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CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
Thought I'd start a poll off to see if we can see who's with what type of rate-my-builder website, if at all. And which ones seem to work, and if they do, why etc.
I've also put some other options there to see where people are spending their time and money on marketing right now, should they not be spending it with the big few common names.
Current options are:-
My personal opinion on this, after reading so many threads on all our forums, is that they're a middle-man where one isn't needed. People who need jobs doing on their homes could search Google before they came about, and they'd find tradespeoples own websites. And it all worked fine. The full amount of money that the tradesperson charged went to their business. And it wouldn't cost much to get a website online and running well.
- MyBuilder.com - MyBuilder.com - Find trusted builders and tradesmen - https://www.mybuilder.com/
- Federation of Master Builders - https://www.fmb.org.uk/
- CheckaTrade.com - Checkatrade: Find a tradesperson you can trust - https://www.checkatrade.com/
- RatedPeople.com - https://www.ratedpeople.com/
- TrustaTrader.com - Find Trusted Traders and Local Tradesmen - https://www.trustatrader.com/
- TrustedTraders.Which.co.uk - Find traders near you with Which? Trusted Traders | Which? - https://trustedtraders.which.co.uk/
- MyJobQuote.co.uk - MyJobQuote.co.uk - Get quotes from Local Builders and Tradesmen. - https://www.myjobquote.co.uk/
- Yell.com - Yell.com - the UK's leading online business directory - https://www.yell.com/
- Google Adwords (Google Paid Listings) - Google Ads - Get More Customers With Easy Online Advertising - https://ads.google.com/
- Own Website with Natural Google Listings (No Ads Bought)
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc)
- Reply with any other options and I'll add them to the list.
Now though, there's an annual charge, or a percentage of the job, going to a company that's spending millions on advertising and has directors driving around in expensive cars, salesmen on commission selling to existing customers and new ones, trying to get more listing features or whatever.
You can get yourself a website using Wordpress, and update it yourself. Optimise it quite easy. Rank in Google naturally (no paying for ads), and get business coming in from it.
Or you can work on getting your listing with one of these companies up. Some of them encourage you to email your existing customers. Which obviously means there's no assurances the feedback actually comes from genuine customers then, you just get 20 free gmail accounts and send yourself the link to leave 10 star feedback so that when people search the website, your listing looks awesome and your feedback is spot on. Not seen a single listing ever with bad feedback on any of them.
That all said, I've not got a listing with a single one of them.
So I thought I'd run a poll, and have this handy thread for others to read and contribute to ongoing.
Feel free to discuss anything at all, pricing, experience, feedback, customers, type of work coming from them, whatever.
Please be constructive should you have criticism.
If a company you're with isn't in the poll, let me know, and I'll add it.
Please feel free to vote on as many of the options as you use yourself for your marketing.
CheckaTrade | MyBuilder | RatedPeople | TrustaTrader etc - Who's with what and why?
None they are all crap
Bark is the only one that looks ok but you cant trust any reviews online these days or any tradesmen - the ones i have got in for quotes before i do the work myself is legion and every one is awful except for 2 out of 23 that is some bad percentage.
Its sad to say but its very hard to find any tradesman who does a 101% job these days
A site with genuine good tradesguys would be great
This sit from what i have gleaned has a superb number of really knowledgeable and helpful guys
Perhaps you should set one up yourself!
I personally have never employed a tradesman ever as my dad taught me plumbing buliding car mechanics etc etc etc but i know my neighbours would pay to have access to good tradesmen as virtually 100% of them have had bad experiences
They recently had a hamilton accie in who claimed he was plumbing and electirican and fitted a simple led pir outside light to existing wiring and charged £260 for less than an hours work - the light then failed after less than 2 weeks and yip he has not come back so they had to spend more money on another guy who came and fitted another light - no idea how long it will last either as it looks cheap chinese pish as well!