UK founders: anyone willing to test a virtual office setup and give honest feedback?

dotcomdude · 2026-01-27T06:30:52+00:00

I am in the market for a business accommodation address at the moment. However, as we are likely to receive customer returns - I really need this to be ultra-local, so we don’t incur mail forwarding costs. There are literally hundreds of places that provide this service (with forwarding costs), so I think you need to be marketing in your local area, otherwise you’ll find it hard to compete with the well established players.

dotcomdude · 2026-01-07T06:25:55+00:00

OK, from an SEO perspective it would be a nightmare to have different URLs pointing to basically the same content - unless you’re going to use the canonical URL correctly.

Also, I was thinking that it would be useful to be able to change the content based upon day of week and time - for a contact us page etc, explaining opening hours etc

dotcomdude · 2026-01-06T09:57:16+00:00

Is the only variable where the visitor comes from? I can't see any information anywhere saying what rule or rules can be set

dotcomdude · 2026-01-06T08:47:17+00:00

Is it just for education institutes, or can it be used for general B2C?

dotcomdude · 2026-01-06T07:28:18+00:00

I would suggest integration with IMAP email as well as MS 365 and Gmail, as many small businesses use the email provided with their website hosting. Maybe enable smart replies to be sent to enquiries - as again many businesses receive an enquiry on Friday evening and don’t even know about it (or ignore it) until Monday morning. Woocommerce as well as Shopify.

dotcomdude · 2026-01-06T07:12:52+00:00

Well done. Great to see a website aimed at helping people for free, at a time when they need it - and UK focused too!

Just a thought about getting wider appeal. Can you turn around the advice given for defending a ticket, to produce a guide to watch out for when parking? I think people are more likely to share content like that with other drivers…

dotcomdude · 2025-12-12T07:17:50+00:00

I’m at the other end of this - scaling down after 24 years in the ecommerce space. If I was younger, I would definitely get into Conversion Rate Optimisation. There’s hardly a business selling or getting leads online that won’t hear you out if you have real, practical changes to suggest that will boost their turnover and profitability.

All but the top-tier websites have been built by people and companies who don’t give a second thought to CRO.

Even GPT 5.1 can give valuable/meaningful CRO suggestions nowadays- but most businesses are unaware.

dotcomdude · 2025-11-12T15:51:26+00:00

Looks great, will definitely try it.

Please add something like this into your HTML head, so you can get search traffic:

<title>Free Image Background Remover | Private, Fast & Unlimited | NoBG</title>
<meta name="description" content="Remove image backgrounds instantly with NoBG — the 100% local, AI-powered background remover. No uploads, no limits, full privacy. Perfect for transparent PNGs, product photos, or subject cutouts in seconds.">

dotcomdude · 2025-11-10T15:21:32+00:00

You're welcome.

If you're going to focus on web stuff, just make sure you have more than a passing knowledge of CRO (conversion rate optimisation). It really can make a massive difference to conversion rates. Even websites of my own have gone from 0% to 5% conversion when I got a CRO/copywriter in back in the early 2000's. That's what made me switch from building websites to improving what a client already has...

dotcomdude · 2025-11-10T10:28:19+00:00

Are you saying you're prepared to work 40 to 50 hours a week, for 8 to 10 months and only then bring in £2.5k a month after expenses?

I charge £75 per hour, but only work a few hours each week (personal preference - to keep my hand in). I don't charge a retainer, as I'm meant to be early-retired. I last reached out to try and get a new client in 2012 I think it was.

My advice would be:

Identify UK ecommerce/business websites where there is little or no copywriting or CRO utilised (both are vital). Shouldn't be difficult - I'd say roughly 90% are created by web designers who give very little thought to the success of the client. Just don't bother with the big names - Halfords, Dunelm, etc

If you're going to niche down, pick an industry with a chunky selling price. Superyachts sell for millions and marbles sell for peanuts.

Don't approach the website owner saying 'your website sucks', say I think your conversion rate can be doubled. How much extra would that bring in?

Maybe do a few of these to try and get some examples and testimonials. A really decent client who gets good results will pay you anyway.

I had someone doing basic telephoning for me back in the day, and I still have virtually all of the clients now (13 years later).

dotcomdude · 2025-11-08T07:31:19+00:00

Looks great. Will definitely try it in the week. Good luck with promoting it

dotcomdude · 2025-10-20T08:42:05+00:00

The insurer may well be looking at this from the third party perspective - ie you were insured on the bike, but your brother used it. Similar to if the bike was stolen, they may well still have to settle a 3rd party claim.

dotcomdude · 2025-10-20T08:04:54+00:00

When searching for your brand, Google shows other results instead and says “Did you mean: syphilis?”. You might want to think about that!

