Being a roofing contractor is both difficult and rewarding. However to be a successful roofing contractor, you need to take care of so many things all at the same time, that it often becomes overwhelming. Between fierce competition from established roofing outfits and illegal / uninsured contractors who drop the roofing prices for everybody, and rising roofing materials prices as well as other costs of doing business, you need to stay on top things, and ahead of your competition.

In this guide you will find many helpful resources and information, which can make your everyday tasks of running a roofing company, easier and more streamlined, so you can actually do the roofing part, and not spend all your time chasing dead leads, or getting a competitor’s roofing quote in your face, that is a half of yours, and wandering how you keep on loosing business, when your prices are more than fair.

Note – we recommend that you read the “roofing business marketing guide” in the new roofing contractors section, whether you are a seasoned roofing contractor or just starting out in the business, as it contains information that we used to make leads coming in without having to pay for them.

We’ve logically divided this roofing contractor’s guide into three sections (click on link to jump to desired section):

• Technology for roofing contractors – tools, software, social media, online marketing – these are all essential tools, that when implemented efficiently, will streamline your roofing business and allow you to concentrate on installing roofs.




• Info for new roofing contractor – from establishing your roofing company, to getting work, to running and managing the business – in this section you will find answers to many of your questions, which I had to learn through trial and error method, and you shouldn’t repeat many of my mistakes.




• Info for established roofing contractors – though you’ve been roofing for many years, there is always new tricks you can learn to make your business more profitable, and for some old school roofer, rejuvenate your company from stagnation. As they say, an old dog can always learn new tricks

Technology for roofing contractors:

To be a successful roofing contractor in the 21st century, you need to be on top of technological developments that are actually created to simplify your work. I believe that every roofing contractor should have a work laptop, a smart phone – iPhone / Android / BlackBerry, etc. for mobile email and web, and possibly a tablet (such as iPad, PlayBook* or XOOM, etc.) for in home presentation.

Also, every roofing contractor absolutely NEEDs a well designed and search engine optimized website, as today your website is your face and that is how most of your customers do and will find you.

Here at RoofignCalculator.org, we have created few very helpful tools that will improve your efficiency in roof estimating and help you sell more roofing jobs, while spending less time on it. These tools are made for both your mobile devices as well as your website.

Roofing Calculator app for mobile phones and other devices. Roofing Calculator helps you quickly price almost any roof, and generates list of roofing materials needed for the job, cost of those roofing materials, your labor and total roof prices. This app has multitude of settings, to make it work for nearly any roof, as simple or complicated it is.

Roof Calculator app will also improve your sales closing ratio, by enabling you to provide a roofing quote on the spot, without having to go to your truck or office, to work on the quote. We made roofing calculator app to work on all major mobile platforms – iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.

Android Roofing Calculator – this is our original app, and the one we’ve put most effort into (though all roofing calculator apps have the same cross-platform functions). Developing this app proved most challenging, yet was most rewarding for us, and gave us inspiration to move onto other mobile platforms.

iPhone Roofing Calculator – after release of Roofing Calculator for Android platform, we began development of iPhone version, and from technical perspective, this was the most difficult app to make, as the platforms are so much different, and we were trying to maintain same functionality, look and feel across these two most popular mobile phone systems.

BlackBerry Roofing Calculator – at this time, the app will work only on BalckBerry PlayBook tablet, which runs the latest version of RIM o.s. We are hopeful that all future phones and tablets will run this new os, making our app available on all future smart phones made by RIM.

* Note that we will be porting our Android roofing calculator to BlackBerry system, and to run the roofing calculator app on PlayBook, RIM will be releasing special software layer that enable Android Apps to run seamlessly. This software will be released sometime in the summer of 2011. As soon as it’s available, we will release the roofing calculator into BlackBerry App World store.

Besides roofing calculator app, we also developed a system for you to quickly add our free online roofing calculator software on you website, which will help your customers estimate roofing prices right on your websites.

Install a roofing calculator software for your website in as little as 5 minutes.

The pros of this include filtering out most price shoppers / tire kickers before they even call you. Imagine how much time you will save if you don’t have to meet with “clients” that will never buy form you – those who just want a quote, for whatever reason.

