Homepros?

[Mike(VA)]

Anyone know anything about Homepros? http://www.homepros.com/ I keep seeing their name pop up on LinkedIn groups, on forums, and I am curious as to what there are about. Not interested in a franchise, I just like to know about whom I may be competing against some day.

[Eieio]

The way I understand it they are a lead generation company with a new twist.

Initial sign up free, post pictures of your projects and interact with potential clients on the site.

I like the concept

[SLS-Construction]

per their page
Join our community where people work together. Homeowners, Contractors and Designers are all able to create a free profile to post questions, reviews, and ideas… share and learn together at HomePros!

They are still trying to kick it off fully, but it is another place you can list your business like linked in, answer questions occasionally, etc...

[Mike(VA)]

They do have franchise opportunities so they must have started out as a business somewhere. Or is it just a paper business?

[Eieio]

They do have franchise opportunities so they must have started out as a business somewhere. Or is it just a paper business?


I might have to send off an email for the owner to come introduce himself

[R & J]

I joined them when they first started. Check back periodically. Not much action other than from the owner.

[Eieio]

Well Some one from homepros just signed up many we can get some answers :grin:

[HomePros]

Thanks Rory for reaching out. I have always appreciated your online involvement where we cross paths, and am happy for you guys doing this site. Best of luck...you are off to a good start!

First just to get it out of the way, the franchise opportunities you see when you search from us are from a defunct company in IL I believe they used to hold a trademark for the name (which we currently do now). Sooner or later we will grow to a point where those references to them will be diluted in the search results.

HomePros Mission - To create the first functional service based marketplace by bringing together homeowners, contractors, designers, architects, suppliers and retailers using social networking and business process management applications.

Homeowners can investigate projects through company and community driven content, choose DIY or professionally done project paths, manage a project through completion, and track past project details and contacts to create a home's history much like a Carfax report.

The flipside is contractors accessing the marketplace through a dashboard that allows them to manage online content, expose themselves to homeowners actively looking for help, network with other professionals, and collaborate with those involved in a home improvement project including designers and of course, the homeowners themselves.

In all honesty, I have run a lead generation business before. It is called broadbandlocators.com and it is for business class telecom services. Being online marketing guys, our intent was to come in and provide better leads, beat the others at SEO, and have everyone win. Quickly into writing the business plan and meeting with many contractors, I realized that was not going to work. Some markets are just not good for that model and therefore you have to adapt. Telecom being largely agent driven, it works well. Once we started exploring the industry we realized we could do something much bigger than simply providing you leads from tire kicking homeowners. We want to be the dashboard for a persons home, and the ebay + Linkedin for professionals providing home services.

I would be happy to answer any questions and am honored to network with you all. I just did this podcast for an entrepreneurial radio show, and hopefully it will shed some light on who we are and what we are about. We are just getting started, but we are a serious Web 2.0 technology company that you will be hearing a lot more about over the next months. We have not been able to provide a value proposition to both pros and homeowners without a directory, and therefore have not attempted to garner press until now. It should be live and complete along with upgraded user profiles in the next couple weeks.

Have a listen if you have a few minutes:

thebusinessmakers.com/episodes/the-businessmakers-overtime-archives/2009/august-2009/episode-002/businessmakers-breakdown-002.html

[Mike(VA)]

Thanks for the intro and some idea of what you guys are about. Some selling, some buying going on here but mainly just passing information back and forth so we all can learn.

[HomePros]

Nice to meet you Mike. If you listened to the podcast, you will find a big deal to us is listening to the community. Im not interested in pushing product, but more focused on helping with my marketing ideas and gathering feedback about technology needs in this space.

If you have any questions about SEO, social media, etc feel free to hit me up and I will see if I can help in any way.

[SLS-Construction]

The Link (http://www.thebusinessmakers.com/episodes/the-businessmakers-overtime-archives/2009/august-2009/episode-002/businessmakers-breakdown-002.html) mentioned above

[Winchester]

Pffft. yet another site wth nothing for Canada :mad:

[Eieio]

Pffft. yet another site wth nothing for Canada :mad:

whats Canada:rolleyes3:

[Winchester]

whats Canada:rolleyes3:
Your largest and sexiest state :mad2:

[HomePros]

Ryan...we will get into Canada. Problem with businesses like ours is the chicken and egg syndrome. You want to cover as much area as possible, but not have empty pages when a homeowner searches. We will have zip code related searches for instance, but have a directory thats initially browse-able by 25 major metros.

So once we get a tad more traction, I will at minimum add major Canadian cities to the directory. One of our major content contributors is Canadian and has been pushing on me :)

[ModernStyle]

I have a homepro membership I guess, I went to the site and typed in my normal name and password and it logged me in. I sign up for so much stuff I forget half of it. I mainly do it for backlinks. I will have to see what this is all about since I must have already signed up

[HomePros]

Agreed...we have had little value proposition outside of content for homeowners up until now, and therefore havent been providing the marketing the site was set out to provide. A directory will be live very shortly, which is built for SEO, where homeowners can find and contact you. You are right...if nothing else the more places you can be found, and more links you have, the better.

The software tools we provide in the future will set this apart.