I ran across a reference to Thumbtack on Chris Brogans blog earlier today and followed his link to Thumbtack.com. I think it is a really powerful tool for people providing freelance type services but I suppose you could utilize it for other things as well. I recently blogged about On the Fly Expertise connections and consider it a related subject. Please let me know what you think via comments.
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About Joe Hackman
In Joe's day job he helps manufacturers improve operational efficiency. Living in the Sierra Foothills.
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We love Thumbtack and the services they offer.
@EagleVanLines thanks for your comment, glad you are also a fan of Thumbtack.
Hi Joe,
Was looking up for reviews for thumbtack.com I found this helpful and your services interesting. Thanks for the great informatoin.
@CharlotteDennyHenley glad you found it helpful Charlotte, thanks for taking the time to let me know. If you start to use the service I’d enjoy hearing your feedback on it. I have no affiliation with them but I think it is an interesting concept.
Got a spam from them and wasn’t impressed. The implication from “Heather Madison” was that it was a personal email – subject: “Looking for copywriters”. Body starts: “Hey Jonathan, I’ve been searching for copywriters, and I was excited to find you.”
No doubt.
They won’t be getting my business as a provider or a seeker of services.
@jonathanacohen sounds like a weak pitch Jonathan. I am always sharing that kind of stuff with ginidietrich she writes about lame PR pitches on Spinsucks. Thumbtack does seem to be above board but if that was truly from them it is super lame.
Thanks for sharing.
We received essentially the same spam, as jonathanacohen, only directed towards Wedding Planners, which we are not. And when I searched for a local Florist, which we are, I received a list of hits that included shops hundreds of miles from the search target.
I also noticed a paragraph in their Terms of Use:
—————————————
PROFILES AND OFFERS CANNOT USE TECHNIQUES TO AVOID OR CIRCUMVENT THUMBTACK FEES
Subject to any exceptions set forth in these Terms of Use or Additional Policies, if any, service professionals shall not: (a) offer a catalog or a link to a third-party website from which Service Users or any Registered User or user of the Website may obtain the Service directly; (b) exceed multiple Posting limits; (c) post a single Service but offer additional identical services in the Service description; (d) charge fees for traveling further than desired to provide the Service; (e) offer the opportunity through Thumbtack to purchase the Service or any other service outside of Thumbtack; (f) use their Profile page or user name to promote services not offered on or through the Website and/or prohibited services.
—————————————
Not good