GetVendors.com a Social Network for households takes a community approach to marketing and allows merit based marketing for small business owners.
San Jose, CA (1888PressRelease) September 24, 2006 - Foster City (CA) – If someone asks a small business owner, are you struggling to market your small business effectively? Do you lack the time and resources to run an effective ad campaign? Are you losing your share of business to large chains and corporations who fail to match your standard of quality service? Do you have scanty financial resources but a capital of satisfied customers?
The the majority of business owners answer “Yes” to all of these questions. Recently released data from US Census bureau mentions that there are more than 18 million self-employed individuals, and almost all of them (~16 million) have individual proprietorships. Further, most of these individuals work only part time on the small business. When it comes to marketing, small business owners often do not have time or resources to run an effective campaign.
Now there is a hope - a bay area based start up - GetVendors.com (http://www.getvendors.com) is connecting community recommended service professionals directly to users who need their services. It helps small businesses spend less time on marketing and more time on the clock. Nearly 10,000 service professionals are already registered with the site in California and the number is continuously growing every day.
How does it work?
Service professionals can rely on their existing clients to recommend their services to the website. After a search at the local Better Business Bureau, a service professional is added to the database (for free), if no outstanding complaints are found. Then, these professionals are teamed up with users who submit service requirements matching their business.
“Organic matches”— the best possible matches within the vendor database — fills three of the five available slots for vendors to receive a referral. These vendors do not pay anything for the referral. The remaining two slots are filled with the best possible matches from a subset of the vendor database that bids on a pay-per-lead basis. This guarantees that businesses pay only if they choose to spend extra on promotion. There is no overall blanket marketing campaign spending and focus is always on organic matches rather than advertising dollars.
After favorable reviews are placed for specific service professionals, their ranking improves within the system. A review by user is counted towards ranking a professional only if that service professional and user were previously matched by the referral system. This helps cut back on the exploitation of the review system for personal gains. These reviews are placed based on the good services rendered by vendors regardless of any time or money commitment that users have to the service pros. Thus, small business owners get rid of the advertisement burden and users find the best professional for their household service requirements.
Competitive Analysis
The internet is saturated with directories that are looking for the small business owner's money. From the Yellow Pages to Google AdSense program, the business model is consistent – spend more money on advertisement and get better ad placement with the hope to get more business. Whereas, GetVendors.com works hard to empower small business owners with tools to get business based on their professional qualifications rather than hollow marketing hype.
Founded by UC-Berkeley alumni, GetVendors.com is a start up company based in Foster City, California. GetVendors.com was recently mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Jose Business Journal, Oakland Tribune, and Sacramento Bee.
With its exponential rise in user base, especially among busy office staff members and working mothers, GetVendors.com is well positioned to become a driving force in reshaping the way users find service providers. The American Association of Web Masters has also recently awarded a Gold Web Award to GetVendors.com. For additional information about this release topic or schedule an interview, please contact pr ( @ ) getvendors dot com.
GetVendors.com a Social Network for households takes a community approach to marketing and allows merit based marketing for small business owners. 
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