Homeadvisor.com

Bodean

Cali dreamer
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
7,823
Location
San Francisco, Kali
Does / Has anyone any experience with this lead generating service?

Thinking about signing up.....
Almost did but wife had card....so luck of pause to think stepped in......

280 to get a background check and a counselor for the year......and pay for each lead...25/job.
 
We use it... I don't really like it though, we haven't gotten very many good jobs from it. It may be different in your market though. Personally I think it's a bit of a rip off from my experience. If you do it, make sure that you set your spending limits as low as possible to start so you can get a feel... A fair bit of "leads" I never even heard back from the person. if you look online there are nothing but bad reviews and some people claiming that HA makes fake leads... We did it anyways!

Thumbtack is WAY better. $3 per lead, I've gotten a lot of great work from that service.

AdWords is the best for us, so far. It helps drive traffic to your site as well.

A close second or maybe tie for first is a friend of mine who's been in biz for 13 years and has a great reputation. He gets way too many calls to service so he passes my info to ones he doesn't want and I give him $30 for every lead that we close on. We close 90% or more of those..

I hope that helps!
 
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  • #3
This is the stuff I wanna hear.

Hmmmm. Anyone else?

I almost closed with this guy then my wife had the card picking up a friend at the airport.....

He said he'd set me at $600/month as my max for now......THAT'S almost a chipler payment. But if I make $6000 off it?

It's all itemized each lead and deducted monthly with an invoice......Tax deductible.

Says I can stop anytime.

Says it's the UBER of contracting selling instant gratification......just turn on the app when you want leads......respond to texts....

Said he's my counselor and refunds leads if I respond within time and also if I call back three times and never get back to me....

I dunno might try a few months.
 
It's worth a try no doubt. Might be good in your market. I kinda wanted to beat up the dude that sold me!

Also, I found it was a pain in the ass to challenge crappy leads.
 
Here's my experience (copied from the old thread)

I'm out already. I've had home advisor for not even 2 weeks. I already can't stand them. I emailed them why. Here's a list from that email....


1- Setting up the profile was a major pain. I spent about 12-16 hours, spent way too long with chat and phone support to set up my service area and STILL have errors (like I’m being listed as having no insurance though I’ve given you guys all my workers comp, vehicle insurance, general liabilty and bonding insurance AND there are still cities listed on our profiile that are cities that we do NOT work in). One of my concerns was how do we express to your customers that our company does not do free estimates. You said that there is an easy way to get that info to customers. There wasn’t. The people that have found us through your website have been surprised that we don’t do free estimates. This was one of the features I was most adamant about and it turned out there ISN’T a way for people to clearly see if we do free estimates or not.

1a- product brands: Why do you even have this section if I can only show the brand of ONE product that we can use?
1b- I asked several times for my address to NOT be listed on my profile. It has not been taken off yet. That is my home. I don’t need people showing up here. You guys are not respecting privacy to a level that I cannot believe
1c-Areas of expertise: why am I only allowed 5 of them?
1d- memberships and affiliations: Only 2 items allowed?
WHY DO YOU HAVE ALL THESE SECTIONS IF WE CAN’T EVEN USE THEM TO SHOW OFF WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE KNOW?

2- Good vs. Bad leads- when I asked about refunds for bad leads, you expressed that if we get something that turns out to be a bad lead, we just call it in and it would not be charged to our account. We got 2 official leads so far. On the first one, the lady never called us back and never answered our call or HomeAdvisor message and the second guy was appalled that we charge a fee for an estimate. In my mind, both of these are bum leads, but the operator I talked to said that these are legit leads and Home Advisor can’t control whether or not people actually READ the profile (to see we don’t do free est) nor can you control whether or not they pick up the phone when I call, therefore these are legit leads and I WILL be charged for them. This seemed quite surprising to me. Frankly, it’s a ripoff.

3- Finally, cancelling: I’ve had enough. I called yesterday and asked to be cancelled. I had to spend WAY to much time on the phone with a guy who tried to not let me cancel. After it was all said in done, he said he would follow through, shut down all my profile pages on all your variety of websites and would send an email in a few minutes verifying that my account has been closed and no charges would be made to my account. it’s been 24 hours and I do not have an email verification yet.



love
nick




love
nick
 
I used to be with a similar concept online lead source but it was only $50 a month- most the leads are poor quality but at that rate it was good value as I was averaging 5 per day. I think these things represent a shift in leverage to the consumer from the status quo. Consumer punches data into a form and then start receiving calls/emails, you ring them up and feels like you have cold called them and that's how some of them act.

Do you have Adwords set up?
 
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  • #9
No adwords.....I just heard of it from you.

I dumped my sales rep over the phone on his voicemail. Felt bad, but I just gotta trust Nick.

I didn't realize you paid for every text....trimming is 40-60 regardless if you land the job....

The next two closest vendors are each over 50 miles away from SF. Fairfax up north and San Jose down south....

Anyhoo. I'm sure he gets it all the time.
 
Do you have a website Deva?

The beauty of Adwords is that its just so flexible. You have a daily spend that's capped to whichever amount you feel is appropriate for the current conditions, you can modify the amount instantly. You can also turn it off completely if you are swamped with work. I get my website guys to manage my Adwords campaign.
 
The site that was using is Australia's largest (Service Seeking). They advertise to the consumers that they can get them tree work done for $30 an hour plus they brag about applying downward pressure on trade services nationally. I opted out when they said they wanted 10 % of every job.
 
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  • #14
Arbormd.com

My wife "curates" the page.
I've got a ton of better pictures.....but just.....lot to do.

I'm like smart and stupid at the same time, I still don't get adwords.

I couldn't believe that there is no tree guy in the city using Homeadvisor.com. .........maybe if I had another crew that needed leads......but I'm happy right now....3 months out on my own booked out 2-3 weeks.
 
Your best leads will come from your on line presence Deva. People will Google "tree service" etc to find service. Most rarely use a phone book any more in your demographic.
You have a web site... Link it to your Yelp and Angies list. Don't need to buy in BTW.
Make a free Google page showing your service area and link you webby to that as well.
Make sure a business FB page is up and constantly updated with pictures and articles. Make sure all the people you know are invited to like your page. Maybe leave some reviews. Invite custys to do so.
The more likes and searches and hits, the higher up you go on the Google ladder with out having to pay a cent. You will be amazed.
 
Oh, and don't forget to do some flat footing.
Drop cards on realtors, insurance agents and hardware stores. Shake some hands. Have some bulletin boards at some health food stores or little markets around the corners? Pin some up.. Seriously... And shake a lot of hands. Rinse and repeat regular.
 
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  • #25
He called me back....I called him back.....we talked...I told him he was expensive.....I think I won his respect when I told him he was a quality individual and I wish he'd come do sales for me in the big city. I could tell he was blushing, then we said our goodbyes.
 
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