PODCAST · business
Smoke & Receipts
by Clickflame
Somebody online makes a big promise. We run the real numbers. Then we call it. Smoke, or receipts?
Episodes
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Spanish Speakers Can Wait Till Later?
The Instituto Cervantes 2025 yearbook counts more than 630 million potential Spanish speakers and more than 520 million native speakers. CSA Research found 76% of online shoppers would rather buy with product info in their own language, and 40% never buy from sites in other languages. Mobile...
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Your Old Website Is Worthless?
Molly's Sugar Shack has sugared Pacific Beach since 2006. The oldest archived copy of her site has a first post dated December 1, 2010. Her address and phone number have not changed since that first page, and her Google profile has 4.9 stars from 93 reviews. We kept her domain, her photos and her...
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Real Sites. Real Traffic.?
Sonic Agent sells agencies an AI WordPress builder for $2,497 a year. Its own site ranks for one US keyword, its refund page. Of 32 showcase sites, 4 are dead, 9 sit on temp hosts, 6 have Call buttons that dial 555 numbers, and 23 get an estimated under 10 visits a month. The sites with real...
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Yext Fixes Your Listings for Good?
43% of businesses have a wrong phone, address or name somewhere online. Yext pushes the right info to 70+ directories and locks it. The lock is rented. Self-serve Yext runs about $199 to $999 a year, per location. Ten years on the top plan is almost $10,000 for one shop. When the payments stop…
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Online Psychiatry Is Just a Pill Appointment? With Harpal Singh of Mindful Sewa
This one is a sit-down with Harpal Singh, a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and the founder of Mindful Sewa Psychiatry, a telepsychiatry practice that sees patients all over California. The name means something. Sewa is the Punjabi word for selfless service, a value...
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You Need a $15,000 Website?
Real ranges for a local service business: a few hundred a year for a template, $2,000 to $5,000 for a freelancer on a page builder, $5,000 to $15,000 and up for an agency custom build. One big agency's own pricing guide puts a small business site anywhere from $1,000 to $48,000. A spread that…
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SEO Is Dead, Just Buy AEO?
Clickflame measured 17 question searches, comparing the top 3 pages against pages ranked 7 to 10 on the same query. 76 pages in all, then 18 winners against 22 losers once Reddit and Google's own pages were removed. The AEO checklist did not separate winners from losers. FAQ schema was on 4…
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Local Service Ads Are Free Leads?
Local Service Ads charge per lead, not per click. Across 888 home service contractors in February 2026 the average lead cost $53, and roofing leads went from $73.62 to $106.87 in a year. Since October 1, 2026, a missed call during business hours is a charged lead when the caller holds more than…
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Too Small to Go Paperless? With Ross Seymour of EHR1
This one is a sit-down with Ross Seymour of EHR1, a practice management platform for offices that serve Medicare and Medicaid patients. It started with a grant. Ross found money that could help doctors upgrade their technology, then saw there was no platform built for the practices that would…
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Any Locksmith Near Me Will Do? With Mike German of Silver State Locksmith
This one is a sit-down with family. Silver State Locksmith in Las Vegas has been with Clickflame since 2015, one of our very first clients. Mike German is one of the owners. Silver State does residential, commercial and automotive locksmith work, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The…
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Every Mechanic Is Out to Upsell You? With Brian Huey
This is our first episode with a real guest. Brian Huey runs Huey's Mobile, a mobile mechanic in Monroe, North Carolina. He brings the shop to your driveway. Brian spent ten years in restaurants and five in grocery. Then he made assistant manager at an express lube place in about six months. They...
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Does a Small Business Website Take Six Weeks to Build?
Everett Local Movers runs two movers and one truck. Their old site was a free template with no prices, no photos of the work and a phone number shared with three other side businesses. The owner sent the pricing in three texts. That became the whole brief, and the rate became the headline. The…
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Can You Pay Google to Rank Higher on Maps?
Start with one test. Search your exact business name and town on Google Maps and in regular search, then search the way a customer would from inside your service area. If your name finds nothing, the profile is missing, unowned, unverified, suspended or not eligible. Google says verification...
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Appliance Repair Leads Only Come From Lead Sites?
Appliance repair calls come from four places. Your Business Profile, Local Services Ads, Google Search ads and bought leads. Local Services charges per valid lead. From October 1, 2026, it also charges for a missed call during business hours when the caller stays on the line more than 20 seconds....
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A Discount for a Google Review Is Totally Fine?
Landscaping calls follow the weather. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says grounds workers may be busier in spring, summer and fall, and some crews switch to snow removal in winter. Keep your Google Business Profile sharp all year. List up to 20 service areas, post real before and after photos…
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Google Killed Call-Only Ads. Are Your Phone Leads Dead?
Google removed every way to create a new call-only ad in February 2026, and existing call-only ads stop getting impressions in February 2027. The replacement is a responsive search ad with a call asset attached. It can hold up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and a tap on the call button costs...
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Bought a Pest Control Lead? Are You Free to Call It?
In a 2006 opinion letter, FTC staff said a business that buys a lead generally does not have its own established business relationship with that consumer, which is one of the exceptions for calling numbers on the Do Not Call list. Staff said it would not recommend action if the seller clearly…
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Do Big Companies Own the Tree Service Market?
A 2007 study in Arboriculture and Urban Forestry found the four largest tree care firms held only 4% of industry receipts across nearly 82,000 businesses. The numbers are old, so treat them as a rough picture. Google allows one Business Profile per business. A second profile for stump grinding...
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Should Plumbers Just Buy Their Leads?
Many lead sellers send the same request to three or four plumbers at once, so a shared lead is a race that often goes to whoever quotes lowest. Owned channels like your Business Profile, website and reviews make you the only plumber in the conversation, and you keep the customer. Local Services...
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The Cheapest HVAC Lead Is Always the Best Deal?
A cheap lead that never books costs more than an expensive one that does. Shared leads cost less but go to two or three other companies at once, so the first company to call wins. Your break even cost per lead is your average profit per job times your close rate. With made up round numbers, a…
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Google Ads Keeps Your Form Leads Safe Forever?
Google's help page says lead form leads expire after 60 days, so you should download them often. The Google Ads API can also pull up to 60 days of leads. Only users with Standard or Admin access can download leads. Billing, Email only and Read only users cannot, so check who on your team has the...
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More Pages Means More Google Traffic?
Free Dentist Office lists 164,748 dental offices in all 50 states and DC. On October 1, 2026, Google showed 178 of its pages as indexed. The article says plainly there is no happy ending yet. The first version was California only, with 18,460 office pages that were mostly a name, an address, a...
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More Clicks Means More HVAC Jobs?
If all Google sees is a click or a call, it finds more clicks and calls, including the ones that never become work. The fix is to send booked jobs back into Google Ads. One giant campaign mixes a fifty dollar tune up with a ten thousand dollar install under one budget and one bid. Build one...
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What Clickflame Actually Does
People keep asking what Clickflame actually does. So we ran our own receipts on the air. The hype we hear all the time is that a local business has to spend thousands a month on ads just to get calls. Ads are rent. The day you stop paying, the calls stop. A site that ranks is something you own....
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Smoke & Receipts have?
Smoke & Receipts currently has 24 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Smoke & Receipts about?
Somebody online makes a big promise. We run the real numbers. Then we call it. Smoke, or receipts?
How often does Smoke & Receipts release new episodes?
Smoke & Receipts has 24 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Smoke & Receipts?
You can listen to Smoke & Receipts on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Smoke & Receipts?
Smoke & Receipts is created and hosted by Clickflame.
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