In recognition of this achievement, Gavin was awarded a trophy this afternoon.

Thank you Gavin, for all your help and continued support.

Our locksmith Jamie was called out to an address in Milton Keynes recently to secure a side gate at a customer’s home. They had been some burglaries in the area and they were concerned that the gate was not secure and could be easily breached by an intruder. We supplied and fitted a rim deadbolt which is designed to be mounted on wooden garden gates.

The gate can now be locked and unlocked from both sides giving the customer piece of mind and an extra level of security.

For security advice in Milton Keynes or to book a free survey, please call us on 0800 052 0775 or email: office@abbeylocks.co.uk

Locksmith Milton Keynes

Another excellent installation from our engineer Chevy for a customer in Hemel Hempstead!

We fitted a total of 4 security lights around the customer’s property. Three of them were upgrading existing light fittings, so thankfully, we already had cable and power run. The fourth fixture was installed below a bedroom window, so we installed a switch fused spur next to an existing power socket and ran a cable directly to the light fitting.

If you need security lights fitted to your property, we can run new cables from your home to any position on your property, including outbuildings.

To book a survey or for more information, give us a call on 0800 052 0775 or email office@abbeylocks.co.uk

Locksmith Hemel Hempstead

Today, more work was carried out for a regular client in Welwyn Garden City. This is a commercial building with visitors and staff. One of our client’s most essential requirements is having control of keys. Some spaces are rented to the general public for events, so the keys must be restricted to prevent unauthorised copies from being made.

Our locksmith Jamie was tasked with fitting an additional lock to a solid oak door; we decided on a euro deadlock with security escutcheons and a restricted key and turn euro cylinder.

Another essential thing to consider when installing locks on a commercial property is escape routes and fire regulations. We always recommend installing a thumb-turn cylinder on any doors part of an escape route.

The lock in the polished brass finish looked great and matched the existing door furniture; the client was pleased we could fit them in at such short notice and get all the parts ordered and fitted in record time.

For any lock or security enquiries in the Welwyn Garden City area please give us a call for a free quote or on-site survey. Tel: 0800 052 0775 or email office@abbeylocks.co.uk.

Locksmith Welwyn Garden City

We had an enquiry from a homeowner in Cambridge last week who wanted to monitor their back garden and be alerted of any intruders, they decided on our Ring Floodlight camera as they already had a Ring Doorbell.

Our engineer Gavin installed the lighting on the corner of the house and positioned the light so it would illuminate 2 sides of the house. The light was powered from inside the garage and we fitted a switch fuse spur so the light can be turned on and off and also isolated, plus the existing sockets remained free for our customers to use.

Our customer is now able to monitor any activity on their smart devices and any would-be intruders will be deterred as the lighting will be activated once they are detected.

For a free survey and no obligation quote in the Cambridge area contact us on 0800 052 0775 or email office@abbeylocks.co.uk.

Local Locksmith Cambridge | Cambridge Locksmiths Services

We were recently contacted by a customer in Watford who had some existing RIng products including a Ring Doorbell and Ring Floodlight Camera and required an intruder alarm system. After some discussion, they decided on the Ring Alarm system as it integrated with the existing app on their phone and they were familiar with the brand.

We were able to attend quickly and our Alarm Engineer Chevy installed an external bell box, 2 internal PIR sensors and a keypad at the customer’s property.

Once installed it was all tested and the customer was given a brief tutorial and guided through the setup process.

Ring does a variety of products for homes and businesses. If you require a free survey and quotation in Watford or the surrounding areas give us a call on 01923 537999 or email: office@abbeylocks.co.uk

Locksmith Watford

Thinking of Becoming a Locksmith?

Starting a Locksmith Company

Things to Consider

Part 2

by Mark Grainger

Opening a Locksmith Business

The previous article discussed the research you should do before becoming a locksmith and a few ways of generating online leads. In this article, we’ll discuss forming a new Locksmith company.

Some Locksmith training companies won’t accept students that aren’t trading locksmiths, plus most of the Locksmith forums and Facebook groups for Locksmiths refuse admission if you’re not a Locksmith. These forums can be very beneficial as trading on your own can be a lonely place. Also, without the support of an organization like the MLA (Certified Locksmiths and Security Member), you may find that there will be a lot of jobs initially that you will struggle with. So, getting the ball rolling ahead of any training is a good idea.

Sole Trader or Limited Company?

