Business / personal name
Purple Gardening Services
Business address
18 Erneley Close Gorton South Manchester England M12 5RB
Primary telephone number:
0161-221-1512
About you and your business ( please complete)
General Garden Maintenance Hedge Pruning & Trimming Planting & Transplanting Beds & Boders weeding & tidying Lawn Maintenance
Business category
Domestic Garden Maintenance
Where did you hear about Landscape Juice
other
Comments
Websites - yeah I looked and seemed like a fair expense at the outset; my initial thought was what client group uses the internet to search for gardeners; friends tell me most referrals come through word of mouth, which is great once you have a client base, but it's getting off the starting block isn't it!
Still ,any advertising is better than no advertising so in that respect I think your website is great and it isn't costing you anything so there is no loss there. The key thing is to evaluate whatever advertising source you use; ask customers how they found you. If you pay £200 for a website and get 10 positive leads then it is likely paying for itself; if you get none you might need to review what was happening there and if it is worth continuing.
VAT - you need to have a turn over of around £70k before you MUST register for VAT; that's all i know. You wont charge VAT but neither can you claim it back and - would you want to add 20% to every invoice? Check with your accountant if being VAT registered would benefit you or not cus I would hate to steer you in a direction that I thought worked for me but didn't work for you.
Training is another thing to think about - I don't know what training or qualifications you have - and I am not saying that you need to have but sometimes it is a wise investment to help you become more efficient, ensure you work safely and that you are competent in your trade. It is an upfront payment of course so not everything will suit your circumstances but more than happy to chat with you about this. There are some certificates that are mandatory such as pesticides so that would be worth looking into.
Hi Bradley
You are not too far from me, I have recently started up gardening for myself as well. I don't know if I could be a lot of help in terms of advice but the key thing would be to plan and research - know in your head what you want to do and what you hope (and need) to achieve and consider your business to be a success. The best advice I was given was 'Don't Panic'. Take your time, do a good job and you will slowly get recommendations; rush and do a bad job and the whole street will know about it by tomorrow morning. And - your web page looks brilliant mate, I don't have website, I couldn't decide if it would benefit or not - do you find it helps? I reckon you could be offering me advice as you look very professional pal.
All the best of luck to you