Let customers bring you new business

Company: Ditto Trade

Location: Los Angeles, Calif.

??? The online broker Ditto Trade allows both financial professionals and amateur investors to buy and sell equities on behalf of other private investors who want to mirror their trades online. For instance, if you're a stock market whiz and your father-in-law and cousin want you to trade on their behalf, you can do this through the site. To attract new accounts, founder Joe Fox recently started offering financial advisors who run e-newsletters the option to transfer those publications to his own newsletter platform through sister company Followable.com at no cost. Fox hopes that the newsletter subscribers will opt to let the advisors trade on their behalf through Ditto Trade. The site entices advisors and other "lead traders" to bring their subscribers to the site by reducing the commissions they pay for transactions. Since Fox launched the program more than a month ago, he's been happy with the results. "Lead traders are coming on every day, bringing me customers," says Fox.