Pitchup.com at Farm Business Innovation - day 1!

We iz at Farmbiz! And we’re writing on the hoof (boom boom!). It’s the first day of Farm Business Innovation 2013 at the Olympia in London, where we’ve pitched up to share our expertise on how farmers can make more money from their land. We’ve put faces to names (hi again, Atlantic Surf Pods and Lee Wick Farm !), met some luvverly people, and are rather chuffed at how much we’ve been recognised on our nosy wanderings around. And one of our account managers appears to have been chatted up, although no changes there.

As we wrote in the Country and Land Association (CLA) magazine for October, farmers can make bales of cash and rescue any ailing finances by setting up a campsite on their land, from something as simple as a tent field with a water pipe to a swish heated camping pod with a hot tub on site. Farms now account for 20% of Pitchup.com sites, cashing in on a domestic travel market worth £2.5 billion a year. Let us help you make money, thought we, and thus here we are.

We’ve spoken to dozens of farmers today interested in diversifying by turning part of their land into a campsite. The main questions we’ve had have been:

• Do I need planning permission?

• How much will it cost?

• How do I get a camping pod, yurt or whatever?

• How do I sell my pitches once I’m set up?

• What will Pitchup.com do for me?

These - and many more - questions are answered both in our how to start a campsite or caravan park and our extensive upgrade page with FAQs , covering all sorts of stuff like planning permission, licensing, site costs, our role and how it all works when you add your site to Pitchup.com.

We’ll be back tomorrow answering more questions, but for now, it’s nearly drinks time. If you’re in/near London and want to know how to make more money from your land, we’re at the Olympia again tomorrow (29 November) at Stand F666 – come and say hi. Toodle pip for now!