# homeadvisor alternatives?



## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

If you add up all the money that you have paid to home advisor, I’m willing to bet it would come to an amount that could have purchased you a very good package with a quality SEO firm. They could’ve set up a website, your Google properties, and your online presence in a way that would continue to bring you customers for many years.

In addition to what I just mentioned, there are other options that people have varying opinions about. Right now I think the best option is google local service ads. But I am not sure if they are available in your rural area.

They work much better than home advisor since you only pay for a lead that you actually get. You pay when the customer calls you. With home advisor, you pay for a lead that they give to many other contractors that you are competing with.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

don't really know what SEO means. I've talked to google a while back, seemed very pricy, for a very small area. I live in the boondocks so would need a large coverage aera, might have to rethink that now actually. Thing is, if I might be willing to try something like that I don't know what the results would be. And I think i'd be locked in to the agreement for a specific amount of time. I like the idea of only paying if customer calls me!


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

joebeadg said:


> don't really know what SEO means.


 SEO is search engine optimization. Even in the most rural area, people use Google to find services. As you said, the phonebook is finished, the internet took over.

SEO is what you do to get your business page/listing in front of people searching for an electrician. It is a way to put your business ahead of all your competition. 



> I've talked to google a while back, seemed very pricy, for a very small area.


 How much? I can't imagine that it is more than Home Advisor for a rural area. I live in the most major metro area and it's far less than the $55 you mentioned.



> I live in the boondocks so would need a large coverage aera, might have to rethink that now actually.


 As far as I know, you can increase your service area without paying more.



> Thing is, if I might be willing to try something like that I don't know what the results would be. And I think i'd be locked in to the agreement for a specific amount of time. I like the idea of only paying if customer calls me!


 The nice thing about pay per click or pay per call is that you can turn it on instantly and get calls, then turn it off when you are busy. The bad thing is that you have to continue to pay.

SEO is the opposite. The money (and my own work) that I put into SEO years ago continues to bring me new customers daily, even though I don't spend any money on it (just website hosting and domain name registration, a minimal yearly fee).

If I were you, I would definitely get yourself a web presence. You need your business online, every day that you wait you are hurting your future. Website, directory listings, Google properties setup, and basic local SEO. That is what you need. After that you can switch to Local Service Ads or anything else that you want. But having your basic web presence is very important, IMO.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

so, if I hooked up with google, do they do all that? SEO, website , directory, properties setup?


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

joebeadg said:


> so, if I hooked up with google, do they do all that? SEO, website , directory, properties setup?


Nope, none of it. You need an SEO professional to do that.

Google does offer some services. Adwords is one of them, which is advertisements that you use to get people to click thru to your website or a landing page. And the newer Local Service Ads, which is an advertisement that they put up at the top and you pay when someone calls you. This is a good thing to use, IMO. I turn it on and off as needed.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

OK, thank you so much for the info. I'm really old school, so I'm not really up on all this stuff, but I should probably start researching this,


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

joebeadg said:


> OK, thank you so much for the info. I'm really old school, so I'm not really up on all this stuff, but I should probably start researching this,


Yup. And just remember, 95% of the SEO companies out there are crap. A large portion are straight up scammers, the rest are idiots who don't know what they are doing and will set things up incorrectly.

You need to pay a real firm to do it. And it will cost you money. But if done right you WILL receive a great return on your investment. Since you have been paying up to $55 for leads from HA that you haven't even heard back from, then you already understand that this game can be expensive.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

Yea, and theres the problem, most are scams or incompetent. I find that with a lot of things, I'm afraid to deal with anyone anymore. Its all sh-t out there. In any field.


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## mjbasford (Oct 2, 2016)

Hack is right. SEO is the answer. Based on your described skillset, it will cost ALOT upfront for a good site and SEO, but as he said, years and years of revenue with basic upkeep coats. Learn basic web site skills to mitigate the recurring costs.

