Blogging Along

So a nice sale this week through SEDO from JobsinHull.co.uk

Although I’d of love to have kept it I needed the cash flow and also focus (as usual) on fewer projects. Not sure what my biggest sale of a domain is but I know it’s never been over £1k  and £650 was a good buy and sale in my eyes.

Over the past 2 months I have been at “The One Point Ltd” working on and batting projects about. To fast forward to today I now work with The One Point on their marketing and development. With me been into the whole SEO, mini site, back linking, websites, VoIP, domains etc this was an ideal opportunity to gain a desk away from working from home, be in a real office environment, have a good team to work with and help set my aims on target with The one Points and my own goals.

One of the first deals stuck was with my HullFencing.co.uk site that daily is getting leads by phone, email and the unknown shop visits now to a local Hull company HPR Fencing Ltd. Giving them a unique number from The One Point so we can monitor our marketing from the site helps reinforce our no brainier method and costs for a Hull Domain mini site.

The monthly fee covers, domain renewals, hosting, editing, a new phone number and any SEO to help propel the site on to page 1 of search engines for key phrases.

On the affiliate front I’m a bit disappointed with BlueDress.co.uk not converting at all and a slight dip in adsense rev too.

This month (a bit delayed i know) Humber TV will move from Mk1, BETA, or what ever you want to call it and should be a nice breeze of fresh air but most importantly offer some great services to the Humber area. In video advertising, commercial videos, DVD production for distribution, Media company access to help with advertising packages for their clients and enduser media submission.

To finish off on it was nice to warn KCOM about a major security hole for email and hosting accounts with Karoo accounts. Hopefully they will be on the case and enforced a fix by now.

Face to a name?

This post is a bit of a moan and a blatant plug for the best advertising money you’ll spend within Hull!

Formed our limited company around April 08 and submitted the company details to many directories and other sites alike for free.

From that day on (un-ticking the box I wish to receive news letters etc) we have had nothing but a constant bombardment of phone calls and spam emails from most of them. I know they have to make money and to follow up listings but the annoying thing is when they try and sell us a listing and then when we decline SEO or a new website. They clearly have no idea,

That’s what we do!

Two points that bug me –

1. First of all, the call centre person who calls you has no idea what a company offers, who then calls them up to get a listing upgraded to pay annually and just wants your card details.
2. The next day not giving 2 hoots what happens to your listing or business leads now they have their commission and another tick in their box. This is backed up by everyone I’ve spoke to having NO results from paid listing on these national directories.

Really isn’t right that is it?

This got more and more grinding as the months went on. I asked clients and businesses at networking events, do you get these calls and confirmed –

“All the time! Bloody annoying”

Knowing how people generally do searches online using Google, Yahoo, BING and other search engines using a Geo location and service or product required. We decided to start buying up all Hull related domains, Services, products e.g. HullBeds.co.uk, you get the idea where we were going by covering all angles.

• 100’s of domains
• 100 hour’s,  late nights and long weekends
• £xxxx’s for registration fee’s and secondary market domains

We had a solid network of domains and a main directory they all interact with in some way- Hull Local.

We have found people like to speak to faces and real people, not some guy or voices at the end of the phone. We didn’t want to try and create a national directory but kept it a local one just to Hull which also made sense for travel and getting to know businesses. We don’t just expose your business from one website/directory which limits how many times you can be shown in search results but a whole spread of websites.

An example, If your company sells blinds, you can be listed under our Blinds, Conservatory, and Windows categories. All  of which focus on been in Hull and then on our specific mini websites again all focused on been in Hull – Hull-Blinds.co.uk, HullConservatories.co.uk and HullWindows.co.uk This gives your company 8 shots at any one search when people perform a search instead of the usual 2 shots. If you need this explaining a little better please do contact me.

I could write a book on how the network of websites would benefit your business. I’ll leave it there and just ask you to take a look, see how it works and if you do want a chat let me come and show you how it could work for your company!

I thank you ;o)