Saturday 31 December 2011

Resolutions:

Stop drinking

Lose Weight.

Try to build my business.

Let's just keep it at three.


driving lessons in Wallasey?

Friday 23 December 2011

Gimps, Gears and Geeks.

Gimp can make animated gifs. I never knew this before.

Here's one I made earlier.


The reson I made this particular animated gif is because I had this idea that if I was so excited by the prospect of chucking a really quick car around a track, then presumably the sort of person that goes looking for driving lessons might be too. So I intend to do a prize draw in 2012, with the supercar driving experience as the prize.

On a similar vein, I've just sent an enquiry to a local (ish) company that does skid control lessons with a view to offerering one of their things as a prize, or even some kind of collaborative venture where they offer some kind of discount, and I incorporate them into my curriculum.

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Tuesday 20 December 2011

The blunt horns of a nice dilemma.

I became 44 on Thursday. I celebrated by getting up very early, and heading up Moel Famau. I had visions of it being a bit like the last time we did it, but with the added lustre of a blanket of snow.

Sadly, the weather wasn't with me. I drove to Wales in heavy rain, which eased off nicely as I got towards the mountainside carpark. The roads were snowy but drivable with care. The path up the mountain was covered by several inches of fairly fresh snow that crumped and squeaked as I strode lustily forth.

As I neared the top, it became apparent that although I was seeing daybreak, I was not going to see the sun rise. The top of the mountain was shrouded in cloud. An icy wind drove tiny splinters of ice into my face. I took a few photos then hunkered down in the lee of the tower and had a warm coffee and some cold hotdogs.

The view out over the vale of Clywyd, though, as I trudged back down, was magnificent. I will post some piccies soon.

For my birthday, several of my relatives clubbed together to buy me a supercar experience. A great gift for a petrolhead like me!

At some point in the next few months, I will get the chance to chuck a performance car around a track. But which car? I have to choose between an Aston Martin Vantage, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Porsche 911, a Ferrari 360 or an Audi R8.

Agghh!!! The agony of indecision!

driving lessons in Wallasey?

Saturday 10 December 2011

cloud music

Click on the picture to activate the player. This music player is brought to you courtesy of the Cloud Appreciation Society, and the standard of music offered is of an unexpectedly high standard.

Wednesday 7 December 2011

QR Code

This...

should take you to my website. I think.

So if I understand things correctly, if I was to get this printed out as a vehicle graphic, and stick it on  my car, someone would be able to point an iphone at it, and the iphone would read it and send that someone to my website?

driving lessons in Wallasey?

So just what business is being done?

Of the 32 vouchers that people bought, so far, 3 people have called.

One is pretty much at test standard. She's had a couple of driving tests, and failed. She reckons she was put in too early. I will be doing a 2 hour assessment of her driving in a day or two, to find out where she's up to. She probably won't need more than maybe 10 lessons.

Ditto the second one. She's had quite a lot of lessons, and gets a lot of private practice in her own car, so my job will be to assess her driving, and to try to smooth off any rough edges to get her through her test.

Finally, I had a call this morning from a woman who's bought a voucher as a christmas present for her son. He's an absolute beginner, and she will be buying him more lessons for his birthday in January. Potentially a full course of perhaps 35-40 hours here.

driving lessons in Birkenhead?

Here is as good a place as any to keep tabs on how effective this form of marketing has been for me. As more come in I intend to add to this post.

Monday 5 December 2011

Doing the business...

The daily deal format is pretty new. Here's how it works.

A merchant contacts the daily deal website, and offers a substantial discount to their subscribers.
Interested subscribers buy vouchers representing the deal. They give their money to the daily deal website.
The website then gives some of that money to the merchant.
So the subscriber gets a product or service at a knock down price. The website take a big chunk of the money given by the subscriber. The merchant gets business.

Today, my driving school has been the focus of Wirral deals on the Living Social website.

Instead of the usual £20 per hour, Living Social subscribers are being offered 3 hours for £19. Of that, Living Social take about £9+VAT, so I actually get about £8.50 per voucher. Less than £3 per hour, but of course, some of those subscribers will go on to take proper full price lessons.

So how well is it being taken up?

It's exceeded my expectations by quite a long way. Getting the deal up in the first week of December was a huge bonus of course. These vouchers are the perfect christmas gift to give a teenager, and about twenty quid is a pretty typical amount for people to want to spend on nephews or grandkids or whatever.

So far, 20 people have bought vouchers. If all of them went on to take a full course with me, and they were all absolute beginners, and they rook the average 43 hours to get through their tests, that would be 20 people x 40 hours (43 minus the 3 cheap ones) x 20 quid. That's £16,000!

That's not going to happen of course. And that £16,000 is income, not profit, but still, this looks like it's going to have been  a really good way of getting business. Certainly better than giving some arrogant parasite £130 a week. So far, Living Social will have made somewhere around £200 from me, but it looks like I'm going to hit the ground running in the new year.

Some of those subscribers (21 of them now) will already have had lessons. Some will be just going from cheap deal to cheap deal, regardless of how well they've been taught. Some may not redeem their vouchers, or may not like me or my methods. We can't all be born with taste after all!

I will probably do this again sometime next year.

Optimistic for a change!

The deal page has also been driving traffic (excuse the pun) to my website.


driving lessons in Wallasey?

Update: With around five and a half hours to go, I'm now up to 30 vouchers. 90 hours work, for £262, and the potential to bring in as much as £24,000. I have access to a list of purchasers and a bit of demographic info. 78% of purchasers have been female. Over three quarters of payments were made via computer. 10% was by Iphone. Quite a lot of them have been bought as gifts. One person has bought three vouchers, each gifted to a different person. Merry Christmas to them!

Might even be able to get the roof mended some time in the spring.

Further update: 7 dec 2011...

Living social are extending my promotion by another 72 hours - a second chance thing. not as the headline promotion, but further down the page.

So, it won't be generating customers at the same high frequency. Apart from it being less high profile, those interested in driving lessons will presumably have already seem this offer and acted on it. Still, 3 more days of it, and all the stuff about ideal gifts still being true, I could potentially double the 32 vouchers sold.

I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew.

Saturday 3 December 2011

Rrrrrrr

Oh, and while I'm at it, just stonethrow away, there's another lake.

This one is a beautifully formed 'r'. It even has a bit of a serif going on. Geoglyphs in times new roman.


Shame about the bit sticking out of the top, but you can't have everything can you?

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driving lessons in Wallasey?

Mmmmmm.

Not got much to say for meself at the moment, truth be told.

It's been a while since I posted any new letters though. Having completed the upper case lot, I lost momentum.

But I've just found a lake near Walton on the Naze, which looks like a lower case 'm'

Do I have one of those already? It's been a while. This one looks like the typeface that Roger Dean used on the album covers of proggy archetypes, YES.




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driving lessons in Wallasey?