Edited to add:. Google local seo, your town SEO (a few variations/different names/ different areas). If they're worth their salt, you'll see a common link (not a paid one). They may suck, but a good starting point. Selling SEO, be good at your own.


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

mjbasford said:


> Hack is right. SEO is the answer. Based on your described skillset, it will cost ALOT upfront for a good site and SEO, but as he said, years and years of revenue with basic upkeep coats. Learn basic web site skills to mitigate the recurring costs.
> 
> Edited to add:. Google local seo, your town SEO (a few variations/different names/ different areas). If they're worth their salt, you'll see a common link (not a paid one). They may suck, but a good starting point. Selling SEO, be good at your own.


Well I think this type of thing is right in Hacks wheelhouse and has been for a long while.


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## JoeSparky (Mar 25, 2010)

Home Advisor and Angie's list are owned by the same scammers. Same scammers who changed their name from Service Magic because they ran out of contractors to rip off with that name.


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

JoeSparky said:


> Home Advisor and Angie's list are owned by the same scammers. Same scammers who changed their name from Service Magic because they ran out of contractors to rip off with that name.


They leave you with a bad taste in your mouth?


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## JoeSparky (Mar 25, 2010)

MechanicalDVR said:


> They leave you with a bad taste in your mouth?


Not personally. I've heard enough bad stories about them that I wouldn't do business with them. 

To the OP. There are tons of places online to get your business listed for free. Google my business, Yelp, yellowpages.com, porch etc. Get your info up every place you can. Put links back to your website at all of them if you can and keep the information consistent between websites. That is a basic start to SEO and you can do all that for free. Google my business is good for a few calls a month for me. My Yelp free listing is good for sometimes a few a week, but only if you turn the direct message feature on. 
Beyond that, @ Hackwork is right. SEO either done by a paid professional or done by yourself if you have the time to invest will pay you back long after you stop paying for it. Then you don't have to pay a dime again to Scam Adviser only to bid against 5 of your colleagues on a piss ant job.


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

JoeSparky said:


> Not personally. I've heard enough bad stories about them that I wouldn't do business with them.
> 
> To the OP. There are tons of places online to get your business listed for free. Google my business, Yelp, yellowpages.com, porch etc. Get your info up every place you can. Put links back to your website at all of them if you can and keep the information consistent between websites. That is a basic start to SEO and you can do all that for free. Google my business is good for a few calls a month for me. My Yelp free listing is good for sometimes a few a week, but only if you turn the direct message feature on.
> Beyond that, @ Hackwork is right. SEO either done by a paid professional or done by yourself if you have the time to invest will pay you back long after you stop paying for it. Then you don't have to pay a dime again to Scam Adviser only to bid against 5 of your colleagues on a piss ant job.



Was just curious and I agree with you.


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

Home Advisor is open about the rebranding from Service Magic. I don't like them at all, but I don't think they are a scam company. Just a typical business looking to make a profit. Google rebranded it's Local Service Ads 3 times now, and they are barely even fully released.

With that said, I wouldn't ever use a service that charged me a lot of money for a lead that they gave to my competitors, and expect me to get the job only by rushing to call first and have the lowest price.

As for SEO, joebeadg can certainly do a lot of the free stuff, but from my understanding of his current knowledge and experience with this, it would take a significant amount of his time. And it needs to be done right. So it might be best to have an SEO pro just take care of it. Chances are that he would have to go back and make changes to what joebeadg did anyway (that's not a dig at you, joebeadg).

As for Google My Business helping, that is true. But usually it only helps if you have a website with some on-page SEO, enough citations, and some reviews. Until then, it's just one in a million.

