The bloody british weather

Just returned from our first camping trip in our new tent. We somehow managed to pick a rainy weekend and drove away from our sunny home into grey skies and rumbles of thunder.

Camp site was OK, just a problem with the toilets being about 3/4 mile away from our tent! Luckily we were surrounded by woods, which came in useful!

The good news is the tent is fine and worked like a dream. It’s a Campus Nevada 8 and we are well impressed with it. Relatively easy to put up – although not helped by rain and hungry toddler. Waterproof and roomy.

Our single gas cooking stove worked beautifully too, thank you whoever sold it to me on Ebay. In fact the only bad news was our unbelievably badly behaved son.

Such a nightmare was he that we packed up at 7.30 am on Sunday morning to get home! We’d had enough. I think that may be the end of our camping trips for this year on our own. If we have company, someone to keep our toddler amused and occupied we might consider it.

There is always next year when, hopefully, our son will have grown up a little and will behave a bit better.

It’s been a good summer overall and when the sun shines the UK is a great place to be. Just a pity the sun doesn’t shine more often. Looking out the window now it doesn’t look like it’s coming back any time soon.

I’m back at work anyway so not too worried. Working on the Car Loans website, providing some extra blog posts related to the weekend’s motorsport (the disgraceful Ferrari team orders) and also to the car finance page.

So impressed with WordPress on this blog that I’ve set up a multi-user version (WordPress MU) on one of my redundant websites which is now re-named the Big Red Mouse Blog Site. This was really just a test initially to see if I could get it working but I’m now planning how to expand it. If anyone would like a blog on this site please get in touch.

Is Google Adwords worth bothering with?

Is Google Adwords worth bothering with? I’m not convinced. I’ve tried it on many occassions over several years and have yet to see much of a return in any of the sectors I’ve tried it with. The level of bidding always seems to reach a point where it becomes too expensive to show any meaningful return.

Maybe I’m doing it wrong as there doesn’t seem to be a lack of advertisers, but I’ve tried just about everything, including reading various books on the subject and implementing their strategies but it always reaches the same end result.

I’m usually working in the B2B sector so perhaps that is one of the reasons. Working with telecoms and finance companies, both of which are particularly competitive and sought after.

The conversion rate level from the ad click throughs seems ridiculously low too, indicating that there is still plenty of click fraud going on unchecked.  Another reason to give it a wide berth.

Anyway I’m conducting yet another experiment with Google Adwords as we speak now, mainly because they’ve given me £100 free credit! In fact only because they’ve given me £100 free credit. Perhaps all of the Google Adwords advertisers are using their £100 free credits – that would explain a lot.

The latest promoted page is for Business Telecoms. I’ve come up with plenty of keywords having done lots of research and it is off and running. I’ve already spent a chunk of my budget and no return – no calls, no enquiries.

Maybe I will have an epiphany one day and find the key to Google Adwords. In the meantime I’m only going to be using their free credit until I start to see some results.

Getting a loan in 2010

Working with finance brokers as I do there is a fair bit of negativity regarding the lending market at the current time. The worst is over, that’s for sure. There was a time when just about no lending was taking place at all. However the green shoots of recovery seem to disappear almost as quickly as they appear.

My personal experience of the lending market revolves around my attempt to sell my house recently. All I wanted to do was move my current mortgage, which I have had for five years and made every payment (and indeed overpayments) on time, from one property to another. Simple one would have thought.

But no, this involved cancelling my existing mortgage and applying for a new one with the same company. So, even though I have made all my payments comfortably for five years and have never had any credit problems for over 20 years I was refused the same amount of borrowing and only offered a fraction of my existing mortgage!

So that was my plan to move home scuppered. The mortgage company involved still have to honour my current mortgage so are no better off (in fact they are worse off because I may have moved into a cheaper house affording them lower lending or increased equity) but they were not prepared to help me despite my excellent record over many years with them.

This does show that even with a good credit history lending is hard to come by and for those with bad credit it must be an absolute nightmare. That’s why it makes sense to use a credit broker when applying for a loan or mortgage these days.

There are specialist brokers around such as Car Loans UK who offer loans and finance for any type of vehicle. For bad credit loans visit Loan Refused and for all types of mortgages visit Handmade Mortgages.

Other specialist finance websites which offer a niche service include Yes Business Loans, for all types of business finance, and IVA Debt Problem for IVAs, debt management and debt consolidation.

Whilst going direct to your bank or building society might seem like a good thing to do, when they ignore your history with them and treat you as if they don’t know you then a visit to a credit broker could be the answer. As well as online brokers there are many high street credit brokers if you prefer to deal face-to-face. You should be able to find a local one to you in the phone book or Yellow Pages.

Does your business want to save money?

Not that long ago a friend of mine was involved with a utility company selling their products. He was positioned within a DIY superstore and was asking people as they went in “Would you like to save money on your bills?”. The answer was invariably “NO”.

Why would anyone say no to a question like that? Everyone likes to save money. Even rich people (not that I am speaking from personal experience here) like to save money, it makes them even richer in the long run.

