I get a good percentage of hits to my site from Decidio. I've purchased a few leads from Decidio and Wedding Wire, but no response from either as of yet. Maybe I'm doing it wrong...
I've had the same result... either the budget was not worth my response, or I paid for the lead and never heard back from the people. I have stopped using them.
Lucky_Dog wrote:
I've had the same result... either the budget was not worth my response, or I paid for the lead and never heard back from the people. I have stopped using them.
This is my experience too. 80-90% are low budgets or don't list a budget (which I'll respond too sometimes) and the ones that I do respond to have never, not once emailed back. I'm starting to think they're full of it.
We tried several of these places when we were starting out and it really was an awful waste of time. The few people I was able to get in touch with were often not even aware they were looking for a photographer.
One company promised to send me hundreds of active leads of models looking for portfolio work every month. I called him on it, asked him to give me one lead as a show of good faith. He gave me one and after booking the client she never showed up for the photo shoot. The only people who make money out of these things are the sites themselves. It's a big scam, stay away.
See also: "We'd like you to be the {Insert large company here} corporate photographer." What that means is not that they have corporate work for you, it means they want you to buy what is basically very expensive advertising that will reach a few hundred unfiltered prospects at best.
The only one that actually worked for us was David's Bridal ... we booked a couple of weddings when we were their 'store' wedding photographer, problem was they were charging us so much for it that pretty much all of the revenue for the weddings went to pay for the advertising so we ended up working for nothing (less our costs).
It may be overgeneralizing but my attitude these days about paid advertising is if they have to call me .... it's a scam and I'm going to lose money on the deal.
Yeah, same here! We get leads every other week or so and NEVER have anyone reply back. I am guessing it's a scam too. Most all the budgets are coming in way too low, not worth the time at all! We are done with them.
Just about to ask that question - I have a lead for someone with a budget that would be perfect for my photography. Everyone around her says to get on Decidio - but I didn't realize you had to purchase leads. I think they can find my name fairly easily. I can't decide whether to purchase the lead or not...
There seems to be a lot of these "wedding" sites fishing for photographers money lately. I predict in a year or two, 90% of them will be out of business.
We still had a credit of $14.00 in our account with them. Had a lead about a two weeks ago for a high priced wedding.
We used the $2 credit for the lead. I sent the email to the bride and as no surprise once again....no response!
I tried filling out the request for info - just to see how it works. I know I used Decidio as a bride, but I just looked the photographers up on the internet. So it's possible these are real brides, but I think it's sad that they don't know we aren't getting their info for free. I wonder if anyone EVER has gotten an actual response from a lead. It's great press just having your name up there, though.
I registered with them since they show up high on Google in my area and I do get hits to my site from them, but purchasing the leads is worthless. I spent $20 to give it a shot, I think I've bought 5 or 6 so far and haven't heard a word back on any.
