So the time has come! As mentioned in a previous post we were working on something big. We are excited to announce a new online resource for window cleaners - SqueegeeHero.com
The concept of this site was formed nearly a decade ago and it has evolved as the internet and industry has. I am excited about its potential and hope it provides a lasting and positive contribution to the window cleaning community. Below are the main 3 benefits it will provide for members:
Certification
Visibility
Industry Savings
So please check it out and get your spot early on. We have big plans going forward.
Check out the WCRA discounts page for the offer if you are a member.
*Pressure washing equivalent coming soon.
It’s just a middle man. They charge the vendor and have unnecessary control in the exchange. Competition goes up, prices go down, and the winners are the new guys with the worst service and lowest price.
I don’t see this as bad for the industry, but as a POSITIVE for legit businesses. It’s good that someone is attempting to make some way to separate a pro from someone who just bought some tools at HD and calls themselves a “pro” or a “business”.
Amazon, thumbtack, housecall pro, homeadvisor, Angie’s list… they all have “pro verification systems” and anyone with a half legit business can get through the screen.
It sounds like they may be trying to change from all those other unuseful sites.
Here’s where I only find it a positive, if they can actually follow through with their claims of how they would have this structured with verification.
Companies with years of experience is a statement made and less than 20% get verified is positive
Others do just get companies, any company, actually finding qualified companies is the difference between them
Right. And they only allow one listing per service/per service area (the way I read it, anyway). So there’s no motive for them to push through companies that really don’t belong there.
I think the success of a directory site like this one hinges directly on the quality of the listings. Too many companies with low ratings, and the confidence in the entire directory will suffer.
I wouldn’t discourage people from being early adopters. Every venture like this requires some risk takers and early adopters.
Thank you guys for your replies. I welcome feedback! I’m actually glad these points were brought out. Let me address some things.
First, I initially thought of building this site because of my disdain for the big review sites. In fact I had a wc/pw business and I held out on signing up for these sites because I didn’t like what I saw as a deceptive way of taking money from service professionals and driving their websites down in the search results. I even had conversations with their reps (who constantly called me after I said no) about the implications of this. I didn’t like middlemen.
But at the end of the day I couldn’t do anything about it. Just another form of competition in reality. Thats capitalism. I had to accept that ‘middle men’ were the new reality and people were going to continue to support them when they get results. But I realized this was competition I could possibly benefit from. So I begrudgingly tried several of them. I had generally bad results.
Angie’s List. - Newcomers to the site have a hard time competing with 150 A+ reviews that a competitor may already have. In order to compete you often have to drop your prices and offer deals to build up your reviews. My company did not have many reviews but I later bought a company that already had over a hundred A+ reviews and I still couldn’t get jobs. And I was paying $100+ a month (with discount) to be featured. I also did not like the claim that “a business can’t pay to be on our site”. Anybody could sign up and recommend themselves with little effort.
Thumbtack - Same review problem as AL but you have to bid on each job. It became quite costly and not profitable.
HomeAdvisor - Very expensive and you generally have to compete on bids. Most leads were dead ends for me.
Amazon - never tried it but got plenty of email invites. Insurance seemed to be the only requirements past being able to by your email address from someone. Also they take a cut of reoccuring work. Hmm. But I do like the idea of only paying for work and not leads.
Perhaps you’ve had different results. Forgive me if some of this info is outdated.
The point is I had an established and quality operation. But still I couldn’t compete with companies I knew were shady or uninsured. Not to say that there aren’t any good companies on there. But the quality process was compromised by the business model. And without leads there was no other value. Seems like these sites get a core group of service companies to succeed and the new guys that come later are often out of luck. But they keep adding more knowing they can’t deliver for everyone. And new companies are born every day that continue to sign up and waste money.
So lets further separate squeegeehero.com from the other ‘review sites’ out there:
We don’t charge for leads.
We offer more than just leads. Industry specific certification as well as the industry savings are core benefits.
This website will Never get huge and overloaded. Your listing will not have to compete with dozens of others.
Membership rates are reasonable. The pricing model should barely touch your annual profit. Unlike these other sites that can ruin your profitability.
More than just your average listing. If you don’t have a website this gives you one. Full gallery and detailed estimate forms. None of the sites mentioned give you this.
The verification process is comprehensive and ongoing. Its hard to game the system.
Many of the reviews sites cater to cheap clients. We are not selling deals to our visitors, we are selling quality.
To be a premium member you have to rate higher in our review than other members not just pay more. There an extra step in the review process.
As I told Chris this is a passion project for us. A site imagined and built by window cleaners.
My goal was to create a national site that could compete with the big 4 as a niche site. Help window cleaners take back some ground. Help consumers find the good guys.
Is it possible to compete with the big 4 without putting in millions? It’s already being done. The key is that we are not competing with their whole site. We have much lower ambitions. We only pursue a small fraction of their keywords. No other site is as industry specific. No other site will provide the same value to the user. That means something to the search engines. But it will take more than just being a niche site. We also have a VERY good strategy (white hat) up our sleeves.
*It was mentioned that this has been attempted before. I remember a pretty slick site a few years ago. Very different business model. Completely different SEO strategy.
Sorry for the long post. If you’ve gotten down to here I thank you for reading this.
We do not have plans for raising the price in the near future.
Yes there is definitely a perk for early adopters - being the only one listed in your area.
For those requesting a premium listing they would secure their service area. But we do have applicants going through the review process right now so it may not be available long.
To be a premium member you have to rate higher in our review than other members not just pay more. There an extra step in the review process.
Just to be clear, you do have to pay more besides going through an extra step in the review process, correct? Premium listing is $200/yr where as standard listing is $110/yr, almost twice as much.
This website sounds a lot like windowcleaning.com except quite a bit cheaper. (Not cheap, but certainly cheaper)
