I read every message myself. Get in touch

I'm James Tandy.
I help good trades win the work they deserve.

You want a diary full of the jobs you're good at, without having to become a marketer to get it. That's my job. Here's who I am, how I learned it, and what you can hold me to.

James Tandy, founder of JTANDY
James TandyFounder, JTANDY

You've probably paid for marketing
and got nothing back.

Maybe it went something like this. Believe me, it happens to trades far more often than it should.

  1. Day 1You hire someone new

    They say all the right things. For the first time in ages, you've got a bit of hope.

  2. Week 3"All going well"

    You ask for an update. Everything's on track, apparently. No leads yet.

  3. Month 3Still nothing

    Another £1,000 gone. "That's just how SEO works. Give it another three months."

  4. Month 6Back to square one

    You finally let them go, with nothing to show for the money.

And all the while you're coming home from half-booked days, frustrated. You've spent years mastering your trade, and you can't do enough of it because somebody else didn't do their job.

Being good at your trade should be enough.

You shouldn't also have to become an expert marketer. That part's my job.

I learned it on my own sites,
so you don't pay for my practice.

No course, no agency, and no practising on clients' websites. For over ten years I tested everything on my own sites, with my own money on the line. Here's what it taught me, and what it means for you.

  1. Lesson 01

    1,000

    Clicks a day from Google, up from 10

    Getting found is a skill, not luck.

    I started at 18, living at my parents' with one website and a lot of stubbornness. Doing what other SEOs said wasn't getting me far, so I tested everything myself. I ran my own experiments and read the patents Google has filed on how its search works. Slowly, then quickly, my clicks went from 10 a day to 1,000.

    What it means for you: SEO built on what I've seen move rankings, not guesswork or whatever's fashionable this month.

  2. Lesson 02

    £2,000

    A month, once the website did its job

    Traffic is pointless if the website can't sell.

    Then I hit a wall. Thousands of people a day were landing on my site and leaving almost straight away. It was like having your phone ringing all day while it's on silent in the van. So I went just as deep on websites: design, layout and how people move through a page. At 30,000 clicks a day, that site was making £2,000 a month.

    What it means for you: I won't send people to a website that can't turn them into enquiries. If yours can't, I'll tell you, and we fix that first.

  3. Lesson 03

    Gone

    Years of work, after one Google update

    Google changes the rules. Proper work survives.

    Then came the biggest Google update I'd ever seen. It wiped out years of my work, and plenty of big names went down with it. I'll be honest, that knocked me. But I worked out what Google was now looking for, rewrote everything properly and recovered.

    What it means for you: no junk links or quick tricks. I build the kind of work Google is trying to reward, because that's the kind that lasts.

So why trades?

When Google started answering questions itself with AI, I could see blogging was shrinking. Local businesses were going the other way: for them, showing up on Google matters more every year. And trades do real, skilled work that deserves better than the cowboys most of them have met. So that's where I brought everything I'd learned.

If a job's worth doing,
it's worth doing properly.

It's the rule you work by. It's mine too. So here's what you can hold me to.

  1. 01

    What you've probably hadPassed around an agency. A salesperson to sign you up, an account manager to keep you happy, and someone you never meet doing the work.

    What you get with meYou deal with me, start to finish. The person you talk to is the person doing the work.

  2. 02

    What you've probably hadMonths of "SEO" and no idea what was actually done. Sometimes, believe it or not, nothing was.

    What you get with meYou see exactly what I've done and how it's going, every month, in plain English.

  3. 03

    What you've probably hadA £300 template website. Slow, half broken on launch, and no SEO.

    What you get with meA website designed, written and built properly, by me, to turn visitors into enquiries.

  4. 04

    What you've probably had"Give it another two months, we're nearly there." Six months later, still nothing.

    What you get with meIf I'd had your money for six months and got you nothing, I'd tell you. And I'd tell you to stop paying me.

  5. 05

    What you've probably hadTied into a long contract, with your website held hostage if you leave.

    What you get with meNo long contracts. Once your website's paid for, it's yours to keep, or to take elsewhere.

James Tandy

My promise to you

“I will never lie to a client, even when telling the truth costs me money.”

James TandyFounder, JTANDY

New business. Not new to this.

JTANDY is new, but I've been doing this on my own sites for over ten years. I won't dress being new up as anything else, and you won't see reviews here until I've earned them.

Your job gets my attention

I only take on a few new clients at a time, so your work never sits at the bottom of somebody's pile. I do it myself, and I do it properly.

You'll know who you're dealing with

My name and face are on everything. As AI makes it harder to tell who's real online, you'll always know exactly who's doing your work, and who to hold to it.

My name is on the work.
I intend to earn it.

Tell me about your business and the jobs you want more of. I'll tell you honestly what I'd do, and whether I'm the right person for it.

Tell me about your business

Or see the website offer, where you see your homepage before you pay.