$5 per Call--Good Investment?

[treeseer]

I got emailed yesterday with this offer. What do you think?



-----Original Message-----
From: "TreeEstimate.com"
Sent: Sep 18, 2007 4:54 PM
Subject: ISA Members, We need your help!

We at TreeEstimate.com respect your decision to belong to ISA. Therefore we are asking for your help in finding qualified Tree Services in your area and beyond. We receive Tree Estimate requests all across North America (U.S. & Canada) and need tree services locally to handle these requests. If you could please take a moment to make any recommendations for tree care professionals in your area this would be greatly appreciated as we value your opinion!



Thank you for your time,


Jessica
(419) 318-4455
[email protected]
www.TreeEstimate.com
P.O. Box 53053
Pettisville, OH 43553

----- Original Message -----
From: GuyM
To: TreeEstimate.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 6:43 PM
Subject: Re: ISA Members, We need your help!

Is that $5 for every time you send info from a caller?

Reply:
The fee for membership is $11.95 per year which covers any 5 zip codes of your choosing (each additional 5 zip codes would be an additional $11.95 per year). Each time we receive an estimate request from your membership zip codes you will be notified and billed (on a monthly basis) $5.00 per request.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to email or call at 419.318.4455.

Thank you for your interest in www.TreeEstimate.com

Sabrina
VP Development

 

[ASD]

we try ed "TreeServiceDirect.Com" for two years and just stopped using them as we have found that the estimate to contract rate is not very good and they charge $6 per lead

 

[BayouTree]

Looking at the site they promise a free estimate from the company they refer to so I guess you would have to agree to that. Is there any quality control on whom they allow to be members? No arbitration if there is a problem between a customer and tree company I suppose. Here 5 zip codes doesn't go too far maybe okay for some other areas. Seems like if you have a functional web site you would do just as good or better than having this service. It depends on how high this site ranks on some common searches. $5 per referal doesn't seem great. If it were $5 per signed contract referred or some other sliding scale based on the cost of the job that might be interesting.

Overall sounds like :censored:

 

[Sunrise Guy]

An outfit offering "many great leads on people seeking the services of an excellent Certified Arborist like you" called me a few times. I never asked for info until the last call, as it sounded like a scam. Then they told me that I would pay $6/lead whether I booked the gig or not. A fellow who works with me told me that he had used the service and it wasn't worth it. Much of the time you spend your time tracking down the people who supposedly called looking for your services. I suspect it's a boiler room operation of kids calling from the phone book and just asking each person who answers if they need their trees (or whatever) worked on. I passed on it, as I'm buy enough just keeping up with my own leads.

 

[M.D. Vaden]

I've avoided these because they seem to be dividing the leads between services that are not comparable for credentials and skill.

Honestly, I'd rather try Google Adwords and bid $5 per click.

Used to be 25 cents per click, but I think that ArborPro in Portland is bidding around $5 per click.

I reactivated my Google Adwords account two months ago, and tested where I would be positioned, and entering $5 per click did not suggest a 1st place Ad.

So my guess is that ArborPro is bidding at least $5 per click.

Google this ...

Portland Tree Service

And see if you see their Google Ad near the top, or to the right side.

They have done commendably with their website position in general, but it looks like they are depending on the Google Ads as well.

I quit paying for Google Ads as soon as I consistently reached the top half of the pages.

 

[Canyonbc]

RUN A AWAy...seems like a scam...

who is not stopping them from acting as who knows what acting as a client...having you look at a "job" then going back and the company charging you...

Phone book, references...and when times really get slow...well door to door

 

[mckeetree]

An outfit offering "many great leads on people seeking the services of an excellent Certified Arborist like you" called me a few times. I never asked for info until the last call, as it sounded like a scam. Then they told me that I would pay $6/lead whether I booked the gig or not. A fellow who works with me told me that he had used the service and it wasn't worth it. Much of the time you spend your time tracking down the people who supposedly called looking for your services. I suspect it's a boiler room operation of kids calling from the phone book and just asking each person who answers if they need their trees (or whatever) worked on. I passed on it, as I'm buy enough just keeping up with my own leads.