In short, I would say go for the Sole Trader option initially, just because the Limited Company setup has a cost attached to it, there will be larger accountancy fees at the end of each year, and a fee will have to be paid to register with Companies House which is not necessary if you want to trade as a locksmith. Also, it’s a new venture, and who’s to say how successful it will be, so save money where you can!

Setting up a Sole Trader Locksmith Business

There are a few things I would recommend doing initially, most of which are free:

• Make a business plan (this is very important, think very hard about where your work will come from before shelling out any money!)
• Pick a name for your business (check domain names that are already taken and pick something unique).
• Open a business account (not compulsory, but having a dedicated account will help decipher personal and business transactions).
• Find a good accountant (they won’t charge until they do any work, and it will be helpful to have someone to advise you initially).
• Register for self-assessment with HMRC.
• Consider registering a domain name for your business (expect to pay £15-£20 per year).
• Apply for a DBS check (from £25 – most trainers and locksmith associations will require this, and it should be something every locksmith has, considering the nature of our work).

As we mentioned in the previous article, there are some things to consider before jumping in headfirst; we mentioned advertising and marketing and researching your local area; you may find that it is not feasible to start a business due to the saturation of trading locksmiths in your area or the number of new start-up locksmiths fresh off a course. I’d recommend reading the last instalment if you haven’t already. Part 1 – Becoming a Locksmith

I hope this has been informative; once you have decided you’re taking the plunge and are confident that with some training and experience, you can make a living as a Locksmith, the next step will be looking for a Locksmith training course. We will cover this in the article that follows.

Our team has grown over the years, as well as having a Locksmith in Potters Bar, St Albans, Enfield and the surrounding areas, we now have a locksmith in Huntingdon!

Thinking of Becoming a Locksmith?

Research Before Starting

Marketing and Advertising

Part 1

by Mark Grainger

Introduction

My name is Mark Grainger, I am the director at Abbey Locksmiths Ltd, and I employ a team of 6 people, along with a small group of subcontractors and have been locksmithing for 25 years in the London area.

With the recent increase in Locksmith training courses being advertised and promises of a quick entry into the locksmith industry by locksmith trainers and the talk of guaranteed income after becoming a locksmith in 10 days, I thought it was about time I chimed in on the subject again.

Firstly, I’d like to say that I love what I do, and over the past 25 years in the locksmith industry, I have had my ups and downs like any business, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. If you’re reading this after searching for “Locksmith Training” or “Becoming a Locksmith,” then there’s a good chance you’re new to the trade, as was I many years ago. This article will include some advice and opinions based on my experience. For clarity, we offer some advanced locksmith training for trading locksmiths only. This is little and often, but we are regularly asked to put on classes for people; most recently, we hosted a 7 Lever Safe Lock Picking course for Locksmiths in Harlow. Why it may come across differently to some people who read this article, I’m not trying to discourage anyone from becoming a locksmith, nor is this article describing any locksmith trainers specifically (plenty with similar business plans have come and gone over the years); I’m simply pointing out a few facts and hopefully help a few people.

In the first part of this article, we will look at the research you should do before starting a locksmith business and talk about generating work through websites and marketing.

Our team, we have grown over the years, as well as having locksmiths in St Albans, Potters Bar, Enfield and the surrounding areas, we now have a locksmith in Huntingdon!

Becoming a Locksmith

 There are two routes to enter the locksmith industry, either as a self-employed business owner, which most people seem to do or as an apprentice locksmith employed by an existing company. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, the latter being the safest and depending on your employer and team around you, it will expose you to a wider variety of jobs initially, and you’ll also have the benefit of a support network within the organisation, and let’s not forget the most significant bit, a guaranteed wage every month!

Let’s start with Self Employed Locksmiths, which seems to be the more popular route. Beginning as a self-employed locksmith means that not only are you learning the locksmith trade you are also starting a completely new business with all the stresses and the time-consuming tasks that involves; it’s essential to concentrate on both, as you can be the best Locksmith in the world but if the phones not ringing, you’ll be sitting at home all day worrying about how to pay your bills.

Firstly, before even looking at locksmith training courses and before buying any locksmith tools, I would recommend doing some research on the Locksmiths in your area, look at their websites and see what they offer, and go on to google and see how many local companies are listed and try and figure out how you will compete with them (forget the national companies, we will touch on that later).

When I started, printed media was the best way to advertise for work; this included the Yellow Pages, Thomson Local, and BT Phone Book; every house had one, and they were issued once a year. This was expensive at the time and cost between £500-£6,000 per area each year, depending on the size of your advert.

