Bid Clerk, Contractors.com - Need Advice

Park Place

Hello everyone -

With the start of the new year we have decided to turn on a online lead source (not that we have a lot of funds to invest in this - but word of mouth and refferals are not giving us as many leads as we need to survive) So I need to get the most "Bang for my Buck"- My boss wants to turn back on Service Magic but being CLOSELY monitored and jumping on leads immediatly - when we monitored them we seemed to be semi - sucessful but if I could find another site to use I would be happier.

I did a little looking into BidClerk.com and Contractors.com and they seem to be pretty decent - Have any of you used them? And if so what do you think of the leads you recieve? I also found one called allaroundthehome.com - Any users?

Also, we have started canvasing neighboorhoods while doing work in the area, but I need help with a 'script' - Nothing to pushy but would make people want to talk to us...

Any / ALL help you can give me would be much appreciated!!

precisionbuild

I would stay away from the lead places (unless you like paying money for nothing).

What you need to invest that money in is advertisement.

As far as canvassing, I would just put fliers in the doors and/or paper boxes of the neighborhood you are working in. Include a letter with it to explain you are in the neighborhood, etc.

Coastwide

I tried Bidclerk since they seemed to have alot of leads in my area, but once I starting trying to make contact with the HOs or company, I could never get a response or even an answering machine. I was signed up for 6 months and never landed a job off there. I have better luck with CL and Angies list. Angies list does work, it works like a refferal program and it has made me some money in the last year.

silvertree

I never tried Bidclerk, but Contractor.com was a bad experience for me. Just as bad as Everycontractor.com (well EC.com) was the worst, but damn bad.
I know these services work for some people, but I can't deal with the call in the first 10 seconds approach. Good luck!

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Park Place

Thanks for the response - What is CL? And how did you get involved with Angie's List?? Or how do I find out if I am on it??

precisionbuild

CL=Craigslist.
Angieslist= http://www.angieslist.com/Angieslist/

cmecham

In my opinion the pay per lead services are not worth much. I speak to lots of contractors about lead generation and they all say the same thing. The leads are cold. The leads don't respond. The leads don't know why you're calling them. There are six other contractors chasing the same lead. And more . . .

I think you're much better off putting money into your own web site and using organic SEO and Google Adwords to drive traffic.

Of course I would recommend that you hire an expert to help you with all of this as it can be extremely complex. Anyone who tells you it's easy or painless or cheap is either completely ignorant or is just lying.

But . . . what you'll have down the road is a tool that will work for you. Unlike pay per lead where you just have credit card receipts. When you work with an expert to build your site and get traffic to it, you actually build something that will pay you in the long run.

Craig

HomeSealed

I had luck with contractor.com about 3-4 yrs ago, then they changed things around and good leads dried up.

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whph2000

WOW, I can't believe all the bad talk about lead generation services. My company spends about $15,000.00 a year on lead service companies and we do at least a million dollars a year in work from them. My guess would be you guys aren't spending enough money on the leads. Sure a lot of them are bad leads and a waste of time but the good ones more than make up for the bad ones.

Kenny K

can you give us some examples of these lead compaines

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Josh.08

Bidclerk is ok. You have to be in a Major Metro Area or willing to travel long distances to drum up some work off of it though. The price is about $50 dollars a month. I haven't landed a huge job yet, but this year I have completed 4 jobs from the Contacts I have built from that site.

This is the only National Lead Service I use. I also use a small local service that I get some small to medium size contracts from.

Five Star

i also had bad luck with every contractor .com stay away from them

Five Star

there the ones that make all the money. they sell those leads upto 4 times and then they all have sister companys and they sell the same lead another 4-8 times you have better odds at blackjack.

Paul Joseph

I use ************************. You buy zip codes so you dont have to compete against the guys who work for free.
Paul

http://www.PrecisionPlusHomeImprovements.com

Paul Joseph

I use homeimprovementexpodot com from above