Stephoto Photography wrote:
Usually anything promising an increase in customers with little to no effort will be a waste of time.. I don't even bother with them anymore. I have found that anything that issues credits or points, though, tends to be useless. Wyzant, other tutoring sites as well is included in this.

Agree! My bill collector's don't take Credit points as payment on my bill's.

Tropical Photography wrote:
Actually, Thumbtack has been fairly good for me..  I've spent probably around 60-70 dollars and made around 2K...  A buddy of mine is using it and has spent maybe 40-50 and actually got 1 commercial gig that resulted in multiple shoots and about 2K per shoot.. Plus he's gotten a number of headshot and portrait work..

That's pretty good! Any tips? I have e-mail filters set up that text me whenever there's a message from Thumbtack that says "$300," "$400" etc. up to $1000 so that I don't get distracted quoting for low-paying gigs.

me voy wrote:
Share the names of businesses that target photographers promising an increase in customers. Here are the ones that I have used and wasted time and money on:

1-Thumbtack (about $60 plus all the free credits I got after complaining) ...
.

"Shot By Adam" wrote some excellent posts about how to use Thumbtack.com to get good results.
It's long but has lots of GREAT tips which can also be applied to other forms of bidding and marketing, too.
https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post/924294/1
https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post … st19238478

me voy wrote:
I called Google and told them that they were scamming people. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a "Robot" program that clicks on peoples ads so that they can make money.

No, but if you are allowing the ads to run on third party websites (i.e. not just the Google search page), then those websites are paid by Google each time the ad is clicked.  That's where you starting running into trouble as they have a financial incentive to click away.  Google tries to detect those but can only go so far.

Narrowing down your advertising networks helps greatly.  Also make sure you're turning on or off the mobile search advertising depending on your website support for mobile devices.  You may also decide to only advertise during peak times (depending on your target market).

Another (lesser) problem with just advertising on the Google search page, is that occasionally you'll get competitors deliberately clicking away on your ad, trying to drain your daily budget, so that their ads move up...

me voy wrote:
I stopped bidding on TT a long time ago. After reading "Shot by Adam" That's the kind of advice we need when it comes to other companies. For example: I used Google's AdWords and I wasted too much money. I did the very best that I could to target a specific audience and location. Yet, I was still getting a lot of clicks from areas that were too far from me. I had to pay for it. So, I called Google and told them that they were scamming people. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a "Robot" program that clicks on peoples ads so that they can make money.

What's your definition of too far from you...? Lots of times I'll get hired for local or in state things, but by folks that are out of state.

LightDreams wrote:

No, but if you are allowing the ads to run on third party websites (i.e. not just the Google search page), then those websites are paid by Google each time the ad is clicked.  That's where you starting running into trouble as they have a financial incentive to click away.  Google tries to detect those but can only go so far.

Narrowing down your advertising networks helps greatly.  Also make sure you're turning on or off the mobile search advertising depending on your website support for mobile devices.  You may also decide to only advertise during peak times (depending on your target market).

Another (lesser) problem with just advertising on the Google search page, is that occasionally you'll get competitors deliberately clicking away on your ad, trying to drain your daily budget, so that their ads move up...

No third party websites. I did narrowed it down to a specific market and location. It could be "Robots" or competitors. All I know is that I lost a lot of money.

Stephoto Photography wrote:

What's your definition of too far from you...? Lots of times I'll get hired for local or in state things, but by folks that are out of state.

India, Germany and others. I checked and they were paid clicks. After I had my settings for only 100 mile radius. That's when I realized that I was wasting money. To me it is a scam.

me voy wrote:

India, Germany and others. I checked and they were paid clicks. After I had my settings for only 100 mile radius. That's when I realized that I was wasting money. To me it is a scam.

Ah, yup! To me that would be a scam, probably paid,. It reminds me of why I don't do those things anymore! Better uses of time and $$$

Stephoto Photography wrote:
Usually anything promising an increase in customers with little to no effort will be a waste of time.. I don't even bother with them anymore. I have found that anything that issues credits or points, though, tends to be useless. Wyzant, other tutoring sites as well is included in this.