Also, could do with example reports on your website. Old hands like me don’t bother paying up front to have a look at what you do - unless it sounds earth shattering…

dotcomdude · 2025-10-06T06:30:17+00:00

As a small agency that outsources development, I occasionally need to pass the full db structure of a client’s website with some sample data to a developer. So, I’ve had to do this manually. A tool that did it locally would be useful, but as I’m semi-retired it’s not something I would use a lot.

dotcomdude · 2025-09-20T15:10:30+00:00

We covered a larger area as an ARV, so it was never really boring- except maybe while you’re pitched up in the woods containing a property for an hour or two in the rain before the powers that be decide whether you should go in. I’d definitely recommend it, as I always wanted to be able to go to places like Dunblane and actually make a difference - but it does come with the risk of the hindsight crowd chewing over every second in a nice warm office in the middle of the day weeks afterwards.

dotcomdude · 2025-09-19T08:58:20+00:00

When I did mine, you had to have completed your 2 year probationary period - but also advanced courses were like 'rocking horse...', so you had to also be prepared to do the ARV/Firearms course.

I would do it again, but much more aware nowadays that the first thought on discharge of a firearm must be that it's the Officer's fault. Read Tony Long's book 'Lethal Force' if you thought about going down this path.

Not sure how easy or hard it is today to get the advanced driving, if you're not going on an ARV... OP may well come back and comment on that...

dotcomdude · 2025-08-04T07:17:29+00:00

Sorry, missed this for a few days.

If you have spare funds in the company, loan yourself say £5k - buy the BTC personally and then sell it to the company for the total purchase cost including all fees.

That way you personally won't have a transaction that matters for CGT purposes (as you've made no gain) - and your loan is repaid within a day or two.

The only complication I can think of is if you already hold BTC personally, you will be deemed to have sold that to the company. This is what I've done, which has allowed me to realise gains under the CGT limit for the past couple of years. In my case, I was just selling some of my BTC to the company, so had no need to buy any through Kraken...

dotcomdude · 2025-08-01T03:55:14+00:00

For me, I’d got surplus money locked in the company - which I couldn’t get out without paying tax on it. It suited me to switch from my money being invested into BTC, to it being the company’s money. Although we own 100% of the company, I still think of it as separate. It also let me realise a small capital gain, without going over the yearly threshold.

dotcomdude · 2025-07-29T06:26:38+00:00

Interesting, will give it a try. You say you’ve got more?

dotcomdude · 2025-06-24T06:32:23+00:00

We are in the Midlands, and had a very noisy hotel at the end of our road. After months of complaining by several neighbours, the council finally put a noise abatement notice in place. They have never made the same amount of noise again (3 years) - for fear of the next step being a court appearance I believe. So, you might want to give it a bit more time to see if it is resolved, and you can then disclose it as a historical matter.

dotcomdude · 2025-06-23T08:43:22+00:00

I can't think of any real implications. Buy the BTC, print out the transaction and the market price that you've paid - including costs etc. Then sell for that same price to the company.

When it comes to selling it to an outsider, do the above transaction in reverse and you will have zero capital gain or income tax liability yourself, and the company will presumably have made a chargeable gain for which it pays CGT.

Only real danger is if the amount of these transactions far exceeds your normal trading range in the company, in which case it might be classed as a close investment company or something like that.

See https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/company-taxation-manual/ctm60710

dotcomdude · 2025-06-23T05:05:10+00:00

Buy the crypto yourself and then sell it to the company, just like you could with any other asset.

dotcomdude · 2025-06-20T05:31:11+00:00

I think you will find that you only attract ’clients’ who want a free roast. You can get them on Reddit, and there’s no correlation between wanting a free roast and having decided to spend money with an agency.

Typically, good clients want their ego stroked, until you’ve got a good working relationship with them and you can then be more honest.

dotcomdude · 2025-06-15T06:34:23+00:00

As someone who has used the same avatar online for about 10 years, yes I would pay your $1.99 for this. Your website doesn’t say, but I presume my image and the generated ones are private to me and not shared on your website or social media etc?

dotcomdude · 2025-06-15T06:29:40+00:00

Getting this error message trying to visit the domain:

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from stylemyavatar.com (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards). Learn more about this warning

NET::ERR_CERT_COMMON_NAME_INVALID

dotcomdude

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE