I have been longing to sit down with the founder of Bids By Pros (BidsByPros.com), Farnaz, and ask her how she came up with the idea and the concept of bids by pros.
Don: What is Bids By Pros?
Farnaz: Bids By Pros is a community. To elaborate, everyone wants to join a community that is trusting, beneficial and informative. The main focus of Bids By Pros is to connect local consumers to service professionals.
Don: You mentioned a community. How do someone benefit from this community?
Farnaz: As a consumer, you are free to post whatever you need. You need to paint your wall, wash your car or need a new dentist post it in a simple project format. As soon as your post is finalized, all the local service pros that are related to your project category, receive a notification about your project and will respond to your need by placing a bid. If your project does not require a bid and you simply need a referral to find a business, local businesses and the other community members can make recommendation. To get the best result, you can share the project format via social media buttons provided with a circle of your friends and get your friends involved in helping you with your project. After all, what better recommendation than the one coming from a friend.
Don: How did you come up with the idea?
Farnaz: I had a delicate area rug that needed cleaning. In my neighborhood, I searched many classified and online directories and found Few Specialized Persian rug cleaners. My next step was to read the reviews. I spent many hours trying to locate reviews, not very helpful as some they gave good ones and others not. Then my next step was to call them and get prices from these 3 businesses. Non answered so I left messages. From 3 messages, 1 returned my call and gave me an astronomical price quote. I had no other price to compare with and honestly after few days of researching to find a qualified rug cleaner, I exhaustively gave up.
So there it was. I desired to create a site where I could post my need, including all the details of my request and it automatically connects to local service pros and I didn’t have to spend hours searching for them. The main Idea was to get connected. Then there was the development.
Don: Tell me how the community took shape?
Farnaz: I wanted to create a circle of group to help each other with their projects. If someone wants to locate a dentist, Dentist wouldn’t bid on their questions, but the community can suggest the best local dentist to the poster. As well the dentists in local community also can refer themselves by providing their information, service and background. So Bids By pros is not only businesses bidding on a service, but is interaction and referrals.
Don: How do these businesses fit in and benefit from this circle of community?
Farnaz: I owned a small clothing boutique. I ran the day to day business and dealt with customers. Nothing is more insecure than owning your own business. Some days I went with no sales and few days in a raw the sales was decent. I thought of advertisement and with a very little budget due to my lack of sales I approached many local media. To get featured in an article in a local paper, I had to spend few weeks of advertisement and each week for a small black and white, hidden in the corner of the paper, I had to pay $250 per week.
It was not affordable and above all although I included a small coupon clip to follow up, I knew it was shooting in the dark. As a small business owner, I was constantly had my eyes on the door for customers to walk in. I barely could afford hiring and suffered the lack of income. I turned into online marketing, but just like any other site out there, to optimize my site and bring it to the top I had to hire SEO professionals, which I didn’t have the budget. I looked in to many forums and blogs to refer my own business and tell them about my great products. There where many blogs and forums, but when I referred my site after proper introduction, I was considered as spam and was removed. Other options again was to pay for online ads and search engine’s pay per click. There was no free option for any business to get connected. I worked everyday and had no time to attend any community gatherings, although I attended a few and noticed most of the business owners who were there to mingle were tipsy and drunk.
So Implementing the “project message board” in the project page was defined for small local businesses to interact with the related project post and refer their business and site as recommendation. These local professionals can simply interact about their business and write about their services by providing documents and pictures. And the best of all is that they don’t pay a cent and it is free. We have a great admin that monitors every post and interaction and makes sure the business who is referring its services to the poster is relative to the project posted. Remember, we are a trusted community and are based on loyalty not spamming.
Another great opportunity for small businesses is that they can participate in your blog post and in a related article, place a comment in a comment box by give more information on the topic of their expertise and provide their own credentials and site links. I know you moderate the blogs and as long as their comment is relative and informative, they can include their business information for free. This is FREE advertisement.
Don: Farnaz tell us about your self.
Farnaz: I am an artist, idea giver and am an entrepreneur. I owned my own small retail business and have worked small jobs in hospitality field. I am not a website developer nor know how to write codes. But as I am watching over my community of Bids BY Pros, I am learning how to write codes from codecadamey.com and have evolved in the world of Internet and search engines. I graduated from art and agriculture university back in 1996 and am very shy and could never be a good sales person. One think separates my personality and helped me along my small businesses is my honesty and modesty. I am proud to be part of BidsByPros.com and am glad to have you as our blogger and researcher.