I was contacted by Angie’s list after signing up to have a profile on their website. They quoted me for their ad and marketing package, that is supposed to help get my name in front of the clients searching for exterior cleaning in my area. The quote was for 10800 bucks, for the year. They are saying I’ll likely receive a 10 to 1 ROI. This seems crazy to me, has anyone done this and what have you experienced?
They’re lying to you. Do a little google searching to find out all about it. I finally had to threaten reporting them to them FTC before I stopped getting sales calls.
You’ll be realllllyyy lucky to break even with Angie’s List
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Thanks squid, you made that easy on me.
No way in Hell would I pay 10,800 upfront for Advertising… I’m sure a lot of new people fall into it…
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I thought that was a typo
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Let me ask you guys then, what is your most successful free method of getting business and don’t say word of mouth. Door to door? It’s my first full season last year I started in August and used strictly home advisor and that worked great but I’m low on start up cash for this coming season and need to get some business to get me going.
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AL used to be really good, got my company going back in 2010 in a very skeptical area. When they merged with HA it all went to heck. We were the top rated window cleaners with over 300 ‘A’ reviews, but that doesn’t matter anymore now that you have to PAY to be on the list. They want $3,500/mo to be where we were organically just by hard work and honest reviews.
We knew something was up when calls dropped off in the spring of 2017. We were shocked to see our name down at the bottom.
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Free??? Worth of Mouth… But since you are new that’s not possible…
Your gonna need some money to get going, “you need money to make money” Simple!
I would do fliers in your case or Door Hangers… But again, your gonna need some momey to print and design a nice looking money generating hanger/flier.
Don’t mean to be a debbie downer but it’s mind boggling to me when I hear ppl trying to open a business with no money… There’s alot less room for failure when you have no money, pretty much everything has to go perfrct from the get go for you to succeed
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As a noob Thumbtack has been good to me. Turn off automatch. A little spendy but it works at least in my area.
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I will say that Nextdoor has picked up some slack where AL left off. You don’t directly advertise there, but when you do a great job at a house, ask if they can leave a review on Nextdoor. You’d be amazed at the responses.
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For my home cleaning business (just added pressure washing)…AL in my area was $300/month and a 1 year contract. Initially it was great with very solid leads but then it died off pretty quickly. We still get about 3 leads per month…just enough to cover the cost. I won’t renew next year. They have no incentive to provide leads since you spend $300 no matter what.
I have had great luck with HA but it costs everytime they send you a lead. Be careful what leads you are signed up for. I spent $1200 in December before I realized what had happened! Also, they are pretty stingy with lead replacements for bad contacts.
Stick to HomeAdvisor…they bought Angie’s List and you’ll be on both!
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Angie’s List was great when I started out and played a big roll in getting business my first year. However, it has completely fallen off since Home Advisor bought them. It only pays off if you pay for advertising and have several hundred reviews to back your business up. Paying $10,000 is going to be a waste of money for you.
@mikehallyall this if off topic but just glanced at your website and noticed the annual care membership. Have you had much success with this?
@TDclean It’s been a great addition for us! We have a little under 150 members right now and have not aggressively advertised it. Mostly high income clients who don’t want to worry about having to remember to schedule things as they come and want to make sure their home is being maintained throughout the year. We just started offering it in late 2017 and have tweaked things to make it more efficient for them and us over the last year.
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I just looked at it. 150 members at even $300/month is $45k. I like the sample calendar. I’ve been toying with the idea of offering something similar since around 20% of my customers I’m doing work for 3x a year. I’d like to figure out how to bump that percentage.
I know you said you haven’t aggressively marketed it, but how are you marketing it currently?
Also, I’ve got one guy in a gated neighborhood who has committed to paying me $200/month to come knockdown spider webs and wash a patio where he entertains. I’d love to even have 30 folks who are getting stuff cleaned once per month on membership I think.
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@squidskc I have it up on our website now and marketed it when we started the program to the 400 or so clients that spent the most with us the couple of years prior to starting the program. Only 5 came from people that discovered it on the website. Now that we’ve got the staff and equipment for it I plan to start advertising it in the neighborhoods of our current members and go from there.
I figured if lawn care companies could do maintenance programs why not us?
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10k? $400 for the year plus whatever you set your limit at for monthly leads.
@APW1, that’s my point. The op mentioned Angie’s list quoted him for over $10,000 for the year. It’s different for different cities depending on the number of members they have in that location, but if they actually have enough members to warrant that amount of money to advertise with them there’s no way a new guy will get enough work for it to pay off. You’ve got to have a good number of reviews to complete with established companies, and even then Angie’s List is in the process of doing. Don’t water that kind of money on Angie’s List.
