Trudging around delivering leaflets can be a joy, and likewise, can be a nightmare!  It’s great on a sunny day, in a nice area, and you can have a great few hours.  Especially if there’s a few of you, you can have a great time.  However on a day like today where the weather is at best ‘changeable’ and at worst ‘filthy’ there is little fun involved.

However, we wanted to gauge how effective our response from the leaflets was, so I devised a quick and easy way of measuring the response using an Excel spreadsheet.  From this we can see that our efforts in the last two weeks have provided us with an income per leaflet of 44p!

Now that might not sound an awful lot, but if someone said to you, here’s a hundred leaflets.  Deliver them and I’ll give you £1.85 per month, every month, you’d probably think it was a good deal.  Carry that forward to figures like 5000 leaflets, which can easily be achieved in a month, and it’s giving you an income of around £100 per month, every month.

Again, it’s not an exact science, and the figures will bob up and down, but it’s nice to know on a cold, rainy April Monday afternoon, that each leaflet is bringing in the bacon.

This post was kindly submitted by Richard & Megan from Dolly Char domestic cleaning Wakefield

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I have had two companies recently contact me regarding my main company website www.dollychar.com stating that they had run online searches looking for the site and had found that the site was not to be found anywhere in google searches. When I have queried this and asked which keywords or search terms they had used, both companies had just tried using the term cleaners, this brought a little smile to my face as I am aware that I do not rate very highly for that one specific search term.

I went on to tell both companies that the term cleaners is too much of a vague term as anyone searching for cleaners could be looking for carpet cleaners, domestic cleaners, industrial cleaners, patio cleaners, window cleaners infact there are countless different cleaning possibilities.

What other types of cleaners can you think of that people using the basic search term cleaners could be searching for.

My examples again are:- carpet cleaners, domestic cleaners, industrial cleaners, patio cleaners, window cleaners.

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This weekend I am busy spending several hours making a few alterations to my various websites especially on the main body text and also the keyword and meta tags on those same pages.  At present I have in the region of 200 various keywords and phrases that I have covered for search engine optimism purposes.

I would like to hear what search term you would use if you were searching to find a domestic cleaner local to you. Obviously we are all individuals with different and varied ideas and your feedback would be greatly appreciated as I feel that at times I am trapped in my own little world and as such I may well be missing a few very good and important search terms that I have not previously thought of.

I have deliberately steered clear of giving any domestic cleaning search engine examples as I do not want to influence your thoughts, that is why my main example is of a totally irrelevant service to my type of business!

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Get rich quick opportunities

Do you know of any get rich quick schemes that are actually true to the description?

The only possible get rich quick schemes that come to my mind are:-

1. Having a flutter on the lottery and coming up trumps! But there is no guarantee and it could take you several life times to hit the jackpot, so you are not guaranteed to get rich quick!

2. You could be lucky and inherit a fortune from a rich relative, this could happen unexpectedly and quickly but its not guaranteed!

There are many business opportunities out there that I have examined over the years that profess to be get rich quick schemes, but to date I am yet to view one that convinces me that they would live up to their promise of riches!

Do you know of any get rich quick schemes that are 100% genuine?

I do although know of one very genuine get comfortable home based business opportunity

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Searching for some new slogans

I am currently attempting to dream up some new slogans, headlines or taglines for my company Dolly Chars advertising literature (A5 leaflets A6 cards) in the hope of catching a potential clients eye. If anyone can come up with any unique ideas or suggestions for possible taglines I would be very grateful, although I won’t guarantee that I’d use them of course.

A few of my past efforts that I have used with success are:-

Finding housework a chore? …. Then help is on hand!

Finding cleaning a bind …. keep Dolly Char on your mind!

Need a break from cleaning … then look no further!

I have also come up with other variations that I haven’t used such as:-

Is your wish for domestic bliss?

Let us fight your grime

Need a clean break!

I like the last one above but I have never used it as I am frightened that it could give the impression that my cleaners were very destructive!

Obviously with slogans, taglines or headlines they need to be eye catching and where possible I believe unique.

For the record if my few examples haven’t told you already I run a domestic cleaning agency providing cleaners to domestic households.