Emphasis added.
Advertising, memberships, references, meetups, etc. may open doors, but when they do, it's still up to you to walk on through.  If you have legs (good portfolio, availability, experience of the sort needed for the project, etc.) then you will at least be in a position to compete.  If you're in a wheel chair or on life support (little to no appropriate experience, sloppy prior work, a reputation for being uncooperative, etc.) while you may manage to get through the door, not much is likely to happen on the other side. 

On the other hand, if you never knock on the door, nobody will ever know you're there.

All IMHO as always, of course.

me voy wrote:

India, Germany and others. I checked and they were paid clicks. After I had my settings for only 100 mile radius. That's when I realized that I was wasting money. To me it is a scam.

Google adwords may not work for you and your business, but it is not a scam.  Lots of companies use it and derive great benefit from it.  Not every tool works for every task, but that doesn't make it a scam.

I work for a company which relied solely on Google for the first several years (a mix of adwords and organic search) to bring customers to them and it is now a multi-million dollar company. We continue to use Google adwords to increase the number of visitors to our website, and yes, enough of them end up buying our products that it is more than worthwhile for us to continue to pay for Google adwords.

David Kirk wrote:

Google adwords may not work for you and your business, but it is not a scam.  Lots of companies use it and derive great benefit from it.  Not every tool works for every task, but that doesn't make it a scam.

Agreed. All of the sources the OP listed are not scams, you just have to learn how to work the systems correctly. If you are unable to do that, then that's on you, not them. I use Google AdWords, Bing ads, and even Thumbtack from time to time, all with success. With PPC ads though, it's not as simple as just running an ad and then the phone starts ringing, like most people think it will. You have to understand how to read the analytics, traffic reports, and so many other factors to get a result that is profitable. That is why there are so many seminars and online classes out there that teach you how to do it. It's a process.

cwwmbm wrote:
You know, I don't think all of these promise more clients. They promise more exposure and as such - bigger awareness of you. Your work is what attracts customers, so if your work is subpar you can spend millions and still not get a single phone call. Something to think about maybe.

You nailed it. One thing I think is worthy of mention also is that the majority of photographers are clueless about sales and couldn't sell a life preserver to a drowning person. They have little or no sales copy on their websites or any of their outbound emails so they assume that lead generators don't work when the reality is much different. I could even go so far as to say that most freelancers fall into this problem as well, not just photographers.

Over the summer I ran an ad on Thumbtack looking for professionals in an industry they provide leads to. I was VERY clear what I wanted, provided my phone number in the ad, etc. Three of the maximum of five responses I got back were canned cut-and-paste jobs that read like, "Hi, my name is Bob and I've been in this industry for 5 years. Give me a call at 555-1212 and I can help you". One email I got was so poorly written I would never hire them for anything, and the fifth email was sent by someone with no website or business presence at all.

My point being is that there are at least four of the five people who responded to me who are the ones who constantly complain that sites like Thumbtack don't work. They have horrible levels of correspondence, don't understand how to explain features and benefits of their service, don't address the client needs, etc., and yet they sit around scratching their heads as to why nobody calls them back.

Websites like Thumbtack don't promise to provide anything other than a lead. What you do with that lead is up to you, and if you are unable to validate the quality of the lead or don't know how to correspond with that lead, well that's on you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk

LA StarShooter wrote:
I am so glad that Adam contributed to this discussion. Based on responses I will certainly give thumbtack more consideration than previously. And I will read Adam's posts on the subject on other parts of the forum later.

