I can only say that I signed up for the free trial and then got hounded mercislessly by the sales team. Enough to turn me off completely.

I had a PartyPop sales rep call me and actually hang up on me when I told him that it wasn't in the budget for me at this time. No goodbye, no "thank you for your time", just click. I was furious. I will never, ever do business with them. Period.

I went ahead and stayed with Party Pop throughout last year. I did in fact see a slight increase in the number of visits to my website, but I don't feel Party Pop contributed to that increase any more than other sites where I have free listings.

I can say I did not receive a single inquiry for wedding video services that came from Party Pop. Not one. I flat refused to engage in any additional advertising on their site.

Thank you so much for your follow-up. Just out of curiosity, do you use Google analytics or any other software to track how people get to your site? If not, you might want to check it out. It is free and gives you loads of great info about your visitors...

Unless the lead provider is working in a field that's closed to you why spend money getting someone else biigger rather than getting your own site better positioned? It's all about comfort and perceived work.

A relative of mine is launching a website I've helped her design promoting a holiday cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon - the Shakespeare one. She's mesmerised by the desirability of getting on every "visit" site featuring holiday accommodation in that area and is concentrating on appearing on them "along with the competitors" and is unmoved by my urging to get her own site to No1 position on the relevant pages.

The other disadvantage is that she knows the town very well having been brought up there, rather than looking at the property from the point of view of the potential visitor eg it is 40 minutes drive from Oxford which I bet most people visiting Oxford and not finding suitable accommodation would know.

By all means link but my best reward is our site appearing on the first page of our chosen keywords. Sometimnes it feels as if people like Partypop, bride magazines and wedding fair organisers are the only people making money in our business and I'm loathe to make them more.

Excellent point Philip, but once you have exhausted every bit of SEO you can do, then it is time for SEM and these sites, unfortunately, tend to have very high rankings across the keywords we love to use. Sometimes it is worth investing in a site like this to get more leads sometimes it is not. In the attachment you can see that using the first 4 keywords from your site, Partypop ends up as the number one result. That is not to say I recommend Party pop, because I don't. It is to say that SEO will only get you so far... I think advertising on Facebook (see http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/wedding-...marketing.html for a good thread on this subject), AdWords, Bridal Fairs, etc are much better but it is worthwhile to consider these other sites if you have the money to burn....

I also want to add to say that I agree with you 100% on loathing making them money. These pay for use "hubs" eat up everyone's rankings and feel there should be someway of filtering them out and in my experience they override good SEO to the point where it is not enough....

Re: partypop.com. Ever heard of them?
 

Just had someone call me. I offered them a deal, I said, I'll take a paid listing if I can pay at the end of the year term, only if I make money off the listing. I'm not sure if they'll go for it. lol.