nomorecowboys.com

[horsefeathers]

Seen alot of advertising or this group aimed at consumers - anyone heard of them and more importantly joined up with them. I know that tradesmen have to pay (how much?) to get listed in their directory, and reading their FAQs (aimed at the customer) the customer fills in a survey on the tradesman and the work carried out/price etc, the results of which get posted on the site alongside the name of the tradesman, a bit like feedback on ebay.

Sounds good, especially if as a tradesman you are on it - but how much work do you think it could generate and are you likely to recover your joining fee, which i guess would cost a couple of hundred quid or so.

regards

[Mememe]

As you rightly imply it is all down to Customer Aquisition Cost - (cost of advertising with this website divided by the total number of customers acquired by this advertising method). If the profit you get per customer is greater than your acquisition cost then you are making money.

By ringing up some of the listed companies and asking them about their experience you will find out if you will get enough customers.

My own experience is that these type of sites do not generate enough business to justify the costs.

My 2 cents worth
Mick

[Raccoon]

It's already flawed. All someone like ReactFast has to do is offer customer discounts to people who leave good feedback. There would also have to be a system to prevent "just anyone" from leaving feedback. In the early days of eBay, there were entire websites and chatrooms dedicated to feedback "back scratching". Essentially, 100 people in a chat room each leave 100 feedback for eachother, without ever doing business with them.

[Magic]

Just how many customers can be bothered to complete a survey ? I would suggest that it is only those who are seriously unhappy ! The rest will probably 'get round to it one of these days'.

[Shrub]

This had a thread not so long ago, i think its an ok idea but as said open to abuse,

[raimundo]

leave your business cards at the places where people might lock themselves out of autos, like at the gas station you use, and the supermarket. you want to do residential locksmithing, give your business cards to the guy at the big box store that sells locks and cuts keys, probably they have customers who also are looking for some one to do installations. Maybe a friendly key cutter will pass on your fone number.