Much like positions on google, there was a significant benefit from appearing at the front of the locksmith section. Yellow Pages was the leader, and to appear first, had nothing to do with how much you spent; it came down to alphabetical order. After failing two years in a row, I noticed that the same national companies were appearing first every year and noticed something odd at the bottom of each of their adverts, the company names were all beginning with 0’s and A’s; I soon figured out that numbers came before letters and punctuation came before numbers, after trialling lots of combinations in a spreadsheet and sorting by alphabetical order. So my company name became .. …………………000000000000000AAAAAAAAAAAABBEYLOCKSMITHS. It sounds ridiculous, but it worked! I passed the information on to other friends in the locksmith industry I knew, and we all did very well for a few years!

Of course, it wasn’t long before others did the same and printed media was becoming a thing of the past with the introduction of the internet and search engines. My advice would be not to bother with any of the legacy directories when starting, either printed books or their online versions, as they have died off over the years. They don’t have the same brand recognition they once had, and I think It would be a waste of money at first.

Search engines are now the first place people look for a locksmith, so this is your starting point for research and where most of the Locksmith work in the UK is found. I’m sure people know how google works, but I will give examples below anyway, and for demonstrative purposes, base them on the search term “Locksmith Finchley“.

As far as search results on google go, there are three main areas: Sponsored Listings, Local Business Listings and Organic Listings, in that order.

Yellow Pages for Locksmiths in Cambridge

Sponsored Listings

These are paid-for advertisements on google, and there usually are 2-3 listings at the top of each google search result page; this will be the first thing a customer sees when searching for a locksmith. To appear at the top, you must bid for that position; only the top 2 or 3 bids will emerge. At the time of writing this article, 23/02/2023, the cost per click for position one and the search term “Locksmith Finchley” can cost up to £26.55 per click to your website; this is all that you are paying for; there is no guarantee of work or a customer calling you. You can see how this is a gamble and could potentially lose you money during the day, but it can work for some, and there are ways to minimise risk and get good results.

National companies use this strategy as they often don’t have any official local presence and rely on targeted paid advertisements. Any jobs they do get, they will generally pass on to a local locksmith company in the area and pay them a percentage of the job; we’ve seen some vast bills from these companies!; my advice is to stay clear of them entirely unless you want to end up on TV, featuring on an episode of rogue traders! You’ll notice in the below picture that there is an advert from a national company quoting “from £39”; this is a tactic called “bait and switch”, It is usually reserved for more prominent national companies who lure you with a minimal price which increases dramatically as soon as they do any work. We previously covered this scam in an article titled Bait and Switch.

Quite often, the figure quoted is £49, and this is where the phrase “49ers” comes from, a term we in the locksmith industry use to describe the national rip-off companies.

Local Business Listings

These are free listings that any business can apply for; if accepted, you will have the opportunity for your business to appear in the “3 pack” these are the three businesses that google selects to appear for a particular business category and location.

Sounds great, right? As with most things, it is not a level playing field. National companies have muscled in, and although they have no local premises or shop, they pay people to use their addresses and set up fake businesses; hundreds of fake reviews supplement these. There are ways you can report fake listings. They may be removed but bear in mind these national companies have people sitting in an office all day focused on getting calls, so it’s hard to compete with them; plus, they will also be clicking on your paid adverts (if you have any) and trying to get your local business listing removed.

It’s not easy anymore, but If you can get listed here, you’ll see the best results, and it’s free!

Organic Listings

This isn’t as effective as it used to be for driving traffic to your website purely because of the two sections that appear above; the number 1 position on organic listings could be 7^th or 8^th position on the page, below the sponsored and business listings, so not great but still worth doing if you have the time and money to invest in a good website with engaging content. In addition, you need some knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

I know when some people start, they will look at other websites and rather than spend days and weeks creating their own content and images, they will copy someone else. This will have a negative effect on your organic rankings as google sees it as duplicate content, a terrible idea!

I would recommend either employing a company to build your website and help you with the content or doing your own research and create your own. By far, the most popular website creation tool is WordPress. It is a free, open-source CMS (Content Management System), this can be installed on your website and is all you need to get started, you can design or purchase themes to change appearance and layout, and there are also plenty of free plug-ins available for things like e-commerce, marketing, SEO and contact forms. Our site uses this, and I find it comprehensive and easy to use; best of all, it’s free!

