Remodeleze.com

[Mr Remodeleze]

Hi Guys,

My Name is Yoram and I am "Mr remoedeleze":builder2:

We built a platform designed to try and "fix" 2 of the biggest problems of the remodeling industry:

1. Homeowners - How do I find a good reliable and recommended contractor?
2. Contractors - How do I separate myself from my competition and increase my referral work?

Our site offers free membership and tools for Homewoners and Professionals and an optional paid membership for professionals with access to more marketing tools.

I would love to hear from all of you your thoughts about our site and see if we can make it work for everyone.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll be happy to answer.

Best regards,

Yoram

[Silvertree]

I know Yoram and he's OK. Maybe he'll come back and say a little more about his product.

We (Remodel Crazy) do not receive compensation from the vendors on Remodel Crazy, I think Yoram is offering a free trial.

Its your call, I'll let Yoram take it from here.

[Mr Remodeleze]

Thanks Paul.

Remodeleze.com does offer a free membership level for contractors (we don't ask for your credit card when you create the account).

Our goal is to help educate homeowners about what they can expect (pricing quality, time) before they start a remodeling project, and the best way to do that is by showing them pictures with pricing and other relevant information.

Loading your jobs information is very simple with our "Project setup Wizard" and after you load them it's easy to start sharing your work with others.

I'll be happy to answer questions you have about the site, how it works and how it can help your business.

Thank you,
Yoram

[SLS-Construction]

I guess if The Paul says your Ok, well... never mind

Seriously though - welcome to RC & how about a quick overview and why should a contractor join? Free VS ??? service

[Mr Remodeleze]

Thanks for the warm welcome...

A contractor should join Remodeleze.com because we give you an easy way to showcase your self and your work and build trust.
Our research shows that home owners are having a hard time separating between good contractors and bad contractors. They tend to make decision base on... price and a lot of times are not happy with the result or the process. This is part of why contractors image is not that great.

Our solution is: let's provide homeowners with as much information as possible: pictures of you (they want to know who they are hiring), your work, pricing, reviews from previous customers, so they can feel comfortable making the right decision with the right expectation. (no kitchen cabinets at $4999.95).

Free membership:
Free personal profile (you)
Load Projects
Answer questions

Paid membership:
Public profile
Receive reviews and referrals
Company profile
Load Projects
Print Project portfolio
Create and post special offers
Plot jobs on a map
Do-it-yourself marketing tools
Local search optimization for your business

We are not a lead service company, and there is no "per lead" price.
If anyone wants to try our upgraded profile, let me know and I'll get you a free one month trial. (as long as you use it...)


Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks
Yoram

[RCP]

Can you tell us how many searches you get in a specific area? I have joined Angies List, Merchant Circle and other "contractor directories" and find there is little or no activity for my small town. Zip code is 84720

[Mike(VA)]

Welcome, Yoram. You may find difficult sledding here as many of us view most companies that do LGS as unsavory. To differentiate yourself from the ServiceMagic's of the world will certainly help you. When all else fails, bring food and colored drinks.

[Mr Remodeleze]

Great question!
As you can see, we are in "Beta" and are just starting our homeowners drive activities, so I'm guessing that we don't have great activity in your area.
The difference with remodeleze.com and the "directories sites" you're talking about is that we give you tools that serves you even if there is not a lot of traffic to remodeleze.com
We optimize and publish your projects based on their location and keywords so they are found in local searches on google and Yahoo ("kitchen remodel in 84720" for example), We send out a monthly emails to all your contacts on remodeleze with your activity and a request for referral (we ask on your behalf), and we allow you to print your projects in a nice brochure style to take with you as a leave behind for customers (with a link to your company profile). These are just a few of the tools we have (and we are adding a bunch more) that our members are using and having good results with.

[Mr Remodeleze]

Thanks Mike.

My best friend is a GC and he has his share of SM stories. We want to make sure we're not in the middle between you and your customers, just a platform to help you promote you and your services.

