[lands]

Arthur,

For £15 a month I think it's worth a try anyway. I really don't think it can be bank rolled for this long without any incoming. Would love tem to do it but it's just not realistic

Pete

[Art]

Arthur,

For £15 a month I think it's worth a try anyway. I really don't think it can be bank rolled for this long without any incoming. Would love tem to do it but it's just not realistic

Pete

Hi Pete,

I'm not trying to be negative, only realistic. What would you say in a years time and after paying £150 and you hadn't received one enquiry?
My suggestion about 12 months free membership, would be a drop in the ocean if the directory worked as everyone would be on here singing it's praises. It would then be tried and tested with everyone wanting to sign up

Arthur

[Shaun_Ashmore]

If you look at other marketers you'll find they don't reall give things away for free, take Alltec they have now started selling their Fast track Discovery days for £35 as to attract people who are wanting to get involved.

Perhaps a 1 off payment for the first 6 months which I am aware that the first few months may be a bit barron for a figure of £35 and those who want to and get work carry on but at the new price.

Everyone has a single start date so everyone pays the same and after 6 months and the price goes up (which it will) then everyone pays the same for that new date.

Shaun

[ianharper]

guys

with anything related to the Internet you MUST use professionals. people with track records that can be checked out. or your just burning money.

you would not start a franchise without proving it first in two areas. this give confidence, and if then it does not work you must have gone from the path that proved the system in the first place.

respectfully

Ian Harper

[calmore]

I think there should be a substantially discounted (Even free) rate for those that sign up quickly. This will encourage more CCers to join the directory.

More cleaners will mean that more people return to the site. More people returning will mean more business and thus more sign ups.

[Mike_Boxall]

Hi Mike, freeindex to name one does all that and more for free and as far as being a member of any of the pro organisations goes, Joe public really doesn't care or more to the point has never heard of any of them

No Freeindex doesn't do all this. To be honest, it is not one that we considered as being competitive. I've just looked for a cleaner in Worcester but Worcester's not even listed. If you search in Birmigham you can't tell what sort of cleaing each company does unless you read the description. You can't compare results and the site is full of Google Ads.

Yes Freeindex is free but you get what you pay for!

There may well be a discount for early advertisers and will keep you informed

Regards

Mike

[calmore]

It currently costs me between £5 and £10 to aquire each customer. Based on this, I'd be looking to regularly get at least 4 enquiries resulting in at least two jobs per month from something costing £15 per month.

Will the directory achieve this? How many visitors are you expecting per month? How many advertisers?

[robinsky]

Arthur,

For £15 a month I think it's worth a try anyway. I really don't think it can be bank rolled for this long without any incoming. Would love tem to do it but it's just not realistic

Pete

Hi Pete,

I'm not trying to be negative, only realistic. What would you say in a years time and after paying £150 and you hadn't received one enquiry?
My suggestion about 12 months free membership, would be a drop in the ocean if the directory worked as everyone would be on here singing it's praises. It would then be tried and tested with everyone wanting to sign up

Arthur

Art`s comments make the most sense to me, with so many directories out there now you not only need to get people to advertise with you but you have to get high in the search engines! Free for a year will get you the support you need from your "catchment" then if you back it up with the high rankings your probably onto a winner. imo!

[Mike_Boxall]

You're absolutely right. Whether it's good value or not depends on how much business is generated from it and that depends on how many people use it. Being the first UK supplier of commercial cleaning equipment to sell securely online in 1998, and having won a number of high profile ecommerce awards over the years, I think you'll find our record speaks for itself.

We attract up to 30,000 unique visitors a month to the Express site and, as you can see for yourself from the stats here, we regularly get over 700 people a day using Cleanitup. I like to think we know a thing or two about getting web traffic.

Wait for the site to go live (about a week) and then make a judgement. If you then want to try it free for a few months you can and if you want to pay for a featured listing for a few months you can do that too.

Regards

Mike

[Joe H]

Just waiting to see the finished product - no doubt a few sleepless nights for you between now and then.

[Mike_Boxall]

Hi

For those who I've not yet emailed directly, I'm pleased to be able to let you know that the new 'Spick and Span' directory will be launched next Monday the 17th September.

Can I suggest that anyone considering any form of new advertising should wait until they've seen this new site before committing to it. I'm sure you'll be impressed with its functionality and the unique potential to generate new business for you.

There will be a discount for all forum members that sign up within the first 2 weeks.

Please feel free to post any questions you have.

Thanks Mike

[calmore]

Any chance of a link?

[dhnjj]

from the other forum but just takes you to i-clean at the mo

www.spickandspan-directory.co.uk

[Mike_Boxall]

Hi

Finally we have the site online at http://www.spickandspan-directory.co.uk/

We're still in the process of adding data to it so some categories are empty at the moment. We're also finishing off some more functionality (each listing will have a google map attached to it, for example)

To see the difference between a Free listing and a Featured listing please search for 'Window Cleaning Traditional' in TR27. Tou can then select the first 2 or 3 results (including David Morris Window Cleaning) and compare the results.

We've done our best to accomodate all the suggestions that have been made over the past couple of months and I hope everyone will give the site a try for at least a few months and then let us have some feedback in terms of the business generated. You will start to see the site advertised heavily both online and offline over the next few months. We're keen to keep developing and improving the site so if you have any more ideas then please let us know.

In terms of pricing , there are 3 options. You can get a FREE listing with your name, address and telephone number or you can pay either £15 + vat per month or £150+ vat per year for a featured listing like the Dave Morris example above.

As an incentive for forum members to sign up quickly, we are offering a 10% discount on these prices for the next 2 weeks only. To qualify for this discount you must use the referrer code 'cleanitup' on the sign-up screen. Once you submit your information, the 10% discount will be applied on the following screen.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know

Regards

Mike

[stevegunn]

Not having a go but I've just done a search for carpet cleaning ne34 6ef and it listed companies from Sunderland there are companies closer to me than that.Upholstery cleaning ne34 6ef 2 companies in Newcastle then lists companies from the rest of the country.

Needs a bit work if I was paying £15 a month+vat.Plus where is it going to be on the search engines sponsored listing or rely on meta tags to get up the search engines?

 

[Mike_Boxall]

Not having a go but I've just done a search for carpet cleaning ne34 6ef and it listed companies from Sunderland there are companies closer to me than that.Upholstery cleaning ne34 6ef 2 companies in Newcastle then lists companies from the rest of the country.

Needs a bit work if I was paying £15 a month+vat.Plus where is it going to be on the search engines sponsored listing or rely on meta tags to get up the search engines?

Hi Steve

There may well be companies closer to you than the Sunderland ones (which are calculated at 3.05 miles away from NE34 rather rather than, say,  listings at NE29 which are calculated to be 3.24 miles away - is that right?) but they are not listed in the directory yet.

If I'm wrong please let me know.

We'll be doing both paid listings and search engine optimisation. The site is database driven but has been developed in such a way that a static site is created with separate keyword based URL's for search engines. eg (http://www.spickandspan-directory.co.uk/details/7925-david-morris-window-cleaning/window-cleaning-traditional/cornwall/)

Regards

Mike

[stevegunn]

Mike don't understand what your getting at? As a customer doing a search for carpet cleaning in ne30 clean is in the area so customer likely to contact them first.But if I were a customer searching South shields ne33 I would be less likely to contact a cleaner in Newcastle.

I can only assume your database is still being updated.It certainly looks the part and I will be keeping an eye on it before committing myself

[Mike_Boxall]

Steve

The database seems to be working perfectly ok for other areas. All the results are located by distance order rather than postcode order so just because you search for someone in NE34 it doesn't necessarily mean that the closest listing will be an NE postcode.

Thanks for pointing it out though, I'll find out if we can have special functionality for our Geordie customers 

Regards

Mike

[stevegunn]

Steve

The database seems to be working perfectly ok for other areas. All the results are located by distance order rather than postcode order so just because you search for someone in NE34 it doesn't necessarily mean that the closest listing will be an NE postcode.

Thanks for pointing it out though, I'll find out if we can have special functionality for our Geordie customers 

Regards

Mike

Mackems not geordies

[calmore]

It's good although there are a few problems if you try and view it in 800x600 resolution.