I have a question.

How do you know you would never have had them otherwise?

I am not saying it is right ir wing just asking where this idea originates?

Many of the gigs I booked on Thumbtack were types of events that I have never marketed to online, in person, or in any other way. It seems unlikely they would have found me or I them without the Thumbtack service sending leads out to "any magician in the area". And one of them opened my eyes to a whole market that hadn't occurred to me, which I now do many of.

It's great you've found success with it - but it is still a ...

Click here to view attached image.

Have you heard that Thumbtack got penalized today by Google for "unnatural linking"? Their site no longer comes up on organic searches. This is a good lesson for all of us in our SEO.

I hate thumbtack.

You may have seen the recent news about Thumbtack and the penalty it received from Google for "unnatural linking." We wanted to take this opportunity to provide more context on this news and explain GigMasters’ position and best practices.
Unnatural linking refers to the creation of links that are intended to improve search rankings but are not editorially placed or vouched for by a site’s owner. Google does not allow this practice. As part of its penalty, Google has removed Thumbtack from its organic search database. This means that Thumbtack’s services and vendors will not show up when consumers run relevant Google searches.

"We want to assure you that GigMasters is extremely careful to follow guidelines established by Google and all other search engines. Here are a few of the practices our SEO team follows:

We closely follow John Mueller, Google’s best practices authority, to stay up-to-date with any algorithm changes and new guidelines.
We do not buy links, participate in any private linking networks, or cloak and hide keywords on our site. This is the technical way of saying – we do not participate in any linking practices that don't follow Google's best practices.
Instead, we create unique in-house content like videos, blog posts, social media conversations, media articles and other means of quality. This is the type of content that Google values and promotes. We are committed to providing you the best experience possible. If you have any questions or thoughts, please do not hesitate to let us know. "

Gig masters

Go Gigmasters

Go SEO

The Thumbtack penalty just goes to show that you shouldn't rely on other businesses (Thumbtack, Gig Masters, Gig Salad, etc.) for the majority of your business leads.

Plus, buying links is a huge no-no and Thumbtack did just that.

I'd put my money on it that if you have a backlink to Thumbtack (ie. Badge) you might get penalized. Add a nofollow attribute or remove it.

Josh

Well said, Josh.

It started yesterday:

http://www.thesempost.com/thumbtack-goog......y-links/

https://plus.google.com/+RandFishkin/posts/WAkm8FcaroS

http://www.webpronews.com/google-penaliz......-2015-06

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/32020

Gigmasters might be next.

Why would gigmasters be next? Apparently they say they don't play such games. Do you know something we don't?

Gigmasters has "toxic" backlinks as well. Not as many as Thumbtack, but then Gigmasters isn't owned by Google.

you can audit a domain and see the backlink structure and what types of links they have.

Bad SEO can be fixed and cleaned up that service is called "Penalty Recovery" and it aint cheap...
We charge 7500+ for it, and we are one of the cheaper solutions in our market.

Reality Gigmasters corporate has no clue if they are doing it. ONLY the guys doing the SEO know for sure.
Here is the other thing. It could be negative SEO and they just can't see it.

But yeah if you have links from Thumbtack I would log into it and see if you can nofollow the link, OR
remove the link.. If not log into webmaster tools and DISAVOW it

A link from a penalized site to your site is TOXIC and hurts your SEO period. You might not get a direct penalty but your rankings will suffer.
If your site saw more than a 5 spot drop on ALL search terms you rank for send me a message I will audit your site to verify if its penalized.

Also keep in mind Google changes the rules then penalizes people for breaking the new rules.. You have to pay attention or know someone that does.

I had a feeling Gigmasters was cheating one way or another.

Phillips and Henry come up the most on my searches but Ive nothing from them. Thumbtack has gone down in searches in my area. I had all my notifications turned off but recently turned them back on. See what happens.

Back again to the original topic. It was mentioned that thumbtack encourages low end of the market and that magicians have to reduce their rates to compete there.

Some basic questions:
What makes thumbtack position as low end?

And I realize that when you list along side of other magicians, some people might compare on price, but can't you just as easily quote the same price there as you did elsewhere and not compete on price? (Maybe you'll say you can't do that because the customer can't see your full branding.) Just curious.

I would take this as only an "opinion" and with a grain of salt. Many say the same about Gigmasters and others and it has been proven not true. Lou is a respectable guy that has offered his own personal experience on getting $2,500 bookings (more than once) and 40 actual bookings at his regular price or more normal price, so again there may be some proof against this claim.

We must remember most that say this are kids or family magicians, and serve the consumer market. They likely do not have a system in place for accepting, working with and processing leads, so therefore these inadequacies lead them to self-justify that it is "only low end leads". Also many are part-time, which can and does make a difference is how , how soon and the way the respond and process these leads and inquiries. Plus "low-end" can mean different things to different people. "Low-end" to a kids family magician may be $100-$175 for a booking, while "low-end" to a trade show or professional market performer may bean $750-$1000. If the person who said this was serving mostly professional performance markets, sure, most on Thumbtack would be consider leads he may deem "low-end".

So it is important to separate opinion from fact and different interpretations of the term "low-end" into consideration. Most people read these posts as they pertain to THEM, not as they are necessarily intended by the OP as we see over and over again here.

My personal experience with TT has been better than with Gigmasters or Gigsalad.

From Thumbtack, I got a $400 gig, an $800 gig, a $900, a $1200, another $1200, and a $1250 gig...

$5,750 all in December, 2017.

And all from Thumbtack.

I've run the numbers and I'm profiting.
My success with Gigmasters and Gigsalad has been almost zero.
For what it's worth, I don't live in Los Angeles. All the gigs were walk-around gigs in the Midwest.

That is still low end.

This isn't about the actual bookings but the scalability of the lead source.

This is not a stable or viable long term marketing model.

You need to either have diverse marketing channels or a diverse enough list so that if 1 goes down you don't lose your business.

Thank you, Mike. Glad to hear there's still room between me and the ceiling.

So $1,200 is still "low end?"

By "scalability" of the lead source, do you mean that because you don't have the contact info of the lead?