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Aldegar

Aldegar

www.gigharborbigfoot.com
Joined
Sep 25, 2014
Messages
106
Reaction score
54
Location
Gig Harbor, Wa
Hello to all my fellow tree care workers and business owners. I am new to the forum and a new business owner. I am 30 years old and been doing tree work since I was 16 and my partner is 35 and doing it for the last 10 years. We are both family men and work our asses off day in and day out. We are tired of working for shady and greedy people so we devised a plan to go out on our own. We are doing everything the hard way, we have nothing but our climbing gear, ropes, a couple saws, and a beat down flatbed truck for hauling brush. We have dedicated every Saturday to work for ourselves and put every penny we make into getting a descent truck and chipper. Our customers have been really understanding and let us schedule them out pretty far. If all goes as planned we should be full time in about a year. We cannot afford to tie up our families resources into this venture but have the knowledge and willpower to make it work through blood, sweat, and tears. We can use all the support we can get and have started a fund raiser by selling t-shirts which if successful could pay for our insurance for the first year. I am posting this on here because we really don't have much support and maybe you can help with advise and success stories. Also, it would be highly appreciated if you could help us out with our fund raiser by spreading the word about our bad ass tree shirts. http://www.tfund.com/bigfoottree

Troy,
Bigfoot Tree Service
Gig Harbor, Wa
 
I am in the bundled firewood business My wife and I make a very comfortable living. I guess you haul you waste to the land fill there is the other half of your profit. Tree trimmers call me to to haul off there logs. I take the logs home split dry and wrap sell them to customers average $250.00 a rank or in your area it might be a face cord. I don't even advertise. Bundled firewood is called love wood by some of my customers.
 
Here in washington it is a bonus for us that most customers keep the firewood. I do have a list of firewood guys that will come pick it up and happy to hear that there is people like you making a living by recycling this valuable resource. Your point is well taken though because it would be something to consider before we go at it full time and maybe a good supplement during the slower times which is usually the peak of firewood season. Like tree work I'm sure there are ways to do it efficiently to maximize profit, one outfit we know made a kiln out of a land sea container to dry out the wood in a couple weeks.
 
First thing you need to do is split away from the partner. .. I couldn't imagine having a partner in this line of work
 
We have been working as a team for years and don't need to hire employees. There is no drama, just two guys going to work and getting paid a lot more a day than if we worked for someone else.
 
That know employed is the right think to do. My wife all our help they were tearing our profit up. Now just me and my wife we doubled our profit and then some. She let them go 2 years a go I am still fixing stuff they tore up.
 
Aldegar said:
So, we managed to get our license, bond and insurance!!!!!! So happy to be legit. Now we need a way to market our business. Here is our website www.gigharborbigfoot.com does anyone on here know about how to get up there in the search engines?
Click to expand...
Dont waste your money on google ad words, lets start with that. Next get on angieslist right way. You have to get 3 a ratings after your free listing then you can get paid advertisment and thats what you want. Its the best advertising money ive spent. Take it seriously though, your good reviews are like money in the bank.
 
So, for the last month I have been focused on gaining an online presence by building a website www.gigharborbigfoot.com and puting my name in all the typical directories like yelp and angieslist but when I type in Gig Harbor tree service my site still doesn't pop up until like the second page. Any advise on getting more customers? I am seriously considering door hangers with some sort of coupon and just hitting the streets.
 
Aldegar said:
So, for the last month I have been focused on gaining an online presence by building a website www.gigharborbigfoot.com and puting my name in all the typical directories like yelp and angieslist but when I type in Gig Harbor tree service my site still doesn't pop up until like the second page. Any advise on getting more customers? I am seriously considering door hangers with some sort of coupon and just hitting the streets.
Click to expand...
I also have a new tree service and started mine in April of this year. The best form of advertising is word of mouth, but I'm finding that that is hard to come by this early in the game. Generally on word of mouth jobs or if the customer's neighbor needs work you don't get haggled and beat down on your price. I feel like it's not even worth going in the local phone book with the 40 other competing ads throughout it. What has sadly worked best for me so far is Craigslist. Even though most people just go there to get the cheapest service possible, you will still come across some good, loyal clientele every now and then(20-25% of the time). I've had 4 or 5 of my Craigslist customers use me multiple times this year alone. Each year I am slowly noticing more and more repeat work or referrals from customers I did years ago (side work) before I went on my own. So hopefully in the years to come repeat work will be the majority of my work. Anyways....

I had 500 door hangers printed around July of this year for around $120.00 and hung a few hundred of them by the end of the month in high end neighborhoods where I could see tree issues. I try to knock on the door and talk with them about their trees and who I am for a minute or two if they are home. I also explain that I am not trying to sell them on anything right now, and that I am only asking to be one of there pricing options should they decide to move forward on any work. So far I have only gotten 3-4 jobs from them totaling around $2-3K. But my most recent job for $1K came in two weeks ago and they said they kept my door hanger in a drawer since July when I hung it. So hopefully some other people held on to theirs in case of some storm damage or anything they may need this winter. I was thinking of doing what you just said with the coupon on my next batch of door hangers. Maybe something like a %10 off coupon on any service to get my foot in the door in some of these neighborhoods. You can make the door hangers with a 2" perforation at the bottom so they can keep the coupon and contact info and toss the big door hanger out. I feel like people buy things everyday just because they are getting a deal, even if they feel they don't necessarily need it right now. I also made a website a few days ago so once that hits google I'm hoping to see some results with that.
 
Also when I was running my ad in the local paper during the prime season I was averaging 1-3 calls per week. Not a very high transfer rate though with 10 other competitors and half of them being amish hahaha
 
We've had lots of success with Adwords,
You have to be willing to spend some money though,
I would say half our calls come from using Adwords and the other half repeats and referrals,
 
Wow that's awesome! How many calls do you get with adwords per month in the busy season? And with how much money if you don't mind me asking. Hundreds? Thousands?
 
I too started our Tree Service this year and tried Google Adwords for a while this summer. I got 5-10 calls a week with a capped Adwords budget of $100/month. Most were low-quality leads just kicking the tires and weren't serious about paying to get the work done. Out of all of those calls only a couple actually resulted in work. I spent a lot of time quoting and to this day when I drive by I see that the trees are still standing and they were never serious or never had the money. I have had the best luck with word of mouth and Craigslist. Adwords may work better in a larger city but, you will also rack up a bill for all of those search hits. Google said there were over 800 tree service searches every month in my service area but, either they weren't serious searches or Google was simply blowing smoke as the leads I got were crap. Word of mouth referrals and repeat customers are the best but, it takes time to establish that. I am going to have a Yellowpages ad starting in January to see how that works out. We did have some success with door hangers for tree removal in an area that had a wildfire burn through that left a number of standing dead trees. Door hanger may also work well in a storm damage area as well.
 
Any business takes time to build a good customer base. It took me years to get my business built up to where I have all I want.
 

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