Last Sunday we had a good laugh having some new photos of me taken for my new male waxing, massage and beauty therapist website. Taking a few photographs - both inside and outside - on a lovely sunny day didn’t take too long. But filming for massage videos always takes much longer than you think doesn't it?
My eternal thanks go to Richard from Lion Television who filmed and photographed both me and my young male model Sebastian; he was extremely patient in coping with to the demands of the photographer - but then he did get a free male waxing out of it!
We did manage to film a video of Sebastian having a back wax and a few lovely photographs of him having a facial treatment. Hopefully - when Richard has edited the videos - we will be able to put them onto my website.
Tales from the life of a male Beauty Therapist offering Massage and Waxing in Camberley Surrey
Monday, 9 May 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
Another nail in the coffin of the cheque
Today I received my bank statement. As is so often the case I also got a load of leaflets with it. Most of the time I just ignore all the flyers and changes to terms and conditions (does anyone ever read this stuff?). But today one leaflet caught my eye. It was entitled CHEQUE GUARANTEE CARD SCHEME.
As you will know if you have read one of my previous blogs about waxing men and massage - I wrote about being defrauded by a client who not only bounced a cheque on me but drew a cheque on a closed account - this was of particular interest to me.
Anyway it turns out that the Cheque Card Guarantee Scheme is finishing on 20th June this year. So even if a customer presents a cheque - along with a card containing a cheque guarantee hologram - it is no guarantee that the cheque will clear. Just one more reason to never accept cheques; just one more nail in the cheques' coffin.
Since I was defrauded I haven't accepted cheques and now I am sure even more small businesses like my massage, male waxing and male beauty business - won't accept them either.
As you will know if you have read one of my previous blogs about waxing men and massage - I wrote about being defrauded by a client who not only bounced a cheque on me but drew a cheque on a closed account - this was of particular interest to me.
Anyway it turns out that the Cheque Card Guarantee Scheme is finishing on 20th June this year. So even if a customer presents a cheque - along with a card containing a cheque guarantee hologram - it is no guarantee that the cheque will clear. Just one more reason to never accept cheques; just one more nail in the cheques' coffin.
Since I was defrauded I haven't accepted cheques and now I am sure even more small businesses like my massage, male waxing and male beauty business - won't accept them either.
Thursday, 21 April 2011
A new uniform for a Massage Therapist
How difficult is it to get made-to-measure uniform for my male waxing and massage business in Surrey?
Here is a copy of a complaint letter to Inline London - bizarely based in Guildford, Surrey.
"Dear Sir
I am absolutely appalled by the service which I have received from your company.
I am a self-employed Massage Therapist (who also spends his day waxing men) who, during a recent visit to an exhibition in London , visited your stand and was measured by one of your representatives for a new brown tunic and matching trousers.
Eventually this arrived by post. The top was fine but the trousers were waist 34" (I am waist 30"); they were also 8 centimetres too long. I therefore returned the trousers (at my own cost), asking how these could have possibly been made to measure and pointing out that they were the wrong size.
A month and several phone calls later, I have now received a size 32" trousers which are still too long and too big in the waist. While I appreciate your policy on returns for made-to-measure clothing, my point - which I cannot get through to your employees - is that these trousers were NOT made to MY measurements.
The trousers are not "as described" or "fit for purpose" and therefore your company is in breach of the Sales of Goods Act 1979. Please either supply me with trousers that fit or refund me for the trousers, the postage and the tunic (which is no good on its own) within 14 days."
Yours
Daniel Bester
Beauty Therapist
To give this company - and the fellow South African who responded to my email - credit by calling me, they supplied a pair of brand new made-to-measure trousers.
However I still had to get them taken up (to fit my short legs) at my own expense. Perhaps in future they should train their employees on how to measure their clients properly.
Here is a copy of a complaint letter to Inline London - bizarely based in Guildford, Surrey.
"Dear Sir
I am absolutely appalled by the service which I have received from your company.
