How SiteKiln works: and what we'll never do

Most platforms that say they're "for tradespeople" started with a good idea. Somewhere along the way, the mission became the marketing and the product became you.

SiteKiln is different. Here's how, and here's what we'll never do.

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What SiteKiln is

A free plain-English resource for UK construction workers. Guides, templates, tools and reference cards covering your rights, your money, your safety and your career.

• 490+ guides -- written like a mate explaining it, not a solicitor billing you
• 200+ templates -- contracts, letters, checklists, spreadsheets you can actually use
• 19 free tools -- calculators and checkers that give you an answer and forget you existed
• 28 reference cards -- print them, laminate them, stick them in your van

Everything is free. That's not a launch offer. That's the model.

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How we make money (honestly)

SiteKiln is funded by category-exclusive industry sponsorship.

That means:

• One sponsor per section. If an insurance broker sponsors the insurance section, their competitors can't.
• "In partnership with [Sponsor]" -- clearly labelled, always. You'll never wonder if something is an ad.
• Sponsors get visibility. They don't get editorial control. Ever.
• We choose sponsors based on whether they're genuinely useful to tradespeople, not who pays the most.

What we won't take money from:

• Payday lenders
• Claims management companies
• Data brokers
• Anyone who makes money by exploiting the people we're trying to help

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What we'll never do

This isn't a privacy policy. It's a promise.

We will never sell your data. Not to insurance brokers. Not to lead generation platforms. Not to "partners." Not to anyone. Your email is for our newsletter and nothing else.

We will never gate guides behind a paywall. If you need to know your rights at 2am on a Sunday, you shouldn't need a credit card.

We will never let a sponsor edit a guide. They get their name on it. They don't get a red pen.

We will never run programmatic ads. No tracking pixels, no ad networks, no cookies following you around the internet selling you van insurance because you read a guide about CIS.

We will never become a lead generation platform. Our tools give you an answer and move on. We don't harvest your postcode, phone number and job description to sell to a "trusted partner."

We will never charge tradespeople for information about their own rights. That's the whole point.

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Why this matters

The information that protects tradespeople already exists. It's in legislation, HMRC manuals, HSE guidance, case law and government websites. It's just not written for the people who actually need it.

There are good people and good organisations doing important work in this industry -- campaigning, raising awareness, supporting tradespeople. SiteKiln isn't a replacement for any of that. But we noticed a gap: the practical, detailed, "what do I actually do now?" resource didn't exist in one place, in plain English, for free.

So we built it.

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The tools are tools, not lead forms

Every free tool on SiteKiln works the same way:

1. You put your numbers in
2. You get your answer
3. That's it

We don't ask for your email to show you a result. We don't pass your details to anyone. We don't follow up with a sales call.

You came for an answer. You got one. Go back to work.

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A word about "free" platforms that aren't free

There are platforms in this industry that position themselves as helping tradespeople. Some of them charge you a monthly fee to receive leads that cost extra on top. Some charge you per lead with no guarantee the customer will even pick up the phone. Some let customers leave reviews about you but charge you to respond properly or appear higher in the results. Some run "free tools" that are really forms -- you enter your details, hit submit, and your phone number lands on a sales list you never agreed to.

That's not a platform for tradespeople. That's a platform that sells tradespeople.

The model is simple: they sit between you and the customer, take a cut from both sides, and call it a service. The customer thinks they're getting a vetted tradesperson. You think you're getting a qualified lead. The platform gets paid either way, whether the job happens or not.

We're not saying these platforms have no value -- some tradespeople build real businesses through them, especially early on. But the model is built on monetising your presence, your data, and your reputation. That's a fundamentally different thing from helping you.

SiteKiln doesn't sit between you and anyone. We don't sell leads, we don't charge for visibility, and we don't hold your reviews hostage. We give you the information to run your business properly, and then we get out of the way.

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While we're at it

Insurance comparison sites. You fill in one form. Your phone rings 15 times before lunch. Your details have been sold to every insurer on the panel, plus a handful of "partners" you never agreed to. Then they call you again next year because they kept your number. That's not comparison -- that's a data auction with your mobile number as the lot.

"Become a [trade] in 12 weeks" courses. Some are excellent. Some charge £5,000-£15,000, rush people through the minimum possible training, and release them into the industry without the competence to work safely. The graduates struggle, the industry's reputation takes another hit, and the course provider is already running the next cohort. There are no refunds when you realise three months in that you needed twice the training. We're not against fast routes into construction -- we're against charging a fortune for inadequate ones.

