How to post a job that gets good quotes

Trades quote from what you give them. A blurry photo and “need wall doing” gets you guesses, or nothing. A clear post with the right photos gets you honest starting prices from people who can actually see the job. Here’s how to write one.

Photos: the thing that matters most

A tradesperson can price most jobs from good photos alone. Take these, in daylight:

• The whole area, wide, so they can see the size and what’s around it
• Both ends of a wall, both sides of a room, the full run of whatever it is
• Close-ups of the problem: the cracked render, the loose pointing, the damp patch, the old boiler with its label
• Access. The path from the road to the job. Can a wheelbarrow get through? A skip? A scaffold?
• Something for scale. A wheelie bin, a door, a tape measure held up

Five or six photos is plenty. Don’t send the same angle five times. And don’t crop tight to the problem; the trade needs to see the context around it.

The description: answer the questions they’d ask

Write it like you’re explaining the job to a friend who does this for a living. Cover:

• What you want done. Be specific. “Take down the old fence and build a brick wall, about 6 metres long and 1 metre high” beats “garden wall”.
• Measurements. Length, height, width of the room, number of windows. Rough is fine. Metres and centimetres.
• What’s there now. Old wall, existing tiles, previous repair, nothing at all.
• What you want it to look like. Match the house brick, plain white, the same as the neighbour’s. If you’ve got a picture of what you’re after, add it.
• Anything already bought. If you’ve got the tiles, the boiler or the bricks, say so. It changes the quote.
• Constraints. Parking, narrow access, a shared drive, pets, a baby who naps at two.

You don’t need to know the trade words. You need to be clear about what you want and honest about what’s there.

What to leave out

Your full address goes to the trade you choose, not into the public post. Don’t put your phone number or postcode in the description. The app handles that when you’re ready.

Timing: tell them when, and mean it

Pick the timeframe that’s true. Flexible, this week, within two weeks, within a month, or just getting quotes. All of them are fine. What frustrates trades is “urgent” jobs that go quiet for a month, or “just looking” that turns out to mean “tomorrow”.

Post before you need it, not after. A good trade is often booked a few weeks out. If you want a wall before the summer, post it in spring.

After you post

Quotes come to you by email and in the app. A few things that get you the best result:

• Reply quickly. Trades quote in batches. The customer who answers a question the same day is the one who gets the site visit booked.
• Answer questions honestly. If someone asks whether there’s a footing or where the stop tap is, “I don’t know” is a fine answer.
• Choose one and get the site visit done. The starting price is from your post. The final price comes after they’ve seen it. Be there for the visit; it’s where the job gets properly understood.

What a good post looks like

Garden wall, Wigan. Take down about 6 metres of rotten fence panels and posts, build a single-skin brick wall around 1 metre high with a brick-on-edge top and a pier at each end. Would like it to match the house brick, photo attached. Ground is level, access down the side of the house is about 90cm wide. Old fence can go in a skip on the drive. Within a month.

Six photos, one paragraph, a timeframe. That gets quoted.

Post your job. It’s free, it takes five minutes, and the better the post, the better the quotes.