A lot of websites for tradespeople work on hope. You put your name on a list, the site sits there, and everyone waits for a customer to wander past.
We don't run Emmerdale Agriculture like that. Every week we spend time and money going out and finding people who need land work done, and bringing their jobs to the contractors on the network.
This note explains what that looks like in practice, and why it's the reason nearly 70 jobs have come through in the four weeks since we opened.
The numbers so far
We opened the network to the public on 6 September. The first job came in the next day.
In the four weeks since:
- 100+ jobs have been sent out to contractors
- they came from 36 different counties
- 50 of them have had at least one price, and those 50 got 2.7 prices each on average
The jobs are the kind the network was built for: paddock topping, weed control, harrowing, hedge cutting, flailing, hay and straw, and tractor hire for weddings and events, along with plenty of one-off land jobs that don't fit a neat label.
The more interesting number is how the weeks went. The first two weeks brought 6 jobs each. The third brought 35. There have been 21 more in the six days since.
That jump didn't happen by luck. It happened because we went looking for the problem.
We advertise every day, and we watch every click
We run adverts on Facebook and Instagram every day, aimed at the people who actually have land: a paddock, a smallholding, or a few acres behind the house. We invest heavily in SEO so our results jump up search rankings, and similarly invest in AI optimization as it becomes more and more prevalent
Roughly half of all the jobs so far came in through those adverts.
But adverts on their own aren't the point. In our first week the adverts were getting hundreds of clicks and almost nobody was describing a job. So we looked at what those visitors actually did, click by click.
Two things were wrong. Most of the clicks were coming from adverts shown inside other apps and games, where people tap by accident and leave straight away. And on a phone, which is how most people visit, the box where you describe your job sat below the bottom of the screen.
We switched off the advert placements that were wasting clicks, and moved the job box to the top of the page. Within a fortnight, jobs went from 6 a week to 35.
That is what "investing in marketing" means to us. Not just spending money, but measuring where every job comes from and fixing what isn't working.
We build for Google, county by county
Paid adverts stop the moment you stop paying. Search keeps working.
So alongside the adverts, we've built more than 260 local pages, one for every county for each of paddock maintenance, hay and straw, and tractor hire. Someone searching for paddock topping in Wiltshire or hay bales in Cheshire should find a page written for exactly that, with a way to describe their job on the spot.
We also write articles that answer the questions people actually type into Google: how much paddock topping costs, when to harrow, what wedding tractor hire involves. Each one is a way in for someone who doesn't know we exist yet.
Search is the slower of the two, but it already brings in jobs of its own, and every page and article adds to it.
We follow up, so jobs don't go cold
Getting someone to the site is only half of it. A lot of good work is lost in the gap between "I should get that paddock sorted" and actually booking it.
So we chase, politely:
- If someone starts describing a job, leaves their email and doesn't press send, they get one reminder.
- If a contractor sends a customer a message and it sits unread for a day, the customer gets a nudge.
- Contractors get a Monday round-up of everything still open in their counties, so nothing slips past.
None of that is glamorous, but every job saved that way is work for someone on the network.
What this means if you're a contractor
It means you don't have to do the marketing yourself.
You don't need a website, a Facebook page or a budget for adverts. You tell us the counties you cover and the work you do, and the jobs we bring in come to you by email, with the acreage, access, photos and location already sorted.
You price the ones you want and pass on the ones you don't. Joining is free, and so is pricing.
If you'd like a head start on new work, our premium membership puts new jobs in your area in front of you before anyone else, and adds a smaller margin to your prices so they land cheaper for the customer. It's optional, and the free account gets every job too.
What's next
We're putting more into both halves: more adverts in the counties where we have plenty of contractors and want more jobs, and more local pages and articles so Google sends people our way without being paid to.
If you're a contractor and you'd like a share of the work we're bringing in, join the network. It takes a few minutes.
If you've got land that needs work before winter, describe the job. It's free, and the contractors near you will do the rest.