Recruitment agencies and their margins. A client pays £350 a day for a chippie. The chippie gets £180. The agency gets £170 for making a phone call and sending a text. Some agencies add genuine value -- vetting, payroll, compliance. But plenty are just a phone and a spreadsheet sitting between a tradesperson and the money they earned. If you're agency, you should know what the client is paying. Most never ask. Most are never told.

"Trade business coaching." The Instagram version: someone who did 18 months on the tools and now charges £3,000-£5,000 for a course that says "charge more, post on social media, get systems." The advice isn't wrong -- it's just not worth three grand when it's the same stuff you'd find in a free podcast or, now, in SiteKiln's 30 Starting Out guides. There are proper business coaches and mentors in construction who are genuinely good. But for every one of those, there are ten selling confidence at a premium to people who can't afford to waste it.

Umbrella companies. Some CIS workers get pushed into umbrella companies by agencies who present it as the only option. The umbrella takes a weekly fee, sometimes skims the margins on expenses or holiday pay, and the worker ends up with less than they'd have kept as a straightforward sole trader. Not all umbrellas are bad -- some provide genuine payroll services. But if you don't understand exactly what they're taking and why, you're probably paying too much for something you might not need.

"Trades marketing" agencies. We're going to be honest here because the founder runs a web design company, so this is us calling out our own industry. There are brilliant agencies building proper websites, running genuine SEO, and helping tradespeople grow. Some of them are our friends. But there's also a layer of agencies charging £300-500 a month for a template website, a handful of blog posts written by someone who's never held a spirit level, and "SEO" that amounts to changing your page title once and sending you a report full of graphs you can't read.

And then there's the hosting racket. Your website costs about £5-15 a month to host. If someone is charging you £250+ a month and calling it "hosting and maintenance," ask yourself what maintenance they're actually doing. Most months the answer is nothing. A good website matters. Good marketing matters. But the monthly retainer model in trades marketing exists mostly because it's easier to keep billing you than to justify the work. If your agency can't explain in plain English what they did this month and why it's worth what you're paying, ask harder questions. And if they lock you out of your own website so you can't leave -- that tells you everything about whose interests they're protecting.

That's partly why we built tools. A media pack builder (£15, not £2,000). A RAMS builder (£5, not £300). A day rate calculator (free, not £3,000 for a coaching course). We charge what things are actually worth. Sometimes that's nothing.

None of this is unique to construction. But construction workers are disproportionately targeted because many are self-employed, time-poor, and not used to reading the small print. SiteKiln exists partly because of this: if you understand your rights, your tax, your contracts and your options, you're much harder to rip off.

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Why we ask for your email (and what we'll never do with it)

Let's be straight about this.

If you just read guides and use tools: we collect nothing. No account needed, no tracking, no cookies beyond what keeps the site working.

If you sign up for the Document Hub: we ask for your email, your region (dropdown), and your trade (dropdown with "prefer not to say"). That's it. No name, no age, no gender, no company, no phone number.

Why we ask: because a newsletter creates revenue that pays for SiteKiln so you don't have to. Sponsors pay to appear in the newsletter. That's how the lights stay on.

But here's the line we will never cross:

We will never give sponsors direct access to your email address. Ever. They pay for a slot in our newsletter. They don't get a list of who opened it, who clicked, or who you are.

That's everything that's wrong with internet privacy and marketing in general -- platforms collecting your data and selling access to you as a product. You are the user here, not our product to sell to others.

Your email is used for: the newsletter (1-2 times a month) and nothing else. Never sold. Never shared. Never rented. Never "passed to a trusted partner." Unsubscribe any time, one click, no guilt trip, no "are you sure?" screen.

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A note on "free"

People are suspicious of free, and they're right to be. If something is free, you're usually the product.

SiteKiln is free because the product is sponsorship, not you.

Sponsors pay for visibility alongside content that tradespeople actually use. That's the deal. The content exists whether sponsors show up or not. If every sponsor pulled out tomorrow, the guides would still be here.

We'd just have to drink less coffee.

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If you've read this far and you think "yeah, but they'll change once they get big" -- bookmark this page. If we ever break these promises, screenshot it and call us out. We'd deserve it.