I have always advtised in yellow pages and then on yell.com, with a link to my website, last year i put alot of money into the advert and it worked well, I filled up most spaces I had in my regular client list, because i pay for adverts i keep sometime freetime to do one off jobs. Yellow pages man came round yesterday and seemed hell bent on me selling me a similar package and a yell website. Does anyone else have one of there websites, do they work?
Does being on the 1st page of google get you more work, when i google "grass cutting in stanford-le-hope" one of the areas i work in, yell.com comes top, you click their link and im top on their page, my own website is on page two of google. Do clients click indivdual compaines on google or go through yell.com. Im i just competing wih my self by paying them to have a good advert on yell.com and then paying them to get me second place on google.
I hope this makes sense
Views welcome
Ian
www.howesgardenservices.co.uk
Views: 137
Replies
Hi Ian, you will get differing views of yell on here as you do with ratedpeople.com. Some members like them and some dont.
I have a yell website running in conjunction with my own web site. My yell website went live in January and to date it has brought me inquiries to the value of £40k for grounds maintenance contracts. I have quoted for them and waiting for the responses. It NEVER does any harm to have a second website running (this was discussed a couple of weeks ago by JP). My own web site is www.mibservices.co.uk which I built using vistaprint and with my yell website I boxed a little clever. I selected a popular web search term, in my case "landscape maintenance Edinburgh" and set up the yell website as www.landscapemaintenanceedinburgh.co.uk and it has worked very well. It looks a bit of a mouthful as a web domain, but people aren't typing my web domain, they are typing a search term. My advice is if you are going to run a secondary website then get it set up as a popular web search term and you will it will also be found in its own right aswell as on yell.com (search the term above and you will see what I mean).
It really just depends on your budget and how much your willing to spend and how much work you want to bring into your business. Ratedpeople.com gets slated on here, but three years ago it got me a £30k + pa contract which has been going ever since, and £100k of work into my business from one contract in the last three years, nowt wrong with that in my book.
Ask yourself what are my competitors doing, where am I prepared to work, what type of work am I after and most important, do I want to spend the money on it all.
Haggle hard for discounts on your website and deal with yell, they are willing to do deals, you just got to push very hard for them and if you do get them to do a website them make sure they back link it to your existing site, works great for SEO. Yell spend a fortune with Google and get highly ranked, thats worth thinking about and with two websites you are covering an awful lot more ground, this is going to be a tough year, spread your coverage as much as possible. Also if you haven't already done it, get your business set up on all the free index websites asap and back link to your current website, ensure your ljn profile page is as full of content as possible, dont just have a few words on it with your life story, have it crammed with info relevent to your business.
Gid luck
Thanks for the reply, do you have an advert in the book or just online?
A little bit more detail about my company may help here. Im a one man company, who works mostly for domestic clients, infact all my work is domestic work. I have around 25 clients who keep me employed 12 months of the year, weather permiting. Most jobs are on a two week cycle, with a few on once a week cycles, over that two week period i have one day free for one off jobs, thats one day a fortnight, during winter somewhere from about the start of nov till mid march I have two days a fortnight to fill.
Hi Ian, i think i have the free line in the book as part of my deal, but because i'm commercial grounds i don't think it works for me, but i still think the older generation tend to use the book. I honestly couldn't give you advice on that because its not an advertising media i promote or spend any money on, but i think for domestic work it may well be worth having. Also all the free index business lists, hotfrog, gumtree, free index, garden101 etc etc get profile pages set AND back link them to your site / sites.
I spend my money purely on web advertising media for my market, but the more domestic minded members may be able to help more, but like i said in my orginal reply, get yourself a popular web search term for your area and use it as your 2nd website domain name as I did, if you take it out, gaurentee'd 1st page for your area no matter what.
Ian Howes said:
Thnaks for the reply, you have given me some food for thought and I will look into other domain name options, thats a very good idea.
I suppose my may concern is money, I have worked out that I have a about 25 max free days a year, if on average I earn say 100 a day thats £2500 a year, yell want somewhere in the region of £3000 a year for the package including running my website. Thats leaves me 500 per year down. Its just picking out the options that will work best for me, what works and what doesn't.
Are you / would you consider in the future to be taking on a member of staff ??, theres another for you lol
If you haggle you will get your web site designed and built, your yell.com advert done for about £1000.00 then there is the monthly ongoing hosting fee to take into consideration. Remember, lots and lots of small businesses are failing, yell need sales and will give deals, worth looking into Ian
Ian Howes said:
At the moment im not looking to take anyone on, I have a few ideas im running with this year including hanging basket production. Im quite happy as a one man band at the moment.
I think I will push them a bit harder when they phone back, yesterday was the first meeting and they are currently running a deal which gives 50% of website builds, monthly fee to host and run it would be £35 per month, and then about 280 per month for the adverts.
www.mibservices.co.uk said:
£280 + £35 a month is a big outlay for a one man business Ian. Try driving the price down to £150.00 at the most including the web hosting. But while your trying that get on the free index sites and get a SEO profile written up for them. There are loads of them and at the end of the day they are free. They are obviously not as popular with the general public as yellow pages and yell.com but they are not costing you anything and they do quiite well on google rankings
just had the bloke on the mobile from yell for half hr asking personal questions about my money jobs business, i think it unfair the type of questions he asked and tries pull my arm and made me feel uncomfortable. i dont see any difference if ur number 1 on listings and all that rubbish with google and linking words etc. i told him im trying make my own wesbite, and on and on he went, and i got offered a pound a day, obviosuly its a lot more than this ! so they talk absolute rubbish, and they dont stop rining and annoying me..
I have done yellow pages and yell.com for years and found it not profitable to do any more. Do not waste your money on yellow pages or yell.com put your self on the free listings with them it will save you loads!
Ian why did you sit on the phone for half an hour with the salesman? Can't you just say no and hang up?
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