A while back we bought a house and started converting it into our dream home - task requiring help from many friends and tradies.
Being new to the area, we relied on several portals to find tradies, with some good and some not so good outcomes. Mostly we've been lucky and found honest and hard working people, that are just trying to make ends meet. Their main complaints about finding new customers is common to all small businesses - tradies or not - how do you keep prices competitive and still earn enough for decent income.
It's very simple, in theory - one needs to keep their costs to a minimum. Which is easier said than done.
Most of the supplier / consumer matching portals are big money making machines. Not for people using it, but people / companies owning them. Small businesses have to pay ongoing licence fee, pay for every lead/contact information, whether it leads to sale or not. And if they are unlucky, at the end of the day, they also have to deal with non-paying customers, stretching their already small budget even further.
A small local family run business ourselves, we understand the challenges in competing with bigger businesses, so have priced our services accordingly.
How do we count the leads? Everyone can see the job details and location. When you click on "view contact info", that counts as a lead.
As a thank you to businesses signing up with a portal at the beginning and helping us grow, they will receive lifetime free business directory service, if signed up within first month of trial ending.
Trial mode is planned to start on 30-Jun-2020 and end on 1-Aug-2020.