By Tina Thorley
tina@newsroom.byu.edu
BYU is no stranger to students with ideas for business ventures or Web sites targeted at BYU students.
However, two BYU students have come up with an idea designed especially for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Roommates Ben Zimmer and Dave Bateman launched their Web site www.DearElder.com last week.
Basically, people go to the Web site, address and write a letter for a missionary and hit submit, they said.
Bateman and Zimmer said they then print the letters out, address the envelopes and mail them.
Bateman, 22, a junior from Billings, Mont., majoring in information systems, said they wrote a program in visual basic to print the letters out in letter form.
Bateman said he came up with the idea from talking with roommates about services for missionaries.
He said he had heard of other Web sites that catered to missionaries in the Missionary Training Center and helped their families with letter delivery.
'I thought about that for a little bit, and I realized that you could open that up and expand the idea and actually create an Internet interface where people could log on and write to people in all the missions,' Bateman said.
He solicited the help of his roommate Zimmer and they began the work.
'We had an idea, but we weren't exactly sure how we would implement it. This is how it all turned out,' said Zimmer, 23, a junior from Port Orchard, Wash., majoring in English.
At this time the site is limited to the pouch missions and those in the MTC, Bateman said.
He said the goal is to be able to mail to all the missions by February, but first they need to get companies to advertise on their page. The revenue will cover the costs to mail out of the country.
Zimmer said there are a number of different ways to advertise to potential viewers when one first starts a Web page.
'We hand out fliers because they make it easy to reach a large audience and are inexpensive,' Zimmer said.
Another big way is by word of mouth. Zimmer said they get letters from all over the country, and they come in grouped locations from people in those areas spreading the word.
'We think the growth will be exponential as far as word of mouth goes,' he said.
Since the site has been up, they said they have averaged about 50 hits a day, and about 25 of those are submitted letters.
'I am almost not able to get my homework done because I am responding to all the e-mails we get from people who appreciate the service,' Bateman said.
Web sites will swap links on each Web page to advertise. Because they target such a specific audience, they are going to stick with advertisements that are church related, Bateman said.
'We consider this a service for families. For pouch mail and the MTC we are only talking pennies in terms of costs to mail letters. This will enable anyone in the country, anyone in the world, to mail letters to missionaries without any cost,' Zimmer said.