I am a self-employed Massage Therapist (who also spends his day waxing men) who, during a recent visit to an exhibition in London , visited your stand and was measured by one of your representatives for a new brown tunic and matching trousers.
Eventually this arrived by post. The top was fine but the trousers were waist 34" (I am waist 30"); they were also 8 centimetres too long. I therefore returned the trousers (at my own cost), asking how these could have possibly been made to measure and pointing out that they were the wrong size.
A month and several phone calls later, I have now received a size 32" trousers which are still too long and too big in the waist. While I appreciate your policy on returns for made-to-measure clothing, my point - which I cannot get through to your employees - is that these trousers were NOT made to MY measurements.
The trousers are not "as described" or "fit for purpose" and therefore your company is in breach of the Sales of Goods Act 1979. Please either supply me with trousers that fit or refund me for the trousers, the postage and the tunic (which is no good on its own) within 14 days."
Yours
Daniel Bester
Beauty Therapist
To give this company - and the fellow South African who responded to my email - credit by calling me, they supplied a pair of brand new made-to-measure trousers.
However I still had to get them taken up (to fit my short legs) at my own expense. Perhaps in future they should train their employees on how to measure their clients properly.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
The advantages of using a home-based beauty therapist
In beauty therapy as with everything else in life in the 21st Century we know you have a choice - and lots of it. So why should you use a home-based beauty therapist and what are the advantages over a beauty salon that's based in a town or city centre?
For a start, whether you are looking for a massage or male waxing you are guaranteed a very personal service in a more relaxed environment. When you arrive you will be greeted either by me or my assistant; what you won''t find is a busy salon with dozens of people milling around .
You will of course only and always have the same friendly beauty therapist – and the same assistant every time who willl greet you and give you a tea or coffee in my waiting room if I am running a little late or you are very early or your appointment.
While I encourage you to do your best to turn up for your massage or waxing appointment on time, I appreciate that you live a busy life and traffic can be unpredictable, so I will do our best to give you the same amount of time for your treatment if you are 5 or 10 minutes late.
And because we know you probably work all day, we are happy to offer evening and weekend appointments; Saturday can often be a very busy day!
You will - over time - get to know me and I will get to know you - after all I spend half my day waxing men . What you won't face is an endless turnover of de-motivated young girls. I can often see you on the same day as you call or email to make your appointment. And as I am not based in Woking town centre, it won't cost you a penny to park outside. There is free parking and plenty of it.
If discretion is important to you then no-one will know you are here. Despite being near Woking and the M25 and M3, it's just a house in a quiet location. And most important of all it is my business.
And it's in my interest to be professional and offer you an excellent friendly, discrete service.
For a start, whether you are looking for a massage or male waxing you are guaranteed a very personal service in a more relaxed environment. When you arrive you will be greeted either by me or my assistant; what you won''t find is a busy salon with dozens of people milling around .
You will of course only and always have the same friendly beauty therapist – and the same assistant every time who willl greet you and give you a tea or coffee in my waiting room if I am running a little late or you are very early or your appointment.
While I encourage you to do your best to turn up for your massage or waxing appointment on time, I appreciate that you live a busy life and traffic can be unpredictable, so I will do our best to give you the same amount of time for your treatment if you are 5 or 10 minutes late.
And because we know you probably work all day, we are happy to offer evening and weekend appointments; Saturday can often be a very busy day!
You will - over time - get to know me and I will get to know you - after all I spend half my day waxing men . What you won't face is an endless turnover of de-motivated young girls. I can often see you on the same day as you call or email to make your appointment. And as I am not based in Woking town centre, it won't cost you a penny to park outside. There is free parking and plenty of it.
If discretion is important to you then no-one will know you are here. Despite being near Woking and the M25 and M3, it's just a house in a quiet location. And most important of all it is my business.
And it's in my interest to be professional and offer you an excellent friendly, discrete service.