Potential cons of this include a seeming effect of getting fewer calls / roof estimate submittions through your website. However, our experience shows that having a roofing calculator on your website in fact attracts more site visitors, and for most homeowners it is important to know “how much”, and many are often too lazy to call. This way they find out the price and when they are ready to buy, they will call you if your website convinced them to work with you.

Info for new roofing contractors:

Starting a roofing company is not an easy task, and challenges that you will have to overcome, can often be discouraging. Not only you will have to invest a decent sum of money into new business that may not pay off, you will also have to protect your company from dishonest clients, competition that is out to get you, uncle Sam’s all-grabbing hands. Bellow are some good tips on how to make this process easier and to succeed in your new endeavor.

How to start a roofing business guide will walk you through the steps you will need to take to establish your new roofing company and explain how to get your name out there and to start getting roofing leads.

Marketing a roofing business – this guide concentrates on acquiring work in this tough economy, with least expenses, and is centered around online marketing of your roofing business. It also covers why you will want to stay away from 19th century marketing methods such as local newspapers and yellow pages, and why they are ineffective and too expensive.

Starting a roofing business with a partner – are you considering opening a roofing company with your buddy? Here is a list of pros and cons of having a partner in a roofing business, based on my personal experience, of working with a partner for a few years. While it’s easier to run a business when you can rely on your partner, there are many things you should consider and know, before you “merry” into a business.

Info for established roofing contractors

Well – we have nothing to teach you because you already know it all … Just kidding of course, but seriously – I will not even attempt to teach you. I just wanted to stretch a point that if you still do not have a website – you absolutely need to make one. Whether you will attempt to do it yourself or hire your nephew to do it, or actually go to an established web design firm to have them build it for you – here are a few things you should definitely know:

First and foremost – why you NEED a website (info for unbelievers):

My neighbor Mike who is a framing contractors of 20 years, has been busy with work for the past 19 years. The past few years, most of his work was from GC’s building new homes. This past year, work has dried out and competition reduced prices by almost 20%, while everyone’s cost went way up. He does not have a website, and does not even know how to send a text message from his phone (mind you he is only about 45) – even my dad who is 73 can send a text / email and uses iPad on regular basis. Mike does not believe in websites and hopes for the best – I wish him luck!

Now my other framer friend who’s work also dried up, had my other friend – web-savvy roofing/siding contractor – built him a website. A rather simple site with just about 10 pages, half of which are pictures, and a decent, easy to navigate site design. His crews are busy again and now about 75% of his work comes through his website, and directly form homeowners, so the GC is not collecting the markup.

Point is – even if you came to rely on word of mouth or GC’s giving you work, nothing is permanent, and you need to explore and develop other streams of getting roofing leads, and finding work, and in my opinion and experience, having a website is the best thing you can do for your business – it’s the least expensive investment into marketing, that will keep on paying off for years to come.

Once again, here is a link to roofing business marketing guide, which also walks you through ins and outs of getting a website.

Main things you should avoid when getting a site built for you:

Always register your own domain name – the .COM or whatever you choose Domains are cheap and easy to register, but a well developed domain is worth much more than a design and hosting of your site. If an unscrupulous “web developer” gets a hold of your domain name – i.e. registers it “for you” and manages it – if things go south you loose your web site!

I know of TOO many examples when businesses lost their website that was well established, and developed for few years. Don’t become a victim of such scams.

You can register domain name for $7.49 per year with GoDaddy and get website hosting for $1.99 / month.

Another VERY important part of creating a successful website is having it show up in search engine, when homeowners are searching for a roofing contractor. This is called SEO or search engine optimization and it is the second, yet never ending step you will need to make when building a site. Once again, this topic is also covered in the roofing marketing guide. As part of your SEO efforts, you will want to list your site in as many roofing sites, resources and directories – one such resource is our own roofing & construction directory, in which you can list your site for free (though we will be very pick as to which sites we will list, until we expand the directory and add categories for states).

This pretty much covers he most important topics for roofing contractors, and will keep you busy for a while. Read our Roofing Blog to keep up with new developments, and new information for roofers.

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