Customers With Pest Questions Have Learned to ‘Ask the Exterminator’

CINCINNATI – Any pest management professional who has surfed the Web undoubtedly has conducted Web searches using pest-related keywords, which means there’s a pretty good chance they’ve come across www.asktheexterminator.com. Just what is the site all about and who is “The Exterminator” answering the questions?

Quite simply, Asktheexterminator.com is a Web site consumers can visit to find answers to their pest-related questions — either from resources already on the site or by submitting questions to “The Exterminator,” who happens to be Rick Steinau, president of Cincinnati-based Ace Exterminating. On Asktheexterminator.com, Steinau describes the site as “written for the non-professional looking for clear, honest answers. I often include a humorous look at problems, but always try to make the problem resolution as simple and inexpensive as possible.”

Steinau, whose involvement in the pest control industry dates back to 1963, launched the site in April 2006, and it has grown to the point where it now has more than 700 pages of content and receives about 90,000 visits per month. The site is run via Google AdSense, an advertisement application in which Web publishers display Google ads on their site’s content pages to earn money. Steinau decided to launch Asktheexterminator.com at the urging of his mentor Tim Carter, publisher of the extremely popular www.askthebuilder.com.

What began as a “bare bones” Web site with nothing but a template now has more than 700 articles and the site’s most recent additions are pest-related videos starring Steinau. In fact, the site has grown so much that Steinau has hired college students to do some of the research and writing (which he always fact-checks). “It’s gotten to the point where it is difficult to keep up with all of the incoming questions I am receiving,” he said. Still, most of the site has been populated by Steinau, who says that throughout the years he’s tried to add one new article per day to the site.

Between the questions Steinau receives, and the research and writing it takes to find answers and respond to questions, Steinau believes he has sharpened his technical skills. “I’m getting questions from around the country and around the world. For example we don’t have stinkbugs in Cincinnati but Pennsylvania is inundated with them, so I had to find out everything I could about the brown marmorated stink bug. Who is doing research on this bug? What is coming down the pike? I speak with heads of university entomology departments to find out what types of research they are doing. It’s been really, really interesting.” Steinau added that he’s also currently receiving questions from Asia about the goliath beetle. Other hot topics from U.S. visitors include bird mites and bed bugs.

Steinau said askthebuilder.com — the site run by his mentor Carter — receives more than 1.3 million visits per month, generating $10,000 per day in ad revenues. Steinau’s goals are more modest; he’s hoping to generate $500 per day — nice extra income, but he says, “the dollars that I earn on it are just icing on the cake. I do not do this for the money. It’s just for the challenge and the gratification for getting to help people.”