Our History

The goal here is to blog about what is happening on NuTrader.com! Lets start by getting everyone up to speed.

NuTrader was born in 2003 when Ralph Hampton, his wife Lydia and I decided we were going into the Internet business. I lived in Sarasota Florida at the time but was looking to relocate to a smaller town, the Hampton's lived here in beautiful East Texas and said "well shoot darlin', why don't you move to Texas?" Well, they sent me a few photos and that's pretty much all it took. East Texas is beautiful and I decided to not only move 1000 miles away but start a business with some Texans that I met on the Internet!

In Sarasota I owned a printing company and sold print advertising. Ralph is a professional farrier and Lydia is a lab tech. What we knew about websites and starting an "Internet business" you could have fit into a salt shaker! But, we learned, some things quickly, some things it took us a while to grasp. I will say from the beginning it has been sheer determination and grit that has kept the site going and growing!

We started out in 2003 as ArklatexTrader.com. Our goal was to market to the arklatex area (for those who are unfamiliar that is the corner where Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas meet, not anything to do with latex! I had a few raised eyebrows in Florida when I told them the name of the site!) Our original plan was several sites targeting geographic areas.

In January 2004 we began marketing the site and in February 2004 I sold my Florida business and moved to Texas. Since that day, the classified site now known as Nutrader has been self sufficient and we have made a profit. (We are still loosely defining profit at this point!)

We have had a lot of struggles. Ralph and I are the only full time employees of the company, although we have had a few full time sales people and a lot of part time help along the way. It is by all means, a family business where the Hampton family has adopted me! Lydia and their kids have all participated, worked for and contributed to the growth of NuTrader.

Somewhere in 2005 we decided to go "national" We looked at where our traffic was coming from and it was definitely beyond the arklatex area and rather than create and market new sites, we changed the name of the one we had to NuTrader. Ok, a little note here. Ralph and I are never allowed to name a site or business again. Neither of us saw Nut Raider in Nutrader at all! We have suggested other business names and quite frankly... we really stink at naming businesses! I think we will leave that up to Lydia and the Hampton family with future ventures!

Currently we are marketing NuTrader to the East Texas, Tyler Texas and Southeast Texas communities although we do have traffic to the site as far away as England and California. We are hitting about 30,000 unique visitors per month to the site and maintain between 2,500 and 3000 ads at any given time. We offer free ads to the public with unlimited ads, 1500 words, and up to 5 pictures per ad. We make income from selling business display ads. Our prices are affordable and the advertising is designed to be effective.

That pretty much sums up where we came from. We have survived hurricane Rita, the fallout of Katrina and the struggling East Texas economy. We have tried a lot of new things on NuTrader, some of them have failed and some have been wildly popular. Ralph and I will continue to promote, grow, enhance, upgrade, improve and build the site and all of the pieces that grow from it.

The last thing I have to say is a big thank you. We have very loyal advertisers. Many of them looked at me (a yankee) with one eyebrow raised and agreed to buy advertising on a website with limited traffic and no reputation. Most are still with us today. They took a chance on us and we are still working hard to make sure that pays well for them. We also are getting very loyal free users who are helping through word of mouth grow NuTrader. We appreciate them!