The only reasons to say no I can think of are:

1. You don’t believe that you will save money (wariness)
2. You don’t want the hassle of changing suppliers (apathy)

Many business owners exhibit the same weariness and apathy, continuing with suppliers who are near-enough ripping them off, despite better deals being freely available elsewhere. This applies particularly to the business telecoms sector in which I work.

Whilst there is inevitably some short term pain in changing your business phones the long term gains can be enormous. You can gain better mobile phone handsets, allowing you to do much more when away from your workplace, improving your communications, plus reduced line rental and call costs.

Getting the best business landline phone deal can lead to free calls to mobile phones – imagine that, FREE CALLS TO MOBILE PHONES! I bet your business is currently spending a large chunk of its monthly or quarterly bill ringing mobiles.

If you are a business decision maker ask yourself the question – “Does your business want to save money?”. If the answer is YES (or even a maybe!!) then why not get a free business telecoms review?

It won’t cost you anything, you don’t have to do anything (other than provide a copy of your current bills so that we can make an accurate comparison) and if you don’t like the results, or we cannot save your business money, then there is no obligation to proceed.

As well as saving your business money we will also look at ways to improve your communications. New handsets offering better features, new phone systems including VoIP, business grade broadband and much more. It’s a total telecoms review but it won’t take up much of your time and energy – you need that for running your own business.

Interested? Just fill out the contact form - it will only take about a minute – and we will contact you.

Free calls to mobiles from your business landline

Now it’s time for my “Tuesday to Friday” job working for a telecoms company in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. They have a number of websites which I look after and am promoting by way of SEO.

The best performing is Business Mobile World, a site I started a few years ago. This was designed initially to generate enquiries for business mobiles but has branched out into other areas.

The business mobile market is extremely tough nowadays, with mobile phone networks looking like they want to cut dealers out of the picture wherever possible, and there are other opportunities within the telecoms field where we can provide a genuine cost saving solution for businesses.

One of these areas is in providing cheap calls to mobile phones from a business landline. More and more businesses are seeing a large proportion of their monthly/quarterly bill is made up of calling mobiles. Although landline tariffs have come down it is still likely that you are paying 10p a minute or more for every call to a mobile phone.

So how would you feel about making calls to mobile phones from 1p per minute or coming out of your mobile inclusive minutes? This is achievable with a new phone system we are currently promoting at one of our new sites, 21c VoIP phone systems. 

A lot of businesses are wary of VoIP phone systems. This new technology has been around for years, and we have been using it in our own offices during this time. Call quality is superb, although that will depend upon your broadband connection.

Our new VoIP phone system includes the VoIP workings within the main handset as well as a sim card reader. This allows all outbound mobile calls (starting 07) to be routed via a sim card over the mobile phone network, coming out of your inclusive minutes.

VoIP can also help reduce international call costs, sending calls over the internet avoiding many local carriers and border restrictions.  The system itself is relatively inexpensive and supports up to 16 handsets, ideal for SMEs.

So if free calls to mobile phones would appear to be attractive to your business get in touch for a quotation to see how much your business could save.

A bit about me and my projects

Just signed up for my new Word Press blog and this is my first post. I have used WordPress before on one of my website projects but always found it a little temperamental – probably because I was using Windows hosting. Hopefully the online experience will be a little more stable.

I’m an IT worker and look after a number of different websites for a couple of employers! I’m also in charge of the SEO which is my main focus. Results have been variable, with some sites gaining top 10 positions on Google for some pretty decent keywords and others struggling to get any traffic at all. It’s a time consuming job and I probably have too many “irons in the fire” – perhaps need to prioritise better!

One of my recent website acquisitions is www.carloans.co.uk. This is a UK based finance site specialising in car loans and car finance to all types of applicant, including those with bad credit. This is part of my “Monday job” which sees me working for a local finance company.

They have a number of finance-related websites, probably around 60 or 70, although I’m just working on around half a dozen of them. Getting loans (other than car loans) is pretty difficult currently so a lot of energy is spent generating leads for mortgages and debt where there are more avenues to place the business.

Of my two jobs this is certainly my favourite as it involves less travelling and is a much nicer atmosphere than my “Tuesday to Friday job”. I can get home earlier and spend more time with my family (wife Than and son Matt). With my son fast approaching 2 years old I’m happy to have a reasonable work-life balance.

Although this is at a cost! My wages barely cover my bills and it’s a constant struggle. I’m unable to plan for the future as I have no money left over at the end of each month. Oh well, I’m not the only one, and at least I have a job. My lack of money has led to me looking for a cheap source of holidays and I’m now officially a camper. Well I’ve bought a tent off Ebay anyway.

Was looking to make my second camping trip (first a couple of weeks ago borrowing my sisters tent) this weekend but weather looks like it’s taking a turn for the worse. I don’t fancy trying to put up a new tent for the first time in the pouring rain. I’ll check the forecast in a couple of days before making a booking. Will be camping locally so can always return home if the worst comes to the worst.