to them."

In its first month, the site had 3,000 hits. In March, it had 6,000. In addition to the fee for links and logos, Daugherty and Bruner also offer online brochures for businesses. "There are a lot of businesses out there who can't afford a full-blown Web site ... we do what's called an online business brochure, and for $75, we'll do a page of information about your place of business, which is really inexpensive," Daugherty said.

There is a monthly fee required to keep the online brochures posted on the GottogoSpringfield.com Web site. Daugherty said two brochures are now being developed.

"One of the (online brochure) customers told me people keep calling him up and asking if he has a menu online and he doesn't. This will be a good way (to have one)," he said. Daugherty hopes the number of paid links and pages on the site increase, but he said that technically, the site already is making money.

"Web-based businesses are really inexpensive to start if you know what you're doing. If you have to contract the building (of the Web site) out, it's expensive," he said.

The site is designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for visitors to find. Daugherty said there are three ways users can find information about specific topics drop-down boxes, menus and a search.

"We want to make it easy to use," he said.