Thumtack.com as a source for leads

[John C Hansen, LEED AP]

The last time Thumbtack was discussed in this forum was about 4 years ago. And I only saw one comment that indicated marginal results.

Does anyone have recent experience using Thumbtack.com and would you please offer any pointers to improve the number of jobs that it will produce?

I signed up for it several weeks ago before my license came through. I get notices every day and they all seem appropriate types of inspection. But I have not yet bid on any. Are the clients mostly shopping for price? Do they really read the contractor profiles to make a decision? If anyone used thumbtack and then stopped, what did you use to replace that source of leads?

[Garry Sorrells]

This is what it is all about :2 Pay to send a quote
When a request is a good fit, pay to send a quote and a personal message.


>>>>>
If you were to get a 0.05% reply back to a quote I think you would be doing goon. Like a bulk mailing, a lot of expense for a very little return. Its in the numbers.

[John C Hansen, LEED AP]

Its in the numbers.

Garry, Thanks for this info. My question is about those numbers. I imagine every service type has a different ratio, and I wonder what it is for Home Inspectors who have used Thumbtack.com.

[Dan Cullen]

Garry, Thanks for this info. My question is about those numbers. I imagine every service type has a different ratio, and I wonder what it is for Home Inspectors who have used Thumbtack.com.

As you should know by now John we are the leading inspection firm in the Chicago area. I diligently tried Thumbtack on multiple occasions, had a great profile, did 5 or 6 'loss leader' inspections in order to get great reviews, and it still sucks big time. Complete waste of time and effort. Mostly bottom feeders looking for cheap inspections.

[John C Hansen, LEED AP]

Mostly bottom feeders looking for cheap inspections.

Thanks Dan. This was what I had been concerned about was the general profile of the clients using Thumbtack and other similar bidding sites. I can imagine that to get the jobs, the lowest bid would win. And as a result, the rest of the pros who are using the site would sink to the lowest bid price. I searched for any quantitative studies on the typical win/loss record, but found nothing but anecdotal stories. It will be interesting to see how long Thumbtack survives when every pro in the country has tried them and then moved on to other methods of getting connected to their clients.

[Kevin Wagstaff]

Thanks Dan. This was what I had been concerned about was the general profile of the clients using Thumbtack and other similar bidding sites. I can imagine that to get the jobs, the lowest bid would win. And as a result, the rest of the pros who are using the site would sink to the lowest bid price. I searched for any quantitative studies on the typical win/loss record, but found nothing but anecdotal stories. It will be interesting to see how long Thumbtack survives when every pro in the country has tried them and then moved on to other methods of getting connected to their clients.

Hey John/Dan,

I used it as a Realtor and my main inspector tried it out as well (I also competed against them when I worked at HomeAdvisor!) and we had similar ratios/results.

The only positive I can think of is if you had text alerts enabled, and you responded the second you got an alert and it was an agent? Otherwise, I do believe your time and money is better spent optimizing your site, so you're in local results (which are above the Thumbtack's of the world in search results) and maybe even organic, which links and content can get you there.

[John C Hansen, LEED AP]

Hey John/Dan,

I used it as a Realtor and my main inspector tried it out as well (I also competed against them when I worked at HomeAdvisor!) and we had similar ratios/results.

The only positive I can think of is if you had text alerts enabled, and you responded the second you got an alert and it was an agent?

Kevin, You mention "similar results" and I wonder what those results were? With 5 maximum bidders, did you get 20% of the bids? Or did you get more or less than the theoretical 20%

Lately, I have been seeing the number of requests decline and for those that I get on my phone, the 3 to 5 minutes that it might take me to send a quote is too long because the request has already received 5 quotes.

Why did you say: "... and it was an agent"? Do agents use thumbtack regularly to find inspectors? Why would the agents not cultivate a strong relationship with one or two (or three) inspectors?

[Kevin Wagstaff]

Kevin, You mention "similar results" and I wonder what those results were? With 5 maximum bidders, did you get 20% of the bids? Or did you get more or less than the theoretical 20%

Lately, I have been seeing the number of requests decline and for those that I get on my phone, the 3 to 5 minutes that it might take me to send a quote is too long because the request has already received 5 quotes.

Why did you say: "... and it was an agent"? Do agents use thumbtack regularly to find inspectors? Why would the agents not cultivate a strong relationship with one or two (or three) inspectors?

Hey John,

Sorry should have clarified, inspectors I worked with had similar results in that they responded fast and low and got some loss leaders jobs, but couldn't consistently get them at the price they deserved/wanted.

I do disagree from an SEO standpoint that it's a complete waste of time. I studied search results everyday when I worked at HA and Thumbtack has an incredibly strong SEO footprint (meaning they are well indexed and their directory pages show up for thousands of high volume queries across many contractor niches) so having solid reviews and a fully filled out profile does send Google positive signals and is recommended.

I believe they had some free credit offer to try them out, so it can't hurt to try it, put 20 min into filling out the profile and responding quick.

Re: Agent's searching. I worked with a number of agents that weren't happy with the inspectors they used, (in my case) left the industry, and I had a client complain about the Word Template report my other guy used, so agents will many times just do a google search in their area for home inspectors and boom - Thumbtack's directory page can often rank well, so no I wouldn't say agents regularly use it, but seeing an inspector on their with good reviews can only help perception.

I think agents definitely want to cultivate the relationships, it's when they're looking for a new one that you want to be everywhere they look!