I've changed my tune on TT a little bit in the last six months but the original outline I posted in the other, referenced thread (Thanks for posting that SayCheez) still applies. It's all about understanding how to see what is a quality lead and what isn't. I'd say that of all the leads that come to me through Thumbtack, I only put an effort forward to respond to about 5% of them. Of those 5% I'd say I've been booked about 30% of the time and that's not bad. Some of the bookings have been small things like bachelorette parties or engagement shoots but I've gotten some really good clients from there also including two national advertising campaigns, several big trade-show shoots and corporate gigs, a few commercial shoots, long-term real estate shoots, and more. One booking I got from TT back in November of last year was a credit union who booked me to shoot their company Christmas party. They liked me so much that they just called me back last week to book me for this years' party.

If you understand sales and marketing, Thumbtack can be a good source, you just have to learn to scrutinize the leads better and understand how to pitch to the client. If you don't have those skills, then no matter what the source of your lead, you're destined to fail. Just because you hang a shingle on the door doesn't mean clients come banging down your doors...you need to learn how to sell your services.

me voy wrote:
I still think Thumbtack is a waste of money and time. The reason why I call it a scam is because it looks like a ponzi scheme. You speculate that you are bidding on a real job, TT collects all the money from bidders, at the end how do you know that an actual person won the job? Adam says you have to know how to work the system. That is a red flag. Why can't TT show the actual person who won the job? Why does it have to be anonymous?

If sources like Thumbtack alerted everyone that I won a gig over you, I would stop using it. How I conduct my business and how I do my sales and how I do my marketing is, quite frankly, none of your business. I couldn't care less who beat me out on a bid. If they got the job and I didn't, I need to rely on my business acumen to tell me why...was it my portfolio? Was it my price? Was it the services provided? Was it my sales copy? Was it my contact email? That's for me to decide. Also in reference to your Ponzi scheme claim, to quote one of my favorite movie characters..



A Ponzi Scheme is where you take money, under false pretenses, from one person and use it to payoff dividends to another person being scammed. This has no correlation to anything how lead generation sources like Thumbtack work.

Google AdWords could be doing the same thing. They collect money from the clicks on your ad. How do you know that it is an actual person clicking on your ad. Could it be a program that randomly clicks on paid ads so that they can increase their revenue?

This is why I so absolutely love being a capitalist. Get this...the market would police them out of business if this were the case. There are billions of dollars being spent on PPC ads every year. If there were fraud taking place or if nobody were seeing returns on their investments, then nobody would continue to pay for these ads. It's simply a matter of understanding how a ROI works. I don't have time to go into great detail as to why your suspicions have been proven wrong, but the short answer of it is, if you and I are using the exact same system and I'm having success with it and you're not, it's not the system that's at fault and it's not the system that's rigged...it's you. That's a tough thing for many people to swallow, but that's how competition works.

Like I said, I targeted a specific region yet my google analytics was showing that I was getting PAID clicks as far as China.

There can be a wide variety of reasons for this.

These companies might work for big companies that have the budget. For the little guy like me, I have to watch how I spend every penny.

I can assure you, I'm not some rich billionaire sitting on a pile of cash in my office. HARDLY the case, but I have been working in Internet marketing since 1997. I read books on the topic, I have taken numerous seminars and attended different workshops on this stuff, and I was taught high-end selling techniques when I was 10 years old. I dropped out of college my senior year to take a job paying 6-figures writing sales copy for an international travel company. If you want to play the game, get better at the game. That's business dude.

That is why I created this thread. To share experiences. Hopefully, other photographers that have the same experience can come forward and expose TT and Adwords and others as potential scams.

There is nothing to "expose". Again, just because YOU cannot use a system effectively doesn't make it a scam. It just means that you don't know what you're doing when it comes to using them. All they do is bring the horse to water...making it drink, that's your responsibility.

me voy wrote:
I'm not the only one that feels this way. There are hundreds of thousands of self contractors that feel the same way.

Hyperbolize much?

All this does is prove my point. Most freelancers, ESPECIALLY photographers, haven't got a clue about how to market or sell their product or service, so because they are uneducated as to how the system works, their default answer is that the system is corrupt. Again, I think it is worth mentioning that if others have figured out how to succeed using the same system, I can assure you, it's not luck. It's just that they know something that you don't know. It's really just that simple.