We like to think of ourselves as "building trust, one profile at a time...", but maybe bringing food and drinks will work too :-)

[TulsaRemodeler]

Receive reviews and referrals

Maybe you have good intentions... What your selling is leads, right? Its opportunism, percieved as making money off the backs of people that actually do things. Hard sell to make it palatable.

[ChrWright]

Our research shows that home owners are having a hard time separating between good contractors and bad contractors.

Really? Is that right.

Cut to the chase. Statements like this are total fluff.

Specific benefits. Why should we want to list with you instead of investing in the SEO of our own sites? Why do I need you to host my profile in order to build trust?

I can do everything in your list from my own sites, blogs, and social networking sites. What do you do that's different?

Service Magic has gotten in hot water for optimizing their own sites in pretty slimy ways. How do you respond to that?

This is not an attack--just a challenge. Most of us on RC have been to more than a few rodeos... and have spent a lot of time driving fluff like that out of our own promotional materials. You'll have to do better than that.

[Blue]

You are attacking him sir. Your remarks are condescending with a touch of flippant sarcasm.... and it's refreshing.


Seriously though to the OP, your selling a fancy website with seo right?

I checked out your site and two of my main competitors
are listed in your seach results but no option to click on them.
I am assuming they have taken advantage of your free listing.
I noticed they were not allowed to list there phone number with their free listing.

Please elaborate.

[Mr Remodeleze]

Wow, so much love...
Let me see if I can answer your questions/comments

1. We don't sell leads!

2. We are in business to make money (as I hope you are) and we're not ashamed of it. Just trying to do right for both sides

3. Yes it's right! You want to tell me that it's easy for you to differentiate yourself from contractors that get work only based on price and convince a homeowner that you should get paid more because your work is better quality, you are licensed, you have insurance, you use better materials, etc... ? Homeowners want to see pictures, reviews and pricing information. Why not give them what they want?

4. We will never tell you to replace what you're doing online to go with our service. It is an addition to your marketing efforts and you should be doing more then one thing at a time. I'm not sure about your individual webmaster skills, but Remodeleze is set to make it easy for anyone to post and optimize JOBS. You can load as many projects as you want and they each get a unique page optimized based on the job location (no bad SEO techniques) and you don't need to know anything about website building.

5. When someone is looking at testimonials and reviews on your website they will give it less weight then when seeing it on a "neutral" platform. The assumption is that you can write what ever you want on your website, where as on our platform is open and when someone posts a review you can contact them and ask them questions.

6. I'm happy to hear that our site looks good...(or was fancy supposed to insult me :))

7. The listings that you see with no details are directory listings of companies that are not site members. These are displayed in addition to site members (and are showed lower in the results page) for areas where we don't have enough results. They didn't use our free membership. You can always have a free personal profile on remodeleze and load as many projects as you want.

To be continued...

[Silvertree]

Well, Yoram sure got a good start today.:rolleyes3:

I can't wait until we really get someone that pisses people off, should I invite Service Magic over?
They are starting a blog and forum and I know I'm real curious as to how that works for them. They had a forum and shut it down, I never went to it so I don't know the reason.

Everycontractor.c** called me last week and I told them they could have a chance to join the conversation, they are probably thinking it over.

We (RC) will not shy away from controversial topics as long as its not politics or religion, so if you want to bang on the Sierra Club or whatever we may get the chance.

I think a fight is allright as long as we don't insult someones mom or something.

[ChrWright]

Wow, so much love...
Let me see if I can answer your questions/comments

1. We don't sell leads!
OK

2. We are in business to make money (as I hope you are) and we're not ashamed of it. Just trying to do right for both sides
A nice bit of honesty--but out of curiousity, how do you make your money?