SEO

 This is where you will either get fortunate, work incredibly hard or pay someone. We work hard on our site writing blog posts (like this one), as do the marketing company we employ to oversee all our marketing and SEO. There is a monthly fee we pay, this gives us continued SEO and keeps our organic rankings high, and in many areas, we are number 1. Although you can try and do it yourself, you may get lucky if there’s not much competition in your area. For us, it wouldn’t be possible without the help of professionals. It can take months and sometimes years to build up a website or page with good authority on google, expect to be paying between £1000-£2000 per month initially if you want to see results quickly. Also worth mentioning is that the older the website, the better the domain will rank, meaning a newly registered domain name has an immediate disadvantage.

You’ll never be found on organic search results without good Search Engine Optimisation. This is because so many new locksmiths are starting new careers, creating a website, and trying to generate leads every week. The market is flooded with start-ups, and this is evident when you see the number of new locksmith tools being sold online from new locksmith companies which have failed.

To summarise, along with the free google business listing, I would also invest a few thousand pounds in a website and a marketing campaign, or if you have the skills and knowledge to do it all yourself, it will be free, and there’s lots of helpful information on the internet.

Facebook and Other Social Media

As well as google, some locksmiths have success with posting on social media and being recommended by others on local Facebook groups. I recently spoke with a locksmith in Cambridge who said most of his work is from Facebook, so these platforms shouldn’t be ignored.

Creating a Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn business page is a good start. Posts could include information about your business, mentioning services you offer, jobs you’ve completed and any offers on your products or services.

Social media is free to join and use, so this is an obvious thing to do and something most people already use and understand.

I would mention that most locksmith work isn’t repeat business, so you’ll need to keep making posts in the hope they will appear for someone at the right time. You may get one lead if someone sees your post and they need a locksmith at that point in time, but it may not lead to others. Also, spamming Facebook groups constantly is frowned upon and may work against you.

I hope this has been informative, in the next instalment (if you still think Locksmithing is for you) I will go over forming a company, going self-employed and what to expect.

Locksmith Training – 7 Lever Safe Lock Picking Course

Another successful day today with some new students that are trading locksmiths and attended our 7 Lever Safe Lock Picking course so they can offer a new service to their customers.

As well as opening high security safes and gun cabinets as part of his job at Abbey Locksmiths, Gavin also holds regular classes teaching students how to pick open common safe locks found in many homes and businesses across the UK as well as other Locksmith training courses.

Today we hosted a 1 day course where students were taught the techniques we use to open safes and gun cabinets and the associated tools. We’ve already received good feedback from the students, who found it very beneficial and feel more confident now, and Gavin was very pleased with their progress throughout the day.

Locks covered and there derivatives included:

• Lowe & Fletcher 2802
• Willenhall CT12
• Walshall S1311

Methods taught included easy opening with dedicated tools, picking with a 2-in-1 tool and reading levers with a pointer. Also Gavin showed how to size and shape tools to fit in safe locks as well as going over lock identification and things to look out for.

Benefits

Mastering these locks and opening them non destructively opens up a whole new market to a self employed locksmith. It is a more specialised skill than most other locksmith jobs require and not something that all locksmith companies offer, so you will have a clear advantage over your competitors. It is also a gateway into picking the more difficult safe locks. As your skills and knowledge improve so will the money you can earn, as the more difficult safe openings can pay very well indeed!

There is a big demand for gun cabinet openings and it can be regular seasonal work for a competent picker. Gun safe inspections are often done over a fix period annually which will see a rush of jobs during some months as gun owners have lost keys and need to get access to get there certifications from inspectors.

Money charged for opening safes and gun cabinets fitted with the types of locks taught on this course can be upwards of £120, so it’s easy to see why it’s a great skill to acquire.

As well as the great tuition and valuable skills learned, all participants were provided with unlimited refreshments throughout the day and lunch.

Thank You!

We’d like to thank all our course attendees today and look forward to seeing some of you again soon!

For more information and future course dates, or if you own a safe or gun cabinet and need assistance getting it open, please contact our office on 0800 052 0775 or email: office@abbeylocks.co.uk

And let’s not forget today’s safe pickers!, if you’re looking for a safe or gun cabinet opening service please contact the people below:

Paul Allcock (PMA Locksmiths) – 07795 032 682 – Safe Opening in Stambourne

Che Glossop (BTN Locksmith) – 07817 550 737 – Safe Opening in Brighton

Patrick Golledge (Patsabout Locks) – 07415 374 045 – Safe Opening in Rushden

Our locksmith trainer Gavin has lots of informative content on his socials, so why not give him a follow!

Links below:

Instagram

Youtube