Also, the links from directories and other online listing sources are just about worthless. They are no-follow so they don't count as links for your website. Believe it or not, when it comes to local SEO, the "citation" of your business name, phone number, and address on those listing and other websites will help your own website more than a link to it.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

thank u, those free things u mentioned I will look into. I do think HA is kind of scamish in the way its layed out. People go on ther many times not intending to have contractors contact them, they just meant to be browsing. The way the site is set up you unknowingly do just that. I've gone on there to just browse, but end up stopping because I can't even figure out how too! lol When you get a phony bad review HA won't delete it, I don't mean a legit bad review, but a phony one. They do nothing for the contractor. I'd like to go back to the old days! LOL


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## WPNortheast (Jun 4, 2017)

My wife set up SEO for us on google. 6 years in and we have more work than we can do. When I was just getting started i advertised in a small local paper which got lots of crap but enough good jobs to make it worthwhile (incl. a 5000+ sq foot house) and i also paid "Networx" for leads. Was pretty cheap and got me lots of work. Good luck!


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## Nick'sElectricLLC (Aug 17, 2019)

Facebook!!!!!!! Can't stress that enough. Been through the Home Advisor crap, been through the random search engines nonsense. Make a post with a cool pic on it, and boost it for any amount of money. I usually select my audience within a 30 mile radius of the main city around me, and throw 200-400 bucks at it for a week run. It really does work!! Check out my page, NicksElectricLLC on Facebook and scroll through the last 2 years of posts ive made. When I'm low on customers or in a drought, I boost a FB post.


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## Nick'sElectricLLC (Aug 17, 2019)

I used to "freeze" the leads on Home Advisor, (2 weeks was the max), and they would restart after midnight and I'd wake up to several hundred dollars of leads I didnt want and got nothing from.


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

Nick'sElectricLLC said:


> Facebook!!!!!!! Can't stress that enough. Been through the Home Advisor crap, been through the random search engines nonsense. Make a post with a cool pic on it, and boost it for any amount of money. I usually select my audience within a 30 mile radius of the main city around me, and throw 200-400 bucks at it for a week run. It really does work!! Check out my page, NicksElectricLLC on Facebook and scroll through the last 2 years of posts ive made. When I'm low on customers or in a drought, I boost a FB post.


Facebook is a great place to advertise, but it's the same as anything else, it has to be done right.

$200-400 is a very high spend for 1 week. With that put into an AdWords campaign you may very well get twice the ROI. Or not.

With that amount over a 2-3 month period put into good SEO, you might get 100 times the ROI for years.

"the random search engines nonsense" :vs_laugh: Nonsense, right :vs_laugh:


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## Nick'sElectricLLC (Aug 17, 2019)

HackWork said:


> Facebook is a great place to advertise, but it's the same as anything else, it has to be done right.
> 
> $200-400 is a very high spend for 1 week. With that put into an AdWords campaign you may very well get twice the ROI. Or not.
> 
> ...


Well take my advice or not, but it's worked for me. Very few people search google or yahoo for "Electricians around me" anymore. Tons of them get on Facebook and say "Who do you recommend?" to their friends. 

And I don't think 200-400 is "very high" for a week. But then again I have 10 expensive union electricians on my payroll. Verizon (my main customer) had some setbacks in some of our bigger jobs so I put a $400 ad out on Facebook to keep a few guys busy last week. Got so many calls and messages I had to cancel the ad 3 days in. Just one service call netted me $800 in profit after the JW and App were paid. You must spend money to make money, until you are well established.


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

Nick'sElectricLLC said:


> Well take my advice or not, but it's worked for me. *Very few people search google or yahoo for "Electricians around me" anymore.*


 After reading what you just said, I’m not gonna take any of your advice. 



> Tons of them get on Facebook and say "Who do you recommen?" to their friends.


 Yes, many people do this. I get a lot of business this way. But it has absolutely nothing to do with promoting a post. I’ve never spent a cent on Facebook.

I ignored the rest of your chest thumping about how big and great your company is. Let me warn you, no one here will be impressed.


