Taxi Driver Online

the internet has 3 uses for taxi/PH work

1. your own website with your details on IF searches will find you

2. refferal sites like yell.com (i.e. just a listing)

3. quote sites where the publics enquiry gets sent to members to quote on

just another tool in the box

1. free
2+3 as much or as little as you wanna spend

i found one which always gets a top google search hit, because its extension helps it, and its title is so obvious as to lend itself to searching AND its free or donation...

yell.com has a free listing too, has does freeindex

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

nope, he's been PH for 9yrs (earlier post, other thread) but knows the square root of feck all if his posts are anything to go by. I still have a sneaky suspicion he's a regular at the wind-up. Hence my asking about the date he joined. I've not been here long enough to know if any of you long timers would do such a thing.

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My heart is heavy, but my consience clear,
I voted Yes, without any fear.

admin may be able to include a posters IP address alongside posts, that would tell us.......

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Admin can see every IP address for every post.

Alex

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ʎɐqǝ uo pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ɐ ʎnq ı ǝɯıʇ ʇsɐן ǝɥʇ sı sıɥʇ

Simply the best taxi forum in the whole wide world. www.taxi-driver.co.uk

hi all. i am sorry if i have offended anyone on this forum.Grumpy you said i might be on here to wind people up?

Hell no! this forum is for taxi drivers to talk and to help each other, get better ideas on the trade etc .As of yet, what i have asked is all realistic. I have not winded anyone up. I joined in april a couple of weeks ago, and i have had quite a few posts. Some posts which may seem like i am having a laugh but i aint.

i am just on this forum to see if i can pick up more ideas to improve myself as a taxi driver. i am sure if we all posted questions on here and helped each other, then improvements will be seen!!

what do you all think?

I have blonde moments so I'm not allowed to think too much

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

If you want help. You will have to firstly help yourself. Stop disrespecting the people & the industry. There are people on here with 20+ years of experience, they have been there and done it. In some cases they have failed and have moved on, but when you ask for help you must be realistic. You cannot/will not make it without putting 70 hours a week in for the first few years. I cannot understand whether you are very naive or here to just have a windup and a giggle. Your posts to date can be taken both ways! If you are serious & I suspect you are well good luck to you. You will spend a fortune for very little reward. Please re-evaluate your proposed venture before it’s too late. I say this with all sincerity.

Well I can share my experience and knowledge of websites. Most of bookings you get from Internet are for long journeys as customers look for ease of use, choice and cheaper fares. Building a basic website is not that much difficult. There are plenty of website design tools available. However most of the people find them unhelpful and a headache.

A website itself may not give you bookings unless it is found in Google's first page for related phrases that the people are typing in the search engine to find. Getting your website on top in the search engines like Google is called Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO in short) and that is hard part of the job.

SEO requires a well structured and realistic website marketing approach as well as well designed, content-rich website with "quality" and "related" links from other websites. Basically it is an art and require efforts and time.

Coming to my personal experience. I designed and optimised a website (www.winchestertaxi.com) for one of my friends some time ago, it went very well. The client started receiving bookings mostly for airport transfers and long distance jobs.

Seeing it as a success another driver came to me and I ended up with design one more taxi website (www.sotontaxi.com). Now both of the drivers are making more money every month than the actual amount they spent on their websites. Well, here I may sound partial in my statements but that is a fact and can be verified. I started this as part time job/hobby (I am an online marketer by profession) and currently working on two more taxi websites.

I may end up writing a thesis on benefits of a website for a taxi driver;) I am not supposed to advertise my services here but I am happy to help your answering your questions. Ask me anything about search engine optimisation, website, design etc. I would try my best to answer all your questions in a simple way.

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A TAXI Website brings more airport transfers and long distance iobs.

Taxi Websites: www.taxi-websites.co.uk

Speaking from experience,I have had my airport transfer website for around 15 months now.It was quite simply the best decision I've ever made business wise.I have gone from a run of the mill moaning ranker to running a successful operation.It amazes me how much work is out there and obviously you soon build up a regular client base.I have had several bookings from the US,Saudi,Holland,France.It still makes me chuckle,sat at home in my little village getting email enquiries from all over.
You just need a decent vehicle,some common sense,good pricing and above all be reliable.
Regards
www.derbyram

Your weblink is incomplete.

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Grandad,

Must be..all I got was "cannot find web page"

I found plenty but it all appears to be BNP related

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

If you are thinking of using Click a Cab, then try Taxi Bookings Online. To get bookings off the net you need much more than just a website - we have discovered that you need to interact with your customers with a website that not only looks great but is easy to nevigate too.

There are too many rubbish taxi websites out there to say that it is easy to do on your own - believe me - it isn't because I have tried!

You will always pay highly for Google adwords and so we took the view that we would join TBO because they include that in with their website package too.

Watch this video for further info on the company we used to great effect - we get on average 10-15 online bookings a week with this and it is growing [before then we only took orders over the phone]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmH1TftKmOk

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For information on Stansted Airport check out the premier <a>Stansted Airport</a> portal today.

We sell customer calls to cab firms http://fareexchange.co.uk. And a large part of how we secure customer calls is through the internet. Not sure if it is different outside of London. But inside London we can match or beat the no of calls of a small-medium cab firm within a few days using the internet.

for example one firm we work with had 14 drivers, and through our work they now have 40 drivers within a few months.
Another firm had officially 20 drivers but was getting maybe 35 calls a day. We doubled it in a week. Typically we can deliver 20-200 new customers per day within 24 hours. Which is amazing.

So that is the power of the internet. And its going to become even more important with more and more smarth phones and more internet access. More and more people are just throwing the cards they get through the door away.

Thats the good news

The bad news is that just setting up a website is not going to have much impact on the no of customers. There is so much more involved. Things like
Online Booking and payments, Ongoing SEO, Google Places, Cost Per Click Advertising etc. And they all have to be combined. Just building a website is like building a fancy house in the middle of the dessert. No ones gonna see it.

So my advice is that
a) its good to have a website.
b) having a booking system is only worth it if you are going to move to the next step of bringing customers to your online bookings
c) It is definately worth looking at the online world because the growth it can give you is phenominal.

If any of these sites/products/etc are as good as we are being told, then one has to wonder why they need the big sell.

Firms are falling over themselves to gain work, so why are they begging these sites for work?

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IDFIMH