I had sent him an e mail cause I wanted to sign up for a year & had a few question. Never heard from him.
John Devine. allwashedupny.com
Dude just disappeared.
talked to barry the other day. he’s alive, just swamped. sounds like he’s got quite a few projects all rolling at same time.
New to roof cleaning. What is the ARMA method?
American roofing manufacturers association I think
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There is a bit more ARMA information here.
http://pressurewashingresource.com/vBulletin/roof-cleaning/3197-roof-cleaning-arma-what.html
Thanks Tim, I had a brain cramp.
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It doesn’t require money to get listed but even if you wanted a gold account, its automatic.
What isn’t automatic is the listing going live. I verify each and every listing against the website linked. If the linked site does not have any roof cleaning info on it, does not mention “ARMA” or “no-pressure”, I email the listed email address. My emails are ignored 90% of the time. Still though, I usually send 3-4 before I delete the account altogether. In some cases I actually call.
Another reason listings don’t get published is that they have no content in their listing…or just one sentence. I used to insist on quality and quantity but I relaxed the rules a bit. Letting poor quality listings go live has hurt the directory tremendously.
Another thing to keep in mind is that for every listing, I’ve verified and approved, 4 did not pass. For every user account that has a listing, I’ve deleted 40. My point is that it’s a lot of work to maintain a free site. If it was a pay only site, I could craft your listing myself, like I do for many Gold members and spend a lot more time consulting with the users.
From the forums…
I am not a real big forum poster to start with and when the cleaning season is running, I have little time. Like I said on RCIA, during the season, I clean all day, work on websites and themes and such as soon as I get home…till I go to sleep. Plus, I’m a single parent of a 9 year old.
Still…an email eventually gets attention.
Starting this year, we are opening the hosting company up to all contractor businesses. I’m going to roll all of the sites (web design, directories and hosting) into one ticket system with 24/7 support. It’s been an issue of growing pains more than a lack of attention or concern.
Thanks for the clarification, Barry. The new stuff looks extremely interesting!
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Homeowners are not the targeted consumer of the directory.
The site was never intended to outrank local searches…although it has done pretty well in that respect. The plan from day one, which was a year before it actually launched, was to A) build up the listings…fill up the map. B) market the URL to realtors, HOA’s Ins companies, property managers as a list of non-pressure roof cleaners.
We couldn’t expect to be taken serious with a couple of listings…we had to wait.
I had hoped for better coverage before moving to step “B” and hoped it would happen faster but we began step “B” last month. I’ve made 2 power point presentations to insurance companies and they were received well.
You need to think of the directory different than a SEO marketing tool. Think of it as a resource that might be found on Insurance Adjusters Resource Association or the HOA Resource Association (I made those up to make a point).
PWRA doesn’t outrank your site but you still see the value of the membership, share info in it’s forum, take advantage of it’s resources. That is the intended value of the directory.
I get frustrated sometimes. Contractors think too “2 dimensional”…too “inside the box”. They buy a truck, load it with equipment, build a website and join the rat race we call search engines. National Org’s aren’t much better. It’s always bottom to top thinking.
Has water ever “trickled up”?
Lastly…let me address your question…“Has it payed off”?
It’s free, yes, we do have premium listings and they do get more attention, more benefits but there are very few. How do you calculate the ROI of something free? Okay, it’s not exactly free…you have to type words and maybe add some pic’s.
People join free forums and with no hope of any ROI, they type and type and type…some will put 2+ hours a week in typing on forums. Can you imagine how well a blog post would do (SEO) if they spent 1/50th of that effort adding content?
I was reading a SEO article last week about content and ranking. These guys did some research and found out that what the top ranked URL’s all had in common was 2000+ words.
Any page, any site…and how well it ranks is a lot like a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous - “keep coming back, it works if you work it”.
Here’s the link to the map I made as an example of “better mapping”. Like I said on the phone, I scraped the data from your public map so it’s only as accurate as that data.
contractorthemes.com/pwra-map/
Damn thing won’t let me link!
Thanks Tim
2 more posts and I pass the spammer block
How do I go about getting the certification?
Thanks for the info, Barry. It’s helpful to have a clearer understanding of the goal of the directory.
I’ll be upgrading the content on my listing for sure.
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