Ok, well today I just finished a very simple 4 page handyman website for a client. You can see it here: http://www.ExpertLocalHandyman.com. The client is completely out of his element when it comes to the web. This project was not the typical build a site and get paid for a couple reasons. First of all, I did not build it soley for the money. This is evident by the fact that I barely even got paid for a half hour of time to do it, I basicly did it for free. I did it for no cost because the guy does great handyman work and his business is slow. That brings me to the point of the site… To get him more business! I truly believe that as a developer, if I can help lots and lots of others my business will grow over time. Its not about money at this point. I want to build a solid client base by providing a desperately needed service to the people out there busting there tails day in and day out to make a living. My skill set was aligned perfectly to help this guy.
What is your skill set and who are you helping?
As we all know having a great site is absolutely worthless if people dont ever see it. It is like having a bad ass race car in the garage with no gas in it. What good is that? NONE! So phase two was to market his simple clean little site. But in this case we are going to market the site localy. He is a handyman so first thing I did was throw $20 worth of google adwords at it. I streamlined the ads to only show around his area he lives in, Sarasota, Venice, Nokomis, Englewood, Port Charlotte ….
Here is the method of madness I used on his adwords on some of his key words, all at $0.05 per click with a $2 a day limit:
sarasota handyman
venice handyman
nokomis handyman
…
then we threw in a few keywords for the skill of the trade:
venice home renovations
venice home repairs
venice remodeling contractors
…
By the time I was done I had 153 key words that all matched up to the content on his site and promoted his skill set in his demographics.
Now since money is a big issue because most people around here don't have it, we have to put on hold some of the things we would typicaly do to truly promote a company. However, I garantee this will bring him enough work to make a solid living. I can garantee it because I see it every day and I have not one unhappy client.
If money was no issue I would employ a service I can trust to submit a minimum of 100 press releases, 100 articals, and give him a few hundred social bookmarks. Now a days the market is saturated with companies that will perform this for just over a hundred dollars or so. It sure beats submitting them yourself which can take days upon days to do.
The site has a nice code frame work that is easily scalable. Want a blog installed?… No prob. Oh, you need a cataloging system?… No prob!
So there you have it in a nut shell. I don't want to minimize the work that went into it, and every site. There is a ton of other things that have been done also. Such as setting up google analytics, submitting to google and yahoo and ask …. and all the rest. I also built him a back end so he can update his own content. I set up a cpanel, his email server, database for page content, contact form that was customized in how it sends the information to him, not to mention I put in all the content myself. I don't typicaly do that. So he got a full blown SEO optimized site with content and hosting and site promotion for less than you spend on gas for a week.
I sometimes wonder "what the hell am i helping all these people for?" but it is what I felt led to do. So, I do it. I am called to help people help them selves :) I trust that God will keep me afloat if I just do His will.
Joe Mas
Check out the site and let me know what you think: http://www.ExpertLocalHandyman.com. Just keep in mind its not the site we are looking at its the business it generates for the guy. So 3-10 extra phone calls from people inquiring about his handyman work will achieve the goal we were after.