Salve Senior Maintains Newportfinder.com, Looks to Expand

By: Ashley Giandomenio
Posted In: Entertainment

NewportFinder.com is a new website produced by salve student, Shaun Nicholson, in order to facilitate the way for the public to explore downtown Newport with just one click.

Nicholson is in his last year at Salve Regina University. Therefore, like any other college senior with current limited funds and loans to pay back lurking around the corner, Nicholson started to brainstorm an easy way for him and his friends to make some extra money.

Being an ISS major, Nicholson knew his way around a computer and came up with an idea to create a website that would be free to use, but businesses would pay monthly to have a username, password, and be listed. Nicholson said that after he configured the idea, he started to gather the necessities for the launching of a website.

“I went out and spent about $500 on the internet domain names and a host and everything,” Nicholson said. He said that he even purchased the name Newportfinder. Newport.Com is set up to benefit both the public and Newport businesses.

“There are tons of places in Newport that would take forever to find on your own,” Nicholson said. “And NewportFinder is a great way for those places to get their names out there.”

The website offers restaurant menus, photographs of businesses and job advertisements.

“It allows for the businesses to post anything they want, as often as they want,” Nicholson said.

According to Nicholson, this was his first time creating his own website and the first one that sends and retrieves data from a database.

“The database the site uses is very complex so it still blows my mind that it actually works as well as it does,” Nicholson said. The site he created does in fact work well and is fully functional and Nicholson anticipates positive responses from the public.

“Once we establish ourselves as the #1 Newport area website, we want to branch off and do ProvidenceFinder.Com, BostonFinder.Com, etc.,” Nicholson said.

In the beginning Nicholson said that marketing on the site was a difficult task.

“People don’t want to advertise on the site if people aren’t using the site, and people don’t need to use the site if there aren’t many places posted to explore,” Nicholson said.

To compensate, Nicholson gave out free listings to places that he felt Salve students regularly frequented, such as: Coldstone, Via Via and China Star. Yet, there are many more paying customers according to Nicholson.

“We’ve been advertising mostly by word of mouth, phone calls, door to door, and Google.Comawords. We also go to monthly Chamber of Commerce meetings to get the name out there,” Nicholson said.

His goal is to get 1,000 businesses signed by the end of the summer and is confident in attaining that goal.

“Every time businesses are approached by what the site is and how it works they totally buy into it,” Nicholson said.

“The way it’s set up, businesses can update their listings as often as necessary, which means the site can never become outdated.” Newport is just the beginning for Nicholson.

“The goal is to cover every major city in the country and retire by the time I’m 30,” Nicholson said