3. Yes it's right! You want to tell me that it's easy for you to differentiate yourself from contractors that get work only based on price and convince a homeowner that you should get paid more because your work is better quality, you are licensed, you have insurance, you use better materials, etc... ? Homeowners want to see pictures, reviews and pricing information. Why not give them what they want?
Give them pricing? I'm curious about what kind of pricing you can give online for remodeling...

4. We will never tell you to replace what you're doing online to go with our service. It is an addition to your marketing efforts and you should be doing more then one thing at a time. I'm not sure about your individual webmaster skills, but Remodeleze is set to make it easy for anyone to post and optimize JOBS. You can load as many projects as you want and they each get a unique page optimized based on the job location (no bad SEO techniques) and you don't need to know anything about website building.
"No bad SEO techniques." What I consider bad might be different from what you do. This is a very specific compaint about a very specific lead service. You'd better be prepared to distance yourself from it.

This last part is actually a very great benefit but you've only barely touched on it. A lot of contractors don't have the wherewithal or knowledge to build their own site. I would have expected this would be a key benefit, but you don't express it very clearly.

5. When someone is looking at testimonials and reviews on your website they will give it less weight then when seeing it on a "neutral" platform. The assumption is that you can write what ever you want on your website, where as on our platform is open and when someone posts a review you can contact them and ask them questions.
Now things are getting interesting. What kind of interface do you have for HOs to post reviews? How does this compare to Angie's List?

6. I'm happy to hear that our site looks good...(or was fancy supposed to insult me :))
A pretty site doesn't mean it will pull traffic. Frankly I question the efficacy of generic, non-local sites being able to attract and keep qualified prospects. When people go online to find something like remodeling, they're looking for a local source. Do you plan on customizing the home page seen by your visitors based on search engine keywords?

7. The listings that you see with no details are directory listings of companies that are not site members. These are displayed in addition to site members (and are showed lower in the results page) for areas where we don't have enough results. They didn't use our free membership. You can always have a free personal profile on remodeleze and load as many projects as you want.

To be continued...


Paul, I want to meet Cute Angel. :grin:

http://www.remodeleze.com/Pages/Reviews/ViewReviews.aspx?BaseContentID=503ee094-058a-460e-b2aa-774064390363

[Mr Remodeleze]

ChrWright,

I'll answer your questions in the morning, but this is funny -
"Paul, I want to meet Cute Angel.
http://www.remodeleze.com/Pages/Revi...a-774064390363"

It looks like some of our QA testers reviews "moved" to the live site instead of staying on the test one...

[naptownCr]

Paul, I want to meet Cute Angel. :grin:

http://www.remodeleze.com/Pages/Reviews/ViewReviews.aspx?BaseContentID=503ee094-058a-460e-b2aa-774064390363

Me too
Although I don't think she needs any work done. Seems pretty good to me!

[Mr Remodeleze]

Here are some more answers:

1. Pricing info for remodeling:
When you load a project to Remodeleze.com, we ask you to load pictures of the job, provide a description to what was done and provide a price and time frame. The idea is to show homeowners what they can expect when taking on a similar job. The combination of the price, time frame, description and pictures helps set the expectation level right. In addition, homeowners can look at similar projects in their area to and compare.

2. Homeowners reviews:
On Remodeleze.com homeowners can leave a review for a contractors, as long as they are a site member. We also allow contractors to respond to a review. The difference from Angies list, is that the membership is free for homeowners and we allow contractors to join even if they are not "recommended". Everyone deserves a presence and it's up to him to invite his customers to give him reviews (and to keep them happy).

3. Localized experience:
We are adding localized modules to the home page with "companies and Projects near you", so yes it will be "localized" for each visitor

[Century Man]

Paul, I want to meet Cute Angel. :grin:

http://www.remodeleze.com/Pages/Reviews/ViewReviews.aspx?BaseContentID=503ee094-058a-460e-b2aa-774064390363

Did you notice The Paul was canonized a Saint.
Paul Lesieur
Saint Paul, MN