Olican
Private Member
A lot of new members and Plasterersjust starting out ask on here for advice on finding work so I thoughtI would share what has worked for me in the past. @northyskim is onesuch spread so I thought I would write this as a kind of case studybased on his location.
The obvious rules apply; do a highstandard, clean job every time and display professionalism and workwill always follow work. There is however more competition than ever before so you have to be proactive in sourcing more work.
Take a day or a couple of evenings andimplement the following:
Chris (Northyskim) is based in WestSussex and is looking for a mix of domestic and small medium sizedbuilders developers. Google the following;
Architects, property developers,quantity surveyors, Builders, Plasterers.
This came up with about 300 business,now you can do a mail shoot. Send a letter/ email with a couple ofdecent testimonials images of your work.
Contact Building control for yourdistrict www.midsussex.gov.uk/buildingcontrol
Theycan provide you with a list (some Districts charge for this some don't) of all applications pending or approved with addresses. Thisis a great source of info as it will have all the new builds rightdown to extensions even new windows.
On-line sourcing: A decent website works wonders @Danny did mine earlierthis year and it performs very well. Getting a high ranking can betricky (search SEO search engine optimization for more advice onthis) but what works well for me is the following:
OpenFace book/ twitter/linked-in etc and directly source your potential trade. Your local newspaper/ football team etc will have thousandsof followers and they will mostly be in your district so follow/liketheir pages and share images of your work/testimonials etc
Google post-offices &newsagents in Worthing Down, its showing 69results. Nearly all will display postcard size adverts from 10p to£1 a week, trust me they are well worth doing. Get some decent cardsprinted and put on in every window you can. I put 40 odd out yearsgo and now I keep half a dozen in permanently as the regularly bringin jobs ( they are near banks and town centre so get seen quite alot. Believe it or not I've had everything from patch jobs to newbuilds out of these.
Becomea creature of habit, here is what I keep in the van and even when I'm busy I still stick a flyer out or pop a card in a shop window.
Take a lot of pics so that you can build a decent portfolio, in the pic above you can see a small portfolio, it has big jobs and little jobs so you can flip to a relevant image should a job viewing call for it .
Anything prominent in your area will work well like the one below we did a couple of years ago, its one of the main roads into Torquay.
Network, network, network. Be it on here or in your home town. I've passed work on to other plasterers and had work passed back to me, don't see other spreads as competition more as a viable source of work.
There are lead generating sites (checkatrade, rated people etc) and other online sources of trade but I've not had much to do with these but I know some on here have.
Hope some of this helps Chris
:RpS_thumbsup:
The obvious rules apply; do a highstandard, clean job every time and display professionalism and workwill always follow work. There is however more competition than ever before so you have to be proactive in sourcing more work.
Take a day or a couple of evenings andimplement the following:
Chris (Northyskim) is based in WestSussex and is looking for a mix of domestic and small medium sizedbuilders developers. Google the following;
Architects, property developers,quantity surveyors, Builders, Plasterers.
This came up with about 300 business,now you can do a mail shoot. Send a letter/ email with a couple ofdecent testimonials images of your work.
Contact Building control for yourdistrict www.midsussex.gov.uk/buildingcontrol
Theycan provide you with a list (some Districts charge for this some don't) of all applications pending or approved with addresses. Thisis a great source of info as it will have all the new builds rightdown to extensions even new windows.
On-line sourcing: A decent website works wonders @Danny did mine earlierthis year and it performs very well. Getting a high ranking can betricky (search SEO search engine optimization for more advice onthis) but what works well for me is the following:
OpenFace book/ twitter/linked-in etc and directly source your potential trade. Your local newspaper/ football team etc will have thousandsof followers and they will mostly be in your district so follow/liketheir pages and share images of your work/testimonials etc
Google post-offices &newsagents in Worthing Down, its showing 69results. Nearly all will display postcard size adverts from 10p to£1 a week, trust me they are well worth doing. Get some decent cardsprinted and put on in every window you can. I put 40 odd out yearsgo and now I keep half a dozen in permanently as the regularly bringin jobs ( they are near banks and town centre so get seen quite alot. Believe it or not I've had everything from patch jobs to newbuilds out of these.
Becomea creature of habit, here is what I keep in the van and even when I'm busy I still stick a flyer out or pop a card in a shop window.
Take a lot of pics so that you can build a decent portfolio, in the pic above you can see a small portfolio, it has big jobs and little jobs so you can flip to a relevant image should a job viewing call for it .
Anything prominent in your area will work well like the one below we did a couple of years ago, its one of the main roads into Torquay.
Network, network, network. Be it on here or in your home town. I've passed work on to other plasterers and had work passed back to me, don't see other spreads as competition more as a viable source of work.
There are lead generating sites (checkatrade, rated people etc) and other online sources of trade but I've not had much to do with these but I know some on here have.
Hope some of this helps Chris
:RpS_thumbsup:
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