heating season is here - do I need a website?

[thor97]

I have started getting a few orders this week with the cooler weather and they are a little earlier than usual. That makes me happy, but my little bit of advertising may not be enough. I am looking for any advice on having a website for my firewood-how, where, when(now), and why. I have no instincts for these things but can have my son help me. Do you think a firewood website is a good idea? Do I have to hire it done or can it be done by a sharp kid? What are your thoughts?

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Short answer, no, you don't need a web site, but it really helps.
I live in a resort area near Lake Michigan. Lots of second homes, and weekly rentals. These are the folks that find me thru the web site. They are often looking for fire pit wood, or fireplace wood for the short term, but want more than a few bundles.

That's all good. But I hired someone to set up a web page several years ago, like five, and it is terribly outdated. The person who did that for me was just starting out, and is now very successful, and very expensive, so my site remains outdated. It still brings customers to me however.

 

[dave_dj1]

How big do you want to be? A good website can bring in a lot of orders, can you fill them? I guess it all boils down to how much work you want to do and how big you want your company to be.

 

[bodyguy16]

I would do a few posts on fb, twitter etc... you can also buy advertising on these platforms open an account on one where they can find a way to reach you, a website will cost you $ you dont need to spend IMHO.

Sent from my SM-G903W using Tapatalk

 

[jrider]

Local town Facebook pages have been great to me. Yesterday someone asked for recommendations for firewood and 12 posts later I was the only guy recommended. Heck one woman even wrote "I don't buy firewood at all but Ive never heard a bad word about so and so (me). This site has around 14,000 members. I could sell 3 times what I can produce. You just need to be prompt, polite, show up on time with clean seasoned wood and in the amount your customers are expecting. How much wood do you have to sell and how big are you hoping to become?

 

[T. Mainus]

In this day and age if you are serious about what you are doing you need a website. The way people buy products is changing thanks to amazon etc... If people can't send you a contact email at 2 in the morning when they are surfing the net they are going to send one to the guy that does have a website. Your website is your store front. If your store front looks like ****, people won't come shopping at your store. I run 2 businesses, our storage shed business and our firewood business. Within a year of our website for the storage sheds going live, I had to quit my full time job and hire 2 employees to keep up. Our firewood website just went live this year and I can already tell you I have sold more wood during the summer this year then I ever did in the past. We advertise heavily on Craigslist and make sure our website address is at the bottom of every add. We don't do anything on Facebook. We pay for SEO on our storage shed website but not yet on the firewood. Our firewood site is pretty simple to start. We will expand it as the business grows.

www.storageshedswisconsin.com
www.wifirewood.com

 

[jrider]

In this day and age if you are serious about what you are doing you need a website. The way people buy products is changing thanks to amazon etc... If people can't send you a contact email at 2 in the morning when they are surfing the net they are going to send one to the guy that does have a website. Your website is your store front. If your store front looks like ****, people won't come shopping at your store. I run 2 businesses, our storage shed business and our firewood business. Within a year of our website for the storage sheds going live, I had to quit my full time job and hire 2 employees to keep up. Our firewood website just went live this year and I can already tell you I have sold more wood during the summer this year then I ever did in the past. We advertise heavily on Craigslist and make sure our website address is at the bottom of every add. We don't do anything on Facebook. We pay for SEO on our storage shed website but not yet on the firewood. Our firewood site is pretty simple to start. We will expand it as the business grows.

www.storageshedswisconsin.com
www.wifirewood.com

I USED to use and love craigslist. From my personal experience, Facebook has turned out to be much much more helpful. Could be regional though so who knows. I'm a member of 4 local Facebook pages that covers 4 towns all within 15 maybe 20 minutes drive and if you add up all of the members, there's close to 30,000 members. Of course some people belong to multiple but it's safe to say there are at least 18,000-20,000 different people. Now I'm not trying to do firewood full time but I could sell 300+ cords a year if I wanted to thanks in large part to Facebook.

 

[CaseyForrest]

Short answer, no, you don't need a web site, but it really helps.
I live in a resort area near Lake Michigan. Lots of second homes, and weekly rentals. These are the folks that find me thru the web site. They are often looking for fire pit wood, or fireplace wood for the short term, but want more than a few bundles.

That's all good. But I hired someone to set up a web page several years ago, like five, and it is terribly outdated. The person who did that for me was just starting out, and is now very successful, and very expensive, so my site remains outdated. It still brings customers to me however.

Ive set up 3 myself. I started with GoDaddy but eventually switched over to YOLA. My current one is with YOLA.

Its all pretty much scripted/plug n play.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

I've been selling 15-25 cords a week through my website/Craigslist/Facebook/radio ad.

Busy all year.

 

[sunfish]

I simple web site is very beneficial to Any business.