[Lavinia]

I saw on the internet that yel can advertise your company with a link to your web site for £220 , so I e-mailed them. they have just called to say that the actual price is £656 because we are in a popular listing . Is this how much you people pay in this industry and do you find it value for money. I have advertised in yellow pages and that was the biggest waist of time ever, do you get more from yel.com? I would be greatfull for any advice.

[spencer davies]

They called me recently offering a box and a link for £90, I didn't take them up on their offer as we have v strong internet presence in this area, I think they are struggling at the moment so expect even better offers.   


S

[Mike Osbourne]

Pete Sweeney is an ex rep and can do yell deals. Certainly a ROI but not as much as free stuff.

[JandS]

Yell.com have just rung me and offered me listing @ £34 including the dreaded per month.
Is it worth it, how much work a month can you expect it to return?
Or at least how many calls a month.
Have told him to ring back in a couple of days.

John

[derek west]

i had bt exchange today, we can guarantee you 80 leads a month, yes guarantee you 80 leads a month. for as little as £299 and £160 per month, and if you don't get the business we'll give you your money back.
i signed up there and then, thats me sorted for the rest of the year.
derek

[JandS]

You are taking the p*ss I presume Derek.

John

[Mike Osbourne]

I had someone ring me a few month ago claiming to be from the Local BT office. He told me they are looking for a local carpet cleaner to do all their carpet cleaning.

He was in a boiler room, I could hear all the other people giving the same pitch in the background :

[clinton]

Mike 

[derek west]

okay, i didn't sign up straight away, he's ringing me tomorrow to seal the deal,
do ya think i should offer him a bit more, i mean! i am gonna be mega rich an all.
its only polite, and deep down i am a nice guy really. all be it slightly cocky.
does anyone else want his phone number, you could be mega rich too,
derek

[Ricky M]

Derek , pass me the No. pls , not bothered bout him making me mega rich just want a nice chat about his statment , 80 leads per month is better than my Dec 

Love sales folk there fun 

Ricky

[derek west]

he's ringing me tomorrow, whats your number, i'll tell him your interested, he goes on for about 20 mins, you can tell he's reading it off a page.
derek

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

I just love it when you can get them "off-script".....

Hello, can I speak to Roger?

Whose speaking?

Andrew from xxxx

Roger speaking

Hello, this is Andrew from xxxx

Yes you've already said that

Er.....



Or

Are you wanting more business?

Yes

Well we can give you lots and lots

Does it cost money

Well.....

But it'll give me lots and lots of work.

Yes

Well in that case I don't want it

Why not

Well IF you give me all that work then I won't be able to cope with it. If it doesn't give me lots of work then why am I spending money advertising with you.

[Mike Osbourne]

I can usually stomach 4-5 calls a day but what I can't help myself with is when they say And how are you today?

[derek west]

he said to me

not only can we give you all this but we can give you a free website and a free domain name.
we've just bought cheshirecarpetcleaners.co.uk and its yours for free.

you can't own cheshirecarpetcleaners.co.uk, i own it.

what do you mean you own it, yours is affordablecleaners.co.uk

yeah i know but i also own cheshirecarpetcleaners.co.uk and carpetcleanerscheshire.co.uk

oh right! errr errr hang on a minute i'll get my notes.

(phone goes silent)

sorry, ours is carpetcleaners"in"cheshire.co.uk

oh right i said.

he still carried on saying i could have it for free, bless  him.

derek

[clinton]

You could just be rude and put the phone down

[Goldfinch PCS]

Well they got you too?

I contacted them for the same thing and they gave me the same price, what happens with sites such as yell and tomson local, they have a pact with the search engines mainly google and they get traffic driven to you site, I use google adsense on my site and i noticed that I get a lot of tomson local links, yell does a similar thing to adsense and you have people with these links on their site. Anyway I could go on about this and explain crawlers and all that stuff but the bottom line is you will see an increase in traffic and maybe a few enquiries. The also take enquiries on the phone but it's like using 118 118 o Maurene or any of the others, the question is ARE THAT MANY PEOPLE REALLY ASKING FOR OUR SERVICE? If so are they after carpet cleaning or emergency solutions (wine spills)? The problem with yell and bt and all the others is they can't really give you any live data (examples) so you have to go by the words of a sales person my experience in the past suggest that you will get at least one enquiry.

I am in the midland and the best ranking site is Sutton carpet cleaning co. and i often wonder how much it cost him to be there all the time. Getting traffic to your site takes time and there are more cost effective ways to do it so hold out a bit on yell or tomson or any of the others and go for the free ones such as gumtree and bizwiki or even the yell affiliate program(thinking of joining that soon). Yell will keep calling you so haggle until it gets to half price I told them I can't afford it so when they have a better deal to give me a call, they still call offering the same service at that ridiculous price.