If you are a professional photographer in Hawaii, you would already know about the business tactics of Yelp. Their tactics are nothing short of Being the Mafia of the internet, absolutely hounding you all day, making calls one after the other all day. When you block their number they find another number to call you on, and it may look like a local number that is calling you, so you think it’s someone you know? they do this on purpose so you will pick up the phone of course. When you talk to them on the phone and explain to them you are not interested in advertising with them, you may think they got the message and will not bother you again? WRONG…then they simply pass you onto another salesperson at Yelp who will continue the aggressive sales pitch all day and every day. They call because they want you to advertise your photography services with them, they want your money, give me and show me the money…and they also charge a lot more than google adwords, you can be paying 10 times more for a keyword like Maui Photographers or Oahu Photographers or Kauai Photographers or Big Island Photographers and you can only set your daily budget but not set the amount of money you spend on a particular keyword, so you could be spending $16 a click as opposed to google adwords $2.00 a click that you can control yourself. This way of advertising from YELP is absolute madness and I am shocked anyone would do this. Google is a far better platform than Yelp for advertising your photography services like family portraits, senior portraits, weddings, engagements, surprise proposals, maternity, and fashion photography.
But you have to hand it to YELP, whenever you type in any keyword like Maui family Photographers, Oahu Family Photographers, Kauai Family Photographers or the Big Island photographers, yelp will always be at the top of Google organically and they list all the photographers that are on their website in random order and they put their reviews at the side of them. You may see TOP 35 MAUI PHOTOGRAPHERS: Jim boony photography 88 reviews | Tom toddy 103 Reviews TOP 55 KAUAI FAMILY PHOTOGRApHERS: Peter Poodle Photography 77 Reviews | Jennifer Joke 37 Reviews… So you get my point. Years back we were asked by our clients who said they wanted to leave us a Five Star Review and asked us where to go. We use to say YELP but when they left us a review, YELP would accuse them of lying and they put their review in a NoT Recommend section of YELP’s website, all because our clients did not go on yelp often enough…HOW UNFAIR IS THAT? These days we always tell our clients to NEVER EVER go to yelp because if you do NOT surf YELP often and you leave a review, they will punish you and call you a lier and put your review in NOT RECOMMENDED section, so it’s a complete waste of time and extremely UNFAIR.
So if you see go on Yelp and you see TOP 21 OAHU PHOTOGRAPHERS: Jimmy juice Photography 77 Reviews : Joyce Jolly Photography 85 Reviews, TOP 104 KAUAI PHOTOGRAPHERS: Ken kickback Photography 23 Reviews: Paul Piper 65 Reviews: So these photographers may also have some not recommended reviews in their profile but it doesn’t mean they are bad reviews, it just means that YELP wants you to tell everyone to go more often on YELP, that way they make more money from more viewers (EVIL PLAN ) and supposedly the reviews will eventually be put into the good section and away from the not recommend section.
Other websites that show up for popular ways for photographers to show off their services and is also a free place to get a link is the well known and fun Pinterest. Pinterest shows up well on google with creative titles with words like 25 Best Maui Photographers: What you may also see are Top 5 Maui Family Photographers: Or The most affordable couples photography in Waikiki: Others you may see are Top 15 Brides most preferred Wedding Photographers Of Hawaii: 18 Top Engagement Photographers of Honolulu:
We live in a world where getting attention is becoming more difficult, so we all try to create better ways of grabbing attention and say just about anything to get noticed. So who should you believe and who to stay away from? Well thankfully we all have different tastes, so of course, you should start clicking away and find the style that suits you the most. Although at 808 Pictures we have a variety of styles that suit just about everyone’s taste and we are located on all islands of Hawaii from 7.00 am to 10.00 pm 7 days a week.
