Thread: Trust a trader...does it work?

Is anyone a member of this organisation, by member I mean advertise?

Reason I ask is the ad is quite 'repeating' on my local radio, so if i hear it, the customer hears it.
My newpaper ad is hardly generating any new leads

However all I have to do is offer 2 references and that is me on their system, not quite what they sell to the customer...tut tut

However if it brings work then I am willing to pay


Wanted to see what others are doing and if they are with this company?

Hi there,

I looked into this site about a year ago and spoke to someone and they quoted my £500 to join. It is basically one step on from Yell.com, you get a listing. You can add a description of your business, add you web site if you have one and add pics of previous work. Your customers can also leave feed back on the work you carried out. I thought it was a bit expensive what what they offered, basically members of the public can look for a tradesmen in their area and contact them. You can do that with Yell at the moment, you can now add your web page and they give you a page to advertise you business if you don't have a web page. Yell has not worked for us over the past year or so so we do not use them, they wanted £36 per month.

We use Rated People, you pay £40 plus vat per three months to join, around £13 per month, and they send you jobs relevant to your trade in your area, and then it is up to you what you quote for, you pay per lead, prices about £16 per lead, bit expensive but not so risky money wise and it does generate work. My builder is run in a similar way you pay £13 per month to join and you can quote for any many job as you wish no extra costs involved. I keep an eye on this site, but it does not seem to have the amount of work coming up that we would want to quote on in our area, only one to two every three months or so, so it not worth it for us, but it may be worth having a look at.

Checkatrade is another one I looked at but, they are not government approved, despite what they try to tell you, they wanted £40 per month to be put on a list. If you want this sort of thing where you are checked and approved it may be worth asking the local council what that have, I know ours has an approved contractor list.

Hope this helps.

I've been with Trustatrader for about 3 years now, and I'm still there as they do what they say. By the way mate, on signing up, you provide a minimum of 5 references for your work, but the more good ones you have on your profile advert, the more likely your clients are gonna pay for you because they know you are a reliable and trustworthy tradesman. I get alot of work through them, and it is becoming more popular with customer's to look at trustatrader after they get a job done badly from the phone book or whatever.. After all mate, anyone can get an ad on yell, but they aint necessarily any good at their job!. It's well worth the money mate, but you have to remember to hand out your feedback cards to your customer's. A lesson I learned as if you aint got the feedback then people will use you less, like I said. good luck mate.

Just an update...
I am around 3 months in with trustatrader
I tried to book under electrician but those slots were full, I am multi trade so went under home improvments/property improvements
I have 900+ hits (fallunder postcode) of which 200+ view and only around 3-5 known calls/contacts. i have pics, recently added web page. not sure if the hits are people looking to see rivials but would expect more than 3-5...so far not that good
shame the ones who don't 'click' can't leave a reason