January Sales

I often wonder with January Sales how genuine most of them really are! Is it not just a case of normality returning after the pre Christmas hike in prices? The word gimmick often comes to mind with me or better still January Gimmick!

There are always a few very genuine January Giveaways around but they are never that easy to find so the moral of the story is buyer beware!

It can be so very time consuming searching for people who are genuine and serious franchise prospects. It can prove to be very costly on a franchise businesses resources. There are so many people out there who make an initial enquiry about a franchise business opportunity that are not remotely interested but for some unknown reason they feel the urge to submit the online enquiry form.

Many of these franchise business enquiries especially the ones that have enquired using online enquiry forms from various franchise business opportunity websites fill in the forms with bogus telephone numbers, email addresses or even bogus postal addresses! What is that all about I often ask myself? At least with these franchise business enquiries once their email as bounced back to you and you have found that their telephone number is false you can at least delete them from your records and forget about them!

The really time consuming and expensive so called franchise business prospects are those that go to the next stage of requesting an initial business meeting. There are numerous times that I have travelled upwards of 200 miles to meet a so-called prospect that fails to materialize. I have even had phone calls from franchise prospects whilst waiting for them to turn up saying unfortunately something as happened like my friends dog needs taking to the vets I do apologise can you come back to see me tomorrow! What! Or you travel down to the London docklands for a franchise prospect to say we don’t really like your franchise or brand but we just wanted to meet you, what is that all about! These days I personally request that on an initial visit that franchise prospects come to my office so then at least it cuts out some of the day-trippers and time wasters and also it is a good test of their commitment.

There is also another type of franchise business enquirer who almost goes the whole hog attending various meetings and they even send their initial fee knowing that they haven’t got the funds and that their cheque will bounce, I have had more than one of these and on each occasion that this as happened I have never ever been able to contact the person again afterwards, why do people do this? I have no answer to this last problem, suggestions are more than welcome.

Business marketing techniques

When you first start your new business you will probably be relying to a great extent on business marketing techniques trying various methods of advertising to get your business telephone line to ring.

It is I must stress so very important to make sure that you and your staff are there ready on hand and available to receive your potential customers incoming telephone enquiries. Quite an high percentage of potentially new customers to your business could be lost if you find that you are having to rely on them leaving a message on your companies answering machine.

Even in this modern day world many potential new customers will not bother to leave a message instead they will hang up their phone and move on to your competitor, and if your competitor picks up the phone they will then more than likely end up gaining the customers business instead of your business gaining it!

Make sure that you never miss a business telephone call

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I have just completed my first year of business networking and in that time I have built up quite a modest list of contacts in the various business networks that I belong!

What I am thinking about at this present moment is in reality what good is it to have accumulated all those contacts, what does it provide me with? Most people in my business networks I rarely communicate with as to be honest I do not have enough time as it would be a full time job keeping in touch on a regular basis with every one in all these networks! There are a few although who I do correspond with on a regular basis usually through emails but also on occasions by telephone.

I am wondering if in reality with most people who have very large business networks whether it is an ego thing i.e.: - I have got more in my gang than you! What I have found is that the bigger the network the less likely you are to get a response from the individual, they are not interested, I suppose that they do not have the time as they are too busy making another connection! Most people with large business networks only seem to send out meat, whoops sorry spam, which in reality is not at all personal in the slightest!

What are your views on the size of networks?

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Taglines slogans headlines help required

I am currently trying to dream up new slogans, headlines or taglines for my companies advertising literature (A5 leaflets A6 cards) in the hope of catching more potential clients eyes.

If anyone can come up with any unique ideas or suggestions for possible headlines, slogans or taglines I would be very grateful, although I can’t guarantee that  I would use them of course.

A few of my past efforts that I have used with success are:-

Finding housework a chore? …. Then help is on hand!

Would you like more freedom in your life-at an affordable price?

Need a break from cleaning … then look no further!

I have also come up with many other variations that I haven’t used such as:-

Do you wish for domestic bliss?

Let us fight your grime

Need a clean break!

I like the last one above but I have never used it as I am afraid that it could give the impression that our cleaners could be very destructive!

Obviously with slogans, taglines or headlines they need to be eye catching and where possible unique.

For the record if my few examples haven’t enlightened you already I run a domestic cleaning agency providing domestic cleaners to domestic households.

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