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Male Waxing and Massage Cancellation Policy
During the first few months of this year I have noticed that I have had more and more bookings from (potential) massage and waxing clients who book and then just don't show up for their appointments.
Since I am a full-time self-employed Male Waxing, Beauty Therapist and Massage Therapist every cancellation means I lose income either directly from not having that appointment or by not being able to book in another client at that time.
Whille I appreciate that we all lead busy lives and at times postponing an appointment is necessary, please give me as much notice as possible, here is my cancellation policy:
To secure a booking I will need a phone number - preferably a mobile phone number.
Cancellations can be made up to 24 hours prior to the appointment.
If you don't cancel an appointment in advance of 24 hours or simply don't turn up for an appointment, I will only take a booking from you if you pay in advance.
If you pay in advance and then still don't show up for your massage or male waxing appointment you will not get your money back.
Since I am a full-time self-employed Male Waxing, Beauty Therapist and Massage Therapist every cancellation means I lose income either directly from not having that appointment or by not being able to book in another client at that time.
Whille I appreciate that we all lead busy lives and at times postponing an appointment is necessary, please give me as much notice as possible, here is my cancellation policy:
To secure a booking I will need a phone number - preferably a mobile phone number.
Cancellations can be made up to 24 hours prior to the appointment.
If you don't cancel an appointment in advance of 24 hours or simply don't turn up for an appointment, I will only take a booking from you if you pay in advance.
If you pay in advance and then still don't show up for your massage or male waxing appointment you will not get your money back.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Male Waxing business gets targeted spam
Just like you I get unwanted email in my inbox. But this one got through the spam filters and I actually read it. It's clever. It's targeted. But it's absolute crap.
You can read the email in full (below) but here are the relevant lines:
Your website has 0 back-links. Absolute nonsense. A quick check shows there are 40. I didn't get to the top of page two for "male waxing" and "waxing Surrey" with no links to my website.
Right now your website has a Google Pagerank score of 1/10 Google says many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. They have even removed it from Webmaster Tools.
We can produce a report....together with a personal telephone consultation for £499.00. If you are prepared to act this week we are prepared to offer this at a reduced one-off fee of £299.00. £500 for a phone call?! Oh sorry just £300 if we talk now. That old marketing trick of time pressure.
Right now, your site has 8 pages indexed with Google, and Google is regarding some of that content as poor. There could be a number of structural and content issues with your website which may be having a negative impact on your search rankings. My waxing website was built by experts and if you look at the site you will clearly see this is again rubbish
And finaly you do have to ask how good a so-called Search Engine Optimisation company is if they can't get their own website onto page one of Google for "Search Engine Optimisation"!
And here is their not-so-clever email:
My name is Abigail Walker. I’m a senior search consultant at Top 10 Guaranteed. We are part of an IT Group that has been established for over 10 years as a leading specialist in all aspects of online sales and marketing.
Excuse the unusual approach, however I am writing to inform you that I recently visited your website, danielwaxing.co.uk, during a routine survey of web sites which would be capable of achieving higher search engine performance. Obviously resulting in an increase in online sales or the generation of high volumes of additional sales leads.
I am confident that this information will be of use to you, but if I have caused offence in any way through my approach I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. I’m hoping this will arouse your curiosity, since you are obviously attempting to gain new business through your website.
From my initial observations, your website is underperforming in at least one of the major search engines such as - Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You probably are aware that most people don't look past the first page of search results. I struggled to find you in the first couple of pages for highly relevant keyphrases, which means that you could be losing out on a significant amount of business. As such I did a bit more digging...
I ran a back-link check on danielwaxing.co.uk first. Back-links are the number of times your site is linked to via another website. Your website has 0 back-links. Back-links also contribute towards your Google Pagerank score. Pagerank is Google telling us how authoritative and trustworthy your site is. A higher score = higher search rankings. Right now your website has a Google Pagerank score of 1/10, which, when compared to other high ranking competitor websites, may be restricting your rankings. This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve.
