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Here's a bit of info about some of the sites I work on and host currently, as well as the sort of work I've done in each case. Hopefully this gives a decent idea of what I do. Naturally I can't really go divulging details of all my projects without offending NDAs, so here's what I *can* tell you:


Back of the net Football Coaching
(www.backofthenetfc.com)

Youth soccer schools for kids aged 5 to 15, run in association with Arsenal. The site allows visitors to book on several types of courses for a number of courses for different age and skill levels and has an ongoing track record for producing excellent players for local youth teams.

This site runs a thriving email list via Aweber, which means maximum deliverability and full compliance with CAN-spam laws. The marketing used to be mostly offline but gradually it is shifting to be more email-centric. We are just in the process of completing the next generation of the booking system which will have an improved booking system, provides ongoing reporting for the players direct from the coaches and better back-end management tools for the staff.

What started out as a simple little site a few years ago has grown into an online behemouth which keeps 3 staff members busy with enquiries and bookings.

  • Domain name aquisition and management
  • Site design, build & hosting
  • Build multiple booking forms and checkout system
  • Ongoing optimisations & analytics
  • Set up email insfrastructure
  • Mailing list setup and management
  • The site turns over a healthy number of orders every year and is growing steadily
  • Ongoing IT infrastructure development
  • IT support and backups


"My website took over 200 orders in 6 days! I'm chuffed to bits"

J. Brady, Back Of The Net FC

Jan 2010: BOTN goes from strength to strength. Over the last year we've developed a system to manage BOTN's advanced players (i.e. the ones who then go on to local clubs), their booking, attendance and reporting. The system currently has around 250 players in it and allows the parents to log in and book for their players as well as view reports from each term, allowing them to track progress of their players, giving them a competetive edge. As far as we know very few (if any) other football schools in the UK have a system like this.



Executive Chauffeur Parking (www.ecp-online.co.uk)

Meet & Greet / Valet parking service for London City airport. This was a tricky project, primarily because it is a heavily competetive field on Adwords, which is the main source of traffic. This meant we had to really use every technique available to us to make the most of the traffic.

The ad copy, keyphrases as well as the landing pages have all been *rigorously* tested and we spent quite a long time optimising the "sales funnel" using various testing systems including Google's "Website Optimiser" and some custom tools built specifically for the task. As a result the site currently converts roughly 1 in 6 visitors into a sale and enjoys approx 7:1 Advertising ROI.

  • Website build & hosting
  • Booking system & checkout
  • Order management back-end
  • Adwords campaign setup, optimisation and management
  • Landing pages & sales process optimisation
  • SEO
  • Ad and content optimisation


"You took us from zero orders to not just up-and-running but *profitable* in under 6 weeks! Our competition were not amused."

D. Maxwell, Executive Chauffeur Parking

December 2009: Sadly ECP had to shut down recently due to staff illness and some other problems resulting from that. It's a shame to have come all that way and then not carry on but it showed what can be done when the tools are applied correctly.



Bahnstorm Tuning (www.bahnstorm.net)

VW/Audi specialist based in Northampton. This site is for a friend of mine and fellow VW nut who has helped me put my car back together again several times when I've got stuck ;)

This was quite a low-budget site but thanks to some thorough testing early on it seems to enjoy some rather good search-engine visibility and generates a steady trickle of enquiries/leads with very little applied marketing effort.

  • Initial keyword/market research & testing to find the most effective domain name
  • Domain and email setup
  • Logo design
  • Website design, build & hosting
  • Ongoing SEO

Currently google No.1 for their primary keyphrase "VW specialist Northampton".


Firebeans Crystal Therapy (www.FireBeans.com)

This site is for my partner who is a crystal therapist. This site is part of a co-ordinated online and offline marketing effort targeting the Northampton/Milton Keynes area. In the space of a few months she now has a steady stream of face-to-face and distant-healing style therapy clients.

She has maximised the impact of her site by registering with various online business listings and by using social networking to maintain direct contact with her clients. She has produced original and highly targeted content consistently and diligently and has been enjoying free search engine traffic as a result.

  • Logo design
  • Website design, build & hosting
  • On and offline marketing strategies
  • Ongoing SEO


"I don't have a huge marketing budget but I've followed your advice re regularly writing original content for the site and using social networking and am actually getting more business from those efforts than from the paid advertising I've tested in the past! Thanks :)"
K. Hill, Firebeans Crystal Therapy



Jan 2010: From what we learned about her customers over recent months we developed a profitable adwords campaign. Since that campaign proved profitable we tested and ultimately rolled it out in a couple of other healing sub-niches worldwide on adwords. The end result was a flood of work which meant Katy was able to finally make the switch to go full-time... new testimonial just added below :)


I listened to Bernie, and followed his marketing/business advice to the letter, within just a few months I had quit my old full-time job and had my new career fully functioning.


After just a few short months there is so much work coming in that we are currently looking at taking on a second therapist so that we can meet the demand. This has been an absolutely incredible start to my career - I never imagined that it could happen so quickly and so successfully.


We started out with me just giving Bernie £10 to "see what he could do" regarding advertising on Adwords. And very quickly we had our first clicks and sales. From there we arranged a commission rate so that there is always money to fund the advertising and pay for Bernie's services. I have always been so happy to pay Bernie commission because he has worked very hard to get my business off the ground through his ninja advertising skills and every time I've needed to send him commission (or indeed a bonus I felt he more than deserved) I have been happy because this is proof that the sales are coming in and my business is working. I also know that with each commission payment I send him, the more work will come my way as a result. So it's an extremely productive spiral that seems to be going up, and up, and up!


I feel we have got my business to this point on a shoe-string budget marketing-wise. Initially Bernie recommended that the best way for me to increase my advertising (whether I had money to spend on advertising or not) was *content* - and LOTS of it. So I began writing about everything to do with my work, and people online love it. They are always commenting on the amount of content I have and how informative it is. And that's just the beginning because I know from what Bernie has told me that in order to keep my ranking in the search engines I need to keep adding more content. And because of the way my business is constantly expanding (because we are so busy) there is always something new to write about. My problem is just having the time to write the content because I have so much work coming in - hence looking to expand to new members of staff, so that I can keep this important part of the marketing going.


Blogging and Twittering are also essential ways to raise my profile online, as is entering my details into free online business databases. These are all things that Bernie recommended in the early days of me starting up my business and I've definitely seen traffic coming to me because of these methods.


Bernie thought outside of the box with my business and tried to come up with something that would grab people's attention and pull them in to my site. We settled on something that I could give people for free, at no cost except five minutes of my time and the cost of a click for a few pence. People love receiving something for free and as soon as we started this concept we were getting up to six enquiries a day. It was this that became our lead-generating machine.


I think the only difficult part of all this has been that I have needed to listen and follow the advice I have been given by Bernie. I really don't have a good success rate at listening to advice! But I have seen Bernie's work and have seen that those who haven't listened to his marketing advice have been nowhere near as successful as they could have been. I didn't want my own pride to get in the way of my career's success, so I got over myself and got on with it. And I'm so glad I did.


Can you tell? :D


K. Hill, Firebeans Crystal Therapy, March 2010



Search engines (google) are an ever-changing platform so what's number 1 today might not be tomorrow, but for what it's worth here are some of my past and present Google Number Ones and significant mentions (pdfs in a zip file).