I'm seriously wondering if you actually do inspections. You gotta spend a lot of time digging up this great stuff.

Well, the phones have been slow since early September, with only two years in the business and thus a thin referral base it's been tough. I just looked at the November December stats for Northbrook; there are around 250 properties on the market and were around twenty sales, if that's fifteen home inspections and 10-12 are going to already well established inspectors...

I expect the ratios are similar in Evanston, Morton Grove, Skokie, Glenview and the others areas where I do most of my business.

But you know, I really do feel it took me about that much time to really get my skill level up to the point where I'm confident that my clients are getting the level of service they deserve. I'm just not the kind of guy who can - like the inspector in a nearby town who started up around the same time (and who to his credit has also worked very hard at learning the business) - letter my vehicle "XXXXXXX's Most Trusted Home Inspector" on the day I started. Just not my style.

Anyway.. now that the new site is up I'm starting to get some additional business from there, a lot of what you see me doing here related is to building content for the site as part of my marketing efforts, which is this winter's project.

Meanwhile the willingness of posters here to share their knowledge has been one of the main reasons I've been able to improve so quickly as an inspector, and I really feel a sense of responsibility to share what I find in the course of my efforts - including my site-building research - in return.