www.mytrade.ie

Dubhelp

Hi,

Know that I am only a newie on here and it might seem strange mentioning a website. I put an extension on our house last year and nearly tore my hair out with all the excuses from tradespeople coming late and causing delays. I decided to put together a booking website for people looking for carpenters electricans, plumbers, plasterers etc around Dublin.

The problem I have is trying to get the site out to people. Its a free service and all the tradesmen have been completely scanned for their reputation. People can also rate a tradesman after they have completed the job.

Does anyone know what is the best way to get a website out to the public without having million as a marketing budget?

dahamsta

A simple press release will get you started. Go to the websites of all the main newspapers / tech reporters / etc and gather email addresses. Read a few press releases to see how they should be written and formatted (you could do worse than reviewing a few of IrelandOffline's), then write one. Carefully. Try to appeal to both tradespeople and consumers with the release, stressing ease of use and respectability. (And stay respectable, and make it easy to use, obviously.) Keep it short and to the point, and make sure you provide contact details so reporters can follow up.

Put the site in your email/forum sigs, preferably with a clever tagline, and ask your friends to do the same. Set up forums (with stong rules!) where people can chat and refer people. Create a blog about the website and update it at least once a week with developments on the website.

adam

Sponge Bob

that 'master craftsmen guild crap' have a similar site

Dubhelp

Thanks, I am new to the whole online way of doing things and just want people to use the site. Had no idea how to promote it. I nearly lost the plot trying to track down tradesmen and want people to be able to avail of this free service.

I wanted it to be independant of any trade associations thats why I developed the site. When you sit at your comp you can email someone who you want to do the work and it goes straight to their mobile. Their text comes back to you as an email.

jpogorman

You should also indicate that it is currently only for the Dublin market on the front page. No point in letting people get to the registration page only for then to find out that their area is not supported. Might be only annoying potential future customers.

Nuttzz

advertise on estate agents websites, its a nice fit for myhome.ie for example

look at the busier irish sites and advertise there, its all down to budget

FrankGrimes

Nice site.

One thing I'd say is that people are generally pretty suspicious about sites offering these type of middle man service. You need to be as transparent as possible about what your interest is: are the tradespeople paying you, or are you not taking money off anyone, and just doing it all for free, and advertising profit?

If the tradespeople are paying you some people will be wary as they may not think the site is impartial.

Good idea though. A good idea would be a forum or some other ability for people to post up how much they paid for a certain job, so that others can get a ballpark for what it should cost. E.g. 'I got a 3bed house re-wired for 5 grand'.

Dubhelp

The idea is eventually to get advertising revenue and at that make absolutely sure the people advertising aren't gonna over promise either. It was built out of sheer frustration. The problem with the bigger sites etc as was pointed out is that Ireland.com etc cover the whole of Ireland. It took ages to get to register 300 tradesmen let alone 3000, The idea was for the site to become a snowball as such.

I like the forum idea. Will generate a lot of traffic coming back.

mneylon

As already mentioned ..

I'd also make sure that you submit it to as many of the Irish web directories as possible as you are primarily interested in Irish users:

http://www.niceone.com
http://www.search.ie/
http://www.browse.ie/
http://www.browseireland.com/

The only thing I would suggest is that you give people more of an incentive to register. At the moment you are giving very little away on the main page and are asking people to register immediately. Why would they if they don't know what you can do for them?

I like the design

fintan

I really like your site!

Dubhelp

Thanks!!!

How do I put a signature at the end of my name or did I have to do it from the start?

Dubhelp

blacknight wrote:

As already mentioned ..

I'd also make sure that you submit it to as many of the Irish web directories as possible as you are primarily interested in Irish users:

http://www.niceone.com
http://www.search.ie/
http://www.browse.ie/
http://www.browseireland.com/

The only thing I would suggest is that you give people more of an incentive to register.

they are impressive sites!!!!

Thanks for the tip on registration will work on that immediately...any other feedback much appreciated!

mneylon

Only submit your site once to each site. If you feel it should be in more than one category ask the editors (*cough*)

When submitting sites to directories use an objective description. Do not use promotional phrases or subjective analysis (the best, biggest etc)

Human editors don't have the time or energy to wade through thousands of badly written submissions, so make their lives easier. You'll get listed faster

Dubhelp

Sorry

Think I tried to put it into every site possible about 1 millions times!!

Can I have your permission to put it in some more

mneylon

Dubhelp - email me directly about that

Dubhelp

As i said just learning!!!

Paddyo

Hi Dubhelp

What about a heading for Architects or designers.

I am looking for one at the moment for a small house extension in the swords area.

Good luck with the site

Paddyo

Dubhelp

Thats Paddy,

You should be able to find a builder on the site.

We are moving onto "phase 2" whereby we are introducing everything to do with home building.

dvdfan

Have you tried using googles adwords, you can set a very low budget. If you dont know what it is its them ads you see on the right side of the page when you do a google search, try it to see. You can set it to keep showing your adverts until your daily budget is reached and theres no lower limit on the budget amount, so you could budget as low as 50 cent if you want. Think the rates are as low as 1 cent for a click through but if the keywords are common you would need to pay a higher click through rate to have your advert appear higher up the page. But you can limit your ad only to appear to people searchin in Ireland, which will be your main target anyhow.

Good Luck nice site

mneylon

if you pick your keywords correctly adwords can definitely work.

However, it has been rumoured that Google are no longer allowing you to get away with consistently bidding at 5 cents etc., According to what I've been reading those of us who manage larger budgets may get away with it from time to time, but if you try to manage an entire campaign of 5 cent bids you may end up running into issues (I pitch to a market where the cost per click is significantly higher!)

Dubhelp

We are doing a google campaign...will start increasing it from next week.

All these suggestions are really helpful though!!!!

dvdfan

Google campaign, do you mean you have registered your site with google or you have started a google adwords campaign, the adwords will start to show almost immediately and you should be able to track if your getting traffic through your google adwords account and then you can alter to make sure your getting "your target" traffic if your getting lots of traffic and not enough people registering then maybe your being too broad with your search keywords for example no point just using the keywords tradesmen and not specifying the geographic location i.e Ireland because you could be paying for click through from people all over the world and when they realise its only ireland they will leave without registering.

Getting listed in google and other search engines will take several weeks to several months and just needs patients

Dubhelp

If you type in Builder Dublin etc that comes up as the second sponsored link


Is this what you mean?

dvdfan

Dubhelp wrote:

If you type in Builder Dublin etc that comes up as the second sponsored link


Is this what you mean?

Yeah, this is the one, should be helpful, noticed http://www.onlinetradesmen.com/ have a similar site too

Dubhelp

Yes but a different concept ours works off SMS solutions...that the tradesman gets the message directly.