It's not a boiler room but might as well be. The leads you get are not worth a crap.

 

[Canyonbc]

I just have one question for everyone to think about...

Put your self in a homeowners shoes...

what are you going to do, if you want that dying Cottonwood in your backyard...

A. Phone Book
B. Google
C. Phonebook online

i am guessing...phonebook, or phonebook online

Think about it

 

[Ekka]

Just another POS website con job.

A 10 year old built that site, doesn't rank for crap.

They dont check the companies, even have a warning, just another go between trying to make a buck.

STEER CLEAR.

They're that dumb they haven't even filled out there keywords from the web template they used.

Here's the coding.

<meta name="description" content="Short description of your site here." />
<meta name="keywords" content="keywords, go, here, seperated, by, commas" />

Con artists, more like the fungus of the tree business, rack off fools!

 

[treeseer]

Dan, I wrote ISA about it and got a quick reply that they are working on firewalling these phishers.

Boiler room, yeah I envisioned this being done in someone's basement, staffed by their kids or enslaved illegal immigrants.

I get some callers that are such timewasting priceshoppers I would almost be willing to give $5 to NOT hear from them.

The money thing came to mind because I'm due to renew a yp ad, up from $80 to $83 a month. Most of my calls come from internet searchers and I'm too busy but still I figure I will renew. It's $56 for a column listing, $83 for a halfinch and $96 for an inch in Raleigh NC.

Seems way high but I'd miss too many if I was not in there.

 

[teamtree]

Sounds similar to TreeServiceDirect.com

I am a member and 95% of the calls/requests are people fishing for the best price...not service. I have very poor results with them and considering dropping them as my word of mouth referrals far exceed my capacity.

 

[treesquirrel]

You will spend a lot of time and money driving around doing quotes for many people just fishing for prices. I too tries TSD and I was blasted with requests and very few resulted in actual jobs.

I found it to be a place for those who want to play one company against another for price wars.

Advertise locally. Don't waste money.

 

[mckeetree]

You will spend a lot of time and money driving around doing quotes for many people just fishing for prices. I too tries TSD and I was blasted with requests and very few resulted in actual jobs.

I found it to be a place for those who want to play one company against another for price wars.

Advertise locally. Don't waste money.

Well said concerning TSD.

 

[rbtree]

Those services may well be legit.

I get leads from Service Magic, the largest contractor referral service. They cost me $17 a lead...and, yes some are poor, but some are great jobs.....it is working much better for me than my yellow page ads.

 

[Ekka]

Those services may well be legit.

A site is a site and legitimate as long as it is there and follows through with what it does. Whether that site actually has any credibility or marketing pull is for the consumer to decide. Many a consumer, and advertiser, has no idea what to look for in websites and the razzle and dazzle fools many into paying for crap.

I get leads from Service Magic, the largest contractor referral service. They cost me $17 a lead...and, yes some are poor, but some are great jobs.....it is working much better for me than my yellow page ads.

This is perhaps an example of things done better, same concept however they invest into decent services, perhaps promoting their site as a service to consumers just the way Yellow Pages does.

Directories on the internet have been getting a bad wrap. They're predominantly losing ranking and even getting hand filtered by Google (fair enough to).

You see, when most people search for a product or service they actually want real informative sites that do the work not a conglomerate of links in a directory. Hence why a well built website should out perform "link farms" and paid directories.

I would go as far as saying if you didn't pay for online advertising and invested your money into your own site with some-one who knew what they were doing (not blowing out their azz like many with razzle and dazzle) you'd pull top Google ranking without paying advertising.

So next time some-one searched say, tree removal seattle your site would come up ahead of directories just like this site did, without having to pay them. And that site isn't even very well built and it beat service magic.

 

[treeseer]

Those services may well be legit.

I get leads from Service Magic, the largest contractor referral service. They cost me $17 a lead...and, yes some are poor, but some are great jobs.....it is working much better for me than my yellow page ads.

Roger mayve it works for you because you all got bigger trees out there.:greenchainsaw: