hi i am a bookkeeper looking to work from home, have posted a thread in the forum but not getting anywhere, has anyone got any advice to give me. Any advice would be apreciated.

hi i am a bookkeeper looking to work from home, have posted a thread in the forum but not getting anywhere, has anyone got any advice to give me. Any advice would be apreciated.

Book keeper sounds boring - thats what you are

what do you do ? or more importantly - what can you do for me?

where are you going to get clients?

how are they going to find you?

how much are you going to charge? more or less than your competition (assuming you know who your competitors are)

how will you collect it?

what if they dont pay?

are you insured ?do you need it?

hth - if you ask a better question or should I say more specific - then we can help you more

can do all aspects of bookkeeping the only thing i cannot do is year end accounts i would like to know the best way of advertising, i am willing to collect the work within reasonable distance. The legal side and insurance side i can get the information from work. It is just the advertising

can do all aspects of bookkeeping

sorry - still boring -

think of the PAIN that you remove from ME by doing my book keeping

Personal, I'd prefer to sandpaper the end of my tongue than do the VAT return & books

Find the pain and sell people a tablet for it

the details (website/flyers/adverts etc etc) will come after

If you start without defining the problem - you will have no trouble just pouring money away

pm if you would rather continue discussion offline

hi Stephen,

I think sharpend's advice is good. You could start with a blank sheet of paper and make 3 or 4 bullet points to answer each of the questions on sharpend's first post. Then you need to string them together into sentences to form a basic advert which you can fine tune later.

Do you need to list professional qualifications or registration? If so you should add that information.

Once you have all your notes together its a case of putting yourself in your customers shoes. What problems does he have? How can you help? How can he contact you? How much do you charge? Re read what you have written as if you were the customer - also ask a few other people to read your advert, get their feedback and tweak your advert again.

If your question was really where can you advertise cheaply and get lots of response I would say that the response rate is dependent on the quality of the advert (i.e. your copy) rather than the cost of the advert.

There are quite a few places you can advertise very cheaply or for free once you have your advert ready so post back when you are ready and i'm sure you will get some useful advice from the forum.

hi Stephen,

I think sharpend's advice is good. You could start with a blank sheet of paper and make 3 or 4 bullet points to answer each of the questions on sharpend's first post. Then you need to string them together into sentences to form a basic advert which you can fine tune later.

Do you need to list professional qualifications or registration? If so you should add that information.

Once you have all your notes together its a case of putting yourself in your customers shoes. What problems does he have? How can you help? How can he contact you? How much do you charge? Re read what you have written as if you were the customer - also ask a few other people to read your advert, get their feedback and tweak your advert again.

If your question was really where can you advertise cheaply and get lots of response I would say that the response rate is dependent on the quality of the advert (i.e. your copy) rather than the cost of the advert.

There are quite a few places you can advertise very cheaply or for free once you have your advert ready so post back when you are ready and i'm sure you will get some useful advice from the forum.

Hi
I would like to know where to advertise for free, apart from the forum of course

I've been looking for as many really cheap advertising outlets as I can find. So far the list is:

BT Tradespace
other forums
Chamber of Commerce
Sheffield Star - works well for some trades
the free papers - if they are distributed in your target area
word of mouth generated by good pr
sponsorship
networking events

I'm currently looking at local radio as an option.

Of course its horses for courses and knowing a bit about the demographic for your target market will help you decide whether your audience of managing directors will read the friday ads free paper.

Personally my opinion would be that the best marketing is judged by it being good value for money - how many responses do I get per £100 and how many convert.

I'd love to hear other ideas to add to the list.

Hi Stephen, I can help with the bookkeeping software at least. have a look at AccountingWeb.co.uk and click on IT. There's a review of what we do and ... the good news is that it's free to bookkeepers and accountants! yee-hah!
Each client gets a free login for the bookkeeper or accountant of their choice, and it means you can work remotely, but login at the same time as them to do your work, over the phone, on skype, whatever.

You can get some free networking/PR on the Ecademy.com website. I use it and it's quite good, though tbh, this Sheffield forum thing seems pretty good to me.

I totally agree about getting your messages right. If you're not clear, how will you tell people what you do? Take the time to plan properly. Make it simple, memorable and not tooooo dull!

People want to hear how you can save them time, to spend with their kids.
They want to know that you (with the help of Liquid!), can stop them pulling their hair out the night before their tax return is due, by organising their accounts and taking control of their business.
They want you to take away the fear of the pile of unopened bills, which they add more envelopes to every week and just wish would go away.
They want to know that they don't need to spend a fortune on software they can't use, because you can provide a good, cheap alternative that saves them Time and Money.
They want to know that you'll get them a date with Sandra Bullock, or Kylie... now that would be good for PR...

How are we doing?

anything else folks

PS anyone got Kylie's number?!!!

I've been looking for as many really cheap advertising outlets as I can find. So far the list is:

BT Tradespace
other forums
Chamber of Commerce
Sheffield Star - works well for some trades
the free papers - if they are distributed in your target area
word of mouth generated by good pr
sponsorship
networking events

I'm currently looking at local radio as an option.

Of course its horses for courses and knowing a bit about the demographic for your target market will help you decide whether your audience of managing directors will read the friday ads free paper.

Personally my opinion would be that the best marketing is judged by it being good value for money - how many responses do I get per £100 and how many convert.

I'd love to hear other ideas to add to the list.
Dont you have to pay though to be in the Chamber of commerce?

Businesses in their first year of trading the Chamber of Commerce is £99 + VAT. In subsequent years its based on the number of employees - scaling upwards from £150ish. We are members of the chamber and will have the the member of chamber of commerce logo on our new website when its ready.

Sheffield Star and the free papers charge for advertisements although these could be really cost effective options depending on what you are selling.

Of course nothing is trully free, even cold calling. Knocking on doors costs the price of your time. I was advised that if I spent £100 on a newspaper add and it brings in 20 customers its cost me £5 each (so the equivalent of about 15-20 minutes of work). But if I knock on doors for 6 hours and get at best say 6 customers that has cost me an hour per customer and therefore the first £20 I earn from each is just recouping the costs of finding them, but that is based on our particular services - like I said - horses for courses.

In Stephen's case I think he probably needs to get the copy right and learn to "big up" his service before any customers will be confident to use his service over another which offers the same level of service but just presents itself slicker.

Consider changing your user name to a more relevant one a for example, book keeper? That way, when you post, your user name is advertising for you.

Try to google "free ads"