So, a little background on myself. I am actually a business owner, but I don't do trees. I do websites.
About a year or so ago, I moved into a new home which me and the family loved. It has a huge back yard for being in town ( a small town, granted) but it was so overgrown that you couldn't even really tell how big it was. So, I got to work and after weeks of busting my butt, I think I cleared a few feet of undergrowth. You couldn't even tell I had done anything.
So, after that I got my money together and started calling tree companies. Being a website designer/SEO guy, the first thing I did was call up the first couple results on Google. I can honestly say that I wasn't impressed with the people I talked to.
I decided to go old school and busted out the phone book. I ended up calling a guy in town that had absolutely no advertising whatsoever. Honestly not sure how people were finding him other than word of mouth. We talked, he came out and gave me a quote and I told him what I did.
We worked out a compromise of him taking my design fees out of his fees and I paid him the difference. He did an amazing job, they were here for almost three days. There is NO WAY I could have even remotely done what they did. And they didn't even remove any trees. It was all just trimming and pulling stuff out of there. Did I mention the crazy vines growing everywhere?
After all was said and done, I loved his work and he loved his website. He didn't have a lot of money up front to pay for monthly SEO fees for me to get his site ranking (he wants to rank in a city of about 100k that's 15 miles away) so we worked out a 10% commission on jobs he specifically got from the site I built him. After a few months, and he was getting steady work, we decided on a flat fee that we both felt was fair.
The reason I joined and posted all this was because I was doing some more research for his site and I came across a few posts where people were asking about this type of stuff. My philosophy is, I want my clients to WANT to give me the money. I never force them into contracts, but I also never make crazy claims about getting them to #1.
For all of you that are either already working with companies or are thinking about it, make sure you go with someone you can actually talk to when you need to and that you trust. Stay away from YP! I have had to redo so many people's sites from going with them. I had one guy who was paying $1000 a month for a crappy single page site for Bail Bonds in a city of 30k. Ridiculous!!!
So, while I am willing to help anyone who wants help... by no means am I here selling my services. If you have a question or whatever, just let me know. While I'm not a "tree guy", after spending so much time talking to and working out with my tree guy, I kinda feel like I owe you guys in general. lol.
Oh, here is his site... Feel free to use it as a template if you're making your own. Just DO NOT copy and paste anything. You'll do more damage to yourself than to him.
www.lafayettebesttreeservice.com
About a year or so ago, I moved into a new home which me and the family loved. It has a huge back yard for being in town ( a small town, granted) but it was so overgrown that you couldn't even really tell how big it was. So, I got to work and after weeks of busting my butt, I think I cleared a few feet of undergrowth. You couldn't even tell I had done anything.
So, after that I got my money together and started calling tree companies. Being a website designer/SEO guy, the first thing I did was call up the first couple results on Google. I can honestly say that I wasn't impressed with the people I talked to.
I decided to go old school and busted out the phone book. I ended up calling a guy in town that had absolutely no advertising whatsoever. Honestly not sure how people were finding him other than word of mouth. We talked, he came out and gave me a quote and I told him what I did.
We worked out a compromise of him taking my design fees out of his fees and I paid him the difference. He did an amazing job, they were here for almost three days. There is NO WAY I could have even remotely done what they did. And they didn't even remove any trees. It was all just trimming and pulling stuff out of there. Did I mention the crazy vines growing everywhere?
After all was said and done, I loved his work and he loved his website. He didn't have a lot of money up front to pay for monthly SEO fees for me to get his site ranking (he wants to rank in a city of about 100k that's 15 miles away) so we worked out a 10% commission on jobs he specifically got from the site I built him. After a few months, and he was getting steady work, we decided on a flat fee that we both felt was fair.
The reason I joined and posted all this was because I was doing some more research for his site and I came across a few posts where people were asking about this type of stuff. My philosophy is, I want my clients to WANT to give me the money. I never force them into contracts, but I also never make crazy claims about getting them to #1.
For all of you that are either already working with companies or are thinking about it, make sure you go with someone you can actually talk to when you need to and that you trust. Stay away from YP! I have had to redo so many people's sites from going with them. I had one guy who was paying $1000 a month for a crappy single page site for Bail Bonds in a city of 30k. Ridiculous!!!
So, while I am willing to help anyone who wants help... by no means am I here selling my services. If you have a question or whatever, just let me know. While I'm not a "tree guy", after spending so much time talking to and working out with my tree guy, I kinda feel like I owe you guys in general. lol.
Oh, here is his site... Feel free to use it as a template if you're making your own. Just DO NOT copy and paste anything. You'll do more damage to yourself than to him.
www.lafayettebesttreeservice.com