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## joebeadg (Oct 7, 2008)

Nick, you're rebuttel to Sonny's review is priceless! I just got one and its giving me some ideas. LOL


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## HackWork (Oct 2, 2009)

joebeadg said:


> Nick, you're rebuttel to Sonny's review is priceless! I just got one and its giving me some ideas. LOL


 You got a bad review? :sad:

You really have to be careful with how you respond to negative reviews. I know that everything inside of you wants to put that asshole in his place, but to the average person reading it, it doesn’t always look very good. The best way to respond to a negative review is to be apologetic and explain that you want to do anything to make the customer happy, while just carefully sliding in a small part explaining the truth and how it wasn’t your fault.

I have read thousands of reviews for contractors, it’s almost become a hobby LOL. I can tell you that it always looks much better when the contractor takes the “corporate publicist route” versus being adversarial.


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## Wiremancer (Aug 4, 2019)

I know nothing of alternatives to homeadvisor but I wanted to pop in here to say those guys are ASSHATS, mofo's call and email me almost every day to try to get me caught in the tangled web they weave.


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## Jerome208 (May 10, 2013)

Me too, I have never done a nickel of business with them but they keep pestering on the phone and email and text messages, I block them but they keep hammering away, can't take a hint.


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## kb1jb1 (Nov 11, 2017)

Can one quit Home advisor at anytime? I made the mistake and now I am racking up lead fees. It sounded good and I met an electrician who uses them and likes them. Most Homeowners do not answer the phone or emails and I still get charged. One lead fee was $55.00 for hanging a simple kitchen light.


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## AdvancedE&S (Feb 14, 2018)

HackWork said:


> Facebook is a great place to advertise, but it's the same as anything else, it has to be done right.
> 
> $200-400 is a very high spend for 1 week. With that put into an AdWords campaign you may very well get twice the ROI. Or not.
> 
> ...


Hack, I see your posts on every ad thread singing the praises of SEO and it could almost be copied and pasted for each thread. One of the things you always mention is finding the right SEO company to do the work. What has your experience been with this? A larger company? A smaller local company? You say there are a lot of hacks out there. What has been your experience in narrowing down to find the ones who are legit.


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## Coppersmith (Aug 11, 2017)

I'd like to add a bit about Google's Adwords service. (Disclaimer: I haven't used it in over a year so maybe it's changed.) 

My research says it is very common for people to do a Google search for what they need including "Electrician [name of town]" or "Electrician near me". It is also very common for people to call electricians on the first page of search results and never scroll down to page two and beyond. So therefore it is very important to be on page one of search results to get the most action.

Adwords works by tying your ad to a list of search phrases you specify. Your ad is only inserted into the search results if the person is using one of your selected phrases. So if you buy "Electricians near me" and near me is in your selected location the ad will be inserted into the search results.

Now here is the most important point. You are competing with all the other Adword users who are buying the selected phrase. Everybody who is paying for that phrase will be shown in the search results in order of PAYMENT AMOUNT. You decide how much you are willing to pay to have your ad placed. There is no set amount. It can be 10 cents or 10 dollars. Ten dollars will get you higher in the search results. Ten cents may get you on page 8. 

I live in a market with lots of competitors. Last time I placed an ad, It took $20 per exposure for me to be first in the search results. For $10, I was toward the bottom of page one. In a rural area with far fewer competitors those amounts would likely be much less. The only way to know is to experiment.


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## Coppersmith (Aug 11, 2017)

I would like to further add that the best and least expensive advertising is person-to-person referrals. These happen when someone asks a stranger, friend or relative "do you know a good electrician?" The answers to that question are much more highly trusted than any advertising you can buy. You can just do a good job and hope this will happen organically, or you can do things to make it happen much more frequently:

Join a networking group like BNI.
Make it easy for people to post reviews online. (But make sure they are happy with you first.)
Make a deal with other tradespersons you run into to recommend each other to people who ask. (But make sure the other tradesperson actually does good quality work.)
Offer a reward to past clients that recommend your services that results in a sale.


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