Two Hampton neighbors hope that what began as a class project can morph into a business that someday will provide full-time work for both of them.

Gregory Secen, developer and president of Around-YourTown.com, describes the Web sites his company creates as "multi-level community portals." Serving primarily as electronic business directories, the advertiser-supported sites also offer a community events calendar and links to news and weather.

He and his neighbor, Ted Benko, hope to capture a small part of the growing pot of money spent on Internet advertising each year. Estimates of that number range from $1.5 billion to $8.4 billion. In comparison, $60 billion was spent on TV advertising and $47 billion on newspaper advertising last year.

Their fledgling business began with a course Secen took at Robert Morris University in February 2002. The course was in HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, one of the most common languages used to create and link Web pages.

The task professor Robert Skovira gave his students was to design a Web site. One of his suggestions was to put a restaurant menu online.

Secen, 44, who earned a master's degree in Internet information systems from Robert Morris, found himself going well beyond the assignment.

"I thought it would be more useful for users to see a choice of restaurants," he said during an interview in his home office. "Then I went on to categorize the restaurants into different groups -- pizza shops, ice cream stores, family dining, fast food."

That work more than met the requirements for his class assignment, but he continued to add categories to a prototype site he called Around-Hampton.com. The final result was not a restaurant guide but a neighborhood directory for goods, services and activities broken into 14 categories. They include "Let's Eat Out," "Let's Have Fun," "For Your Car," "For Your Kids" and "For Your Body."

He has replicated that model for other communities, creating a network of 38 Web sites covering many of the towns that ring Pittsburgh. About 20,000 businesses are in Around-YourTown's data base, Secen said.

A new feature allows visitors to place electronic orders with local restaurants for either pickup or delivery. The electronic ordering system provides each customer with a copy of the order, Benko said, which reduces the chance of error.

The company's sites draw about 15,000 visitors per month, with the majority attracted to the Web pages serving the northern suburbs, Secen said.

Benko, who has been Secen's neighbor for a dozen years, is Around-YourTown's vice president for sales and marketing. He oversees four sales consultants who have been selling ad packages since November.

Secen graduated from Shaler Area High School in 1979, and Benko graduated from the school a year later. They had known each other in high school but didn't become close friends until Benko moved into Secen's neighborhood. They often bat around business ideas over a few beers, said Benko, 43, an aircraft mechanic who was laid off by US Airways.

The organizing principle they followed was to emphasize local offerings. Almost all the sites are organized around businesses within one municipality.

"If you live in McCandless, you want to find the closest pizza shop," Secen said. Similarly, small advertisers know that their best customers are likely to live within a few miles of their offices, shops or stores, Benko said.

The few exceptions to their one-town arrangement include Around-PineRichland.com, which covers two communities that share a school district, and Around-Wexford.com, which describes a commercial area along Routes 19 and 910 that takes in parts of Pine and McCandless.

Secen and Benko decided early on to include a free listing and phone number for all businesses.

Advertisers can pay $9.95 to $59.95 per month for a range of Web-related services. They can include links to their own Web sites, list themselves in multiple categories and add color advertising pages and coupons. They also can receive monthly statistics on visits to their pages.

Around-YourTown charges one-time development and setup fees ranging from $119 to $719.

Secen is not the first student to find commercial applications for class projects, said Skovira. Other students have reworked assignments into Web sites for U.S. Steel Corp. and Washington County government, he said.

Skovira himself toyed with the idea of putting together an online directory for the Coraopolis-Moon area but was discouraged by the huge amount of data collection. "It's a good idea," he said of Around-YourTown.com. "I think he should do well with it."

Electronic business directories date back to at least 1996, according to Rich Gordon, an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The few that have been successful so far usually have been linked to print directories with electronic listings offered as an option.

"The dilemma is that in order to sell advertising, you need traffic," Gordon said in a phone interview. "And in order to get people to use the site, you need to maximize the information people can find there."

Just having a name and a phone number for every local business probably isn't enough, he said. When people browse through directories, whether in print or online, they want detailed information on such things as brands for sale, hours of operation and policy on credit cards, Gordon said.

"So few of those [electronic] business guides have taken the time to collect and present extra information on the Web site," he said. "The idea is sound, but you'll need a lot of local information beyond the basic listings to draw traffic."

"It's a question of execution," Gordon said. "If they can carry out their plan, they can become successful providers of information in the community they serve."

Gordon's background includes working on The Miami Herald's online edition.

Secen and Benko bring very different backgrounds to their company.

Secen said he had little idea of what he wanted to do when he graduated from high school, but his brother sent an application on his behalf to the former Computer Tech trade school. Admission tests indicated he had the logical mind and math skills needed to succeed in what was then a new technical field.

"And I learned that you have to enjoy spending time alone," he said of his years working with computer hardware and programs.

Attending night classes at Robert Morris, Secen earned his bachelor's degree after more than 12 years of part-time study.

Benko studied at the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics after high school. He worked eight years in Florida for the aerospace giant Pratt & Whitney before returning to Pittsburgh and joining US Airways 15 years ago. He hopes that Around-YourTown.com will offer a way for him and his family to stay in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Around-YourTown.com can be reached at sales@around-hampton.com or 724-444-0660.