Evening Colin,

By coincidence I was going to post something about this so thought I would add my tuppence worth.

Being mobile, advertising is vital to me. Not having premises and therefore a presence which I could spruce up with banners etc to attract passing trade, I need advertising to overcome this major hurdle.

This is done at the moment by way of Yellow Pages and web site. I do have an ad in Yorkshire Auto trader but only for re-mapping advertising. I subscribe to 4 editions of YP in Car engine Tuning Section only. My web-site is normally in the first two pages of Google and normally ranked above most other competitors but below most on-line directories. My site is not managed by any professional outfit but ranking is kept at a reasonable profile by key words and advertising in the free on-line directories. I do not subscribe to Adwords because I think that to be a waste of money.

I keep a strict record of where my jobs come from and this is what it looks like for this year to end of September:

Old Customers: 36%
Recommendations: 29%
Yellow Pages: 24%
Internet: 9%
Misc: 2%

Like you, I am currently renewing my YP adverts and find it frustrating of where to place the advert. ie. Garage services or Car Engine Tuning. I also believe that more people are now turning to the Internet to find what they want and the decline in YP is now becoming obvious. What I intend to do is in two of the YP's is to advertise in Garage Services and then compare the results the following year. I cannot afford to advertise in both sections in all 4 editions. I can justify the outlay in YP's because the income I derive outweighs the costs incurred. Also, New customers become old customers with recommendations.

Turning to the Internet. I feel I am under-performing results wise on this medium. Rather than spend money on a professional company to promote my site, I am looking at revising and adding to my key words and advertising in different sections of the on-line directories. This will take time to produce results but hopefully this will do the trick.

Finally, I would be interested if any of you guys out there actually spend money other than adwords on promoting your web-sites. I would be grateful on your views and especially any success or failure stories.

Regards

Pete M