The next check I applied on your website was page indexing. Search engines like Google scan the information on your website and feed it back to their database. The Google formula is then applied to the data to determine where your website should rank. As such the more pages your website has indexed with quality unique content, the higher you can rank with Google. Right now, your site has 8 pages indexed with Google, and Google is regarding some of that content as poor. This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve. Finally I also identified that there could be a number of structural and content issues with your website which may be having a negative impact on your search rankings.
So, here's a recap of my findings of danielwaxing.co.uk:
- Your Google Pagerank is 1/10
- You have 0 back-links
- Your website has 8 pages indexed
- There are issues with content and site structure and content
I have only scratched the surface of the factors impacting on your rankings. Unlike some of our competitors, I wanted to do some initial work to identify that it would be worthwhile for you to talk to us before contacting you with my proposal. The best way to deal with any problem is to first apply a thorough diagnosis. It would, therefore, be a sensible next step for us to apply a more thorough diagnosis of why your website may not be ranking well before discussing with you what could be done about it.
What we have to offer could prove to be the most value for money investment you could make for your business this year. In an economic climate that is difficult, to say the least, all businesses must invest in areas that will deliver maximum returns with minimal investment. Only strong search engine listings offer real growth opportunities as consumer trends change.
So what do we have to offer? Many factors now impact on how and where you will appear on the search engines. Unfortunately, most business people overlook the things that prevent them from performing well in the search engines and throw good money behind advertising without understanding what their web site really needs. Good SEO firms assess the needs of sites individually and address these by working on sites month on month. A one off fix just doesn't work. As such we offer two approaches for you to consider.
We can produce a detailed 30-40 page Diagnostic Report for your site together with a personal telephone consultation with one of our SEO experts. Consultations explain the technicalities in our report in an easy to understand manner. Our normal price for this service is £499.00. If you are prepared to act this week we are prepared to offer this at a reduced one-off fee of £299.00. Following this consultation we can discuss how best to rectify the situation.
Alternatively we could provide this detailed Diagnostic Report for your site completely free. For this you would need to commit to take up our 12 month optimisation and consultancy service prior to our work commencing. The service is based around promotion of specific agreed keyphrases after discussing how to put right all issues highlighted in our report. We can deliver first page search results in the major search engines. For this we charge as little as £35 per keyphrase, per month, dependent upon the competitiveness of that keyphrase. Furthermore, we guarantee to refund your money should we fail to put you in the first page for the keyphrases once all changes have been implemented.
The reason why I'm so confident about our capabilities is because we have done it so many times before. To name a few examples: Maternity Clothes, Dubai Properties, Gravel, Health Store, Van Hire, Fire Extinguishers, Financial Advisers UK, Coffee Machines, Swimwear, Limo Hire, Mortgage Advisers UK, and more - all are on the first page of Google and all highly competitive keyphrases. We put them there.
Our own group website is in the first page of Google for Website Marketing Company and Internet marketing companies. You will see our site listed as The Web Clinic. To satisfy you even further we can also provide you with comparative existing client’s contact details to serve as references for the quality of our work.
If you are genuinely serious about improving your online revenues and want professional website marketing for a low flat monthly fee or a one-off detailed report, please visit our service website at www.top10guaranteed.co.uk which provides more details about our excellent service and a call back form. See a selection of our excellent testimonials and example results achieved recently on behalf of our clients.
Alternatively, if you prefer to discuss your requirements over the phone, then please don't hesitate to contact me on 0844 7404951 and press Option 1
or simply reply to this mail with a convenient time to call you.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Abigail Walker
Senior Search Consultant
Top 10 Guaranteed
0844 7404951
Providing SEO for clients since 1999
Note: This email is not spam, it was manually sent by us, our sole purpose being to introduce ourselves to you with no obligation on your part. Your email address was found to be publicly available and it has not been added to any list. We consider this to be a polite way to contact you and apologize sincerely if you have been inconvenienced in any way. We are obliged to offer you an 'OPT-OUT' from future mailings from us; should you wish to exercise this right, please reply with "OPT-OUT" in the subject field.
You can read the email in full (below) but here are the relevant lines:
Your website has 0 back-links. Absolute nonsense. A quick check shows there are 40. I didn't get to the top of page two for "male waxing" and "waxing Surrey" with no links to my website.
Right now your website has a Google Pagerank score of 1/10 Google says many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. They have even removed it from Webmaster Tools.
We can produce a report....together with a personal telephone consultation for £499.00. If you are prepared to act this week we are prepared to offer this at a reduced one-off fee of £299.00. £500 for a phone call?! Oh sorry just £300 if we talk now. That old marketing trick of time pressure.
Right now, your site has 8 pages indexed with Google, and Google is regarding some of that content as poor. There could be a number of structural and content issues with your website which may be having a negative impact on your search rankings. My waxing website was built by experts and if you look at the site you will clearly see this is again rubbish
And finaly you do have to ask how good a so-called Search Engine Optimisation company is if they can't get their own website onto page one of Google for "Search Engine Optimisation"!
And here is their not-so-clever email:
My name is Abigail Walker. I’m a senior search consultant at Top 10 Guaranteed. We are part of an IT Group that has been established for over 10 years as a leading specialist in all aspects of online sales and marketing.
Excuse the unusual approach, however I am writing to inform you that I recently visited your website, danielwaxing.co.uk, during a routine survey of web sites which would be capable of achieving higher search engine performance. Obviously resulting in an increase in online sales or the generation of high volumes of additional sales leads.
I am confident that this information will be of use to you, but if I have caused offence in any way through my approach I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. I’m hoping this will arouse your curiosity, since you are obviously attempting to gain new business through your website.
From my initial observations, your website is underperforming in at least one of the major search engines such as - Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You probably are aware that most people don't look past the first page of search results. I struggled to find you in the first couple of pages for highly relevant keyphrases, which means that you could be losing out on a significant amount of business. As such I did a bit more digging...
I ran a back-link check on danielwaxing.co.uk first. Back-links are the number of times your site is linked to via another website. Your website has 0 back-links. Back-links also contribute towards your Google Pagerank score. Pagerank is Google telling us how authoritative and trustworthy your site is. A higher score = higher search rankings. Right now your website has a Google Pagerank score of 1/10, which, when compared to other high ranking competitor websites, may be restricting your rankings. This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve.
The next check I applied on your website was page indexing. Search engines like Google scan the information on your website and feed it back to their database. The Google formula is then applied to the data to determine where your website should rank. As such the more pages your website has indexed with quality unique content, the higher you can rank with Google. Right now, your site has 8 pages indexed with Google, and Google is regarding some of that content as poor. This can be down to many reasons which we can help resolve. Finally I also identified that there could be a number of structural and content issues with your website which may be having a negative impact on your search rankings.
So, here's a recap of my findings of danielwaxing.co.uk:
- Your Google Pagerank is 1/10
- You have 0 back-links
- Your website has 8 pages indexed
- There are issues with content and site structure and content
I have only scratched the surface of the factors impacting on your rankings. Unlike some of our competitors, I wanted to do some initial work to identify that it would be worthwhile for you to talk to us before contacting you with my proposal. The best way to deal with any problem is to first apply a thorough diagnosis. It would, therefore, be a sensible next step for us to apply a more thorough diagnosis of why your website may not be ranking well before discussing with you what could be done about it.
What we have to offer could prove to be the most value for money investment you could make for your business this year. In an economic climate that is difficult, to say the least, all businesses must invest in areas that will deliver maximum returns with minimal investment. Only strong search engine listings offer real growth opportunities as consumer trends change.
So what do we have to offer? Many factors now impact on how and where you will appear on the search engines. Unfortunately, most business people overlook the things that prevent them from performing well in the search engines and throw good money behind advertising without understanding what their web site really needs. Good SEO firms assess the needs of sites individually and address these by working on sites month on month. A one off fix just doesn't work. As such we offer two approaches for you to consider.
We can produce a detailed 30-40 page Diagnostic Report for your site together with a personal telephone consultation with one of our SEO experts. Consultations explain the technicalities in our report in an easy to understand manner. Our normal price for this service is £499.00. If you are prepared to act this week we are prepared to offer this at a reduced one-off fee of £299.00. Following this consultation we can discuss how best to rectify the situation.
Alternatively we could provide this detailed Diagnostic Report for your site completely free. For this you would need to commit to take up our 12 month optimisation and consultancy service prior to our work commencing. The service is based around promotion of specific agreed keyphrases after discussing how to put right all issues highlighted in our report. We can deliver first page search results in the major search engines. For this we charge as little as £35 per keyphrase, per month, dependent upon the competitiveness of that keyphrase. Furthermore, we guarantee to refund your money should we fail to put you in the first page for the keyphrases once all changes have been implemented.
The reason why I'm so confident about our capabilities is because we have done it so many times before. To name a few examples: Maternity Clothes, Dubai Properties, Gravel, Health Store, Van Hire, Fire Extinguishers, Financial Advisers UK, Coffee Machines, Swimwear, Limo Hire, Mortgage Advisers UK, and more - all are on the first page of Google and all highly competitive keyphrases. We put them there.
Our own group website is in the first page of Google for Website Marketing Company and Internet marketing companies. You will see our site listed as The Web Clinic. To satisfy you even further we can also provide you with comparative existing client’s contact details to serve as references for the quality of our work.
If you are genuinely serious about improving your online revenues and want professional website marketing for a low flat monthly fee or a one-off detailed report, please visit our service website at www.top10guaranteed.co.uk which provides more details about our excellent service and a call back form. See a selection of our excellent testimonials and example results achieved recently on behalf of our clients.
Alternatively, if you prefer to discuss your requirements over the phone, then please don't hesitate to contact me on 0844 7404951 and press Option 1
or simply reply to this mail with a convenient time to call you.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Abigail Walker
Senior Search Consultant
Top 10 Guaranteed
0844 7404951
Providing SEO for clients since 1999
Note: This email is not spam, it was manually sent by us, our sole purpose being to introduce ourselves to you with no obligation on your part. Your email address was found to be publicly available and it has not been added to any list. We consider this to be a polite way to contact you and apologize sincerely if you have been inconvenienced in any way. We are obliged to offer you an 'OPT-OUT' from future mailings from us; should you wish to exercise this right, please reply with "OPT-OUT" in the subject field.
Saturday, 12 March 2011
A male waxing party
The other day a guy phoned up to ask if I could give him a back wax, how much it would hurt and how much it would cost etc. All the normal questions I get all the time.
So far, so good.
Then - and this is the bit which was unusual and took me aback - he confessed that actually he wanted the male waxing for a birthday present for a mate of his and wondered if he and a couple of mates could watch the whole process!
This was certainly a first for me, having thought about it for a short while, and warned him that it would be a bit of a tight squeeze in the beauty therapy room, I agreed.
When he turned up with 4 other lads (how did I guess it was going to be young lads?!) and asked to film the whole male waxing process - which ended up being chest waxing, as well as back waxing - I had to draw the line and refused.
Still, at least he got a memorable birthday present. And -given they split the cost between fourof them - a cheap one at that!
So far, so good.
Then - and this is the bit which was unusual and took me aback - he confessed that actually he wanted the male waxing for a birthday present for a mate of his and wondered if he and a couple of mates could watch the whole process!
This was certainly a first for me, having thought about it for a short while, and warned him that it would be a bit of a tight squeeze in the beauty therapy room, I agreed.
When he turned up with 4 other lads (how did I guess it was going to be young lads?!) and asked to film the whole male waxing process - which ended up being chest waxing, as well as back waxing - I had to draw the line and refused.
Still, at least he got a memorable birthday present. And -given they split the cost between fourof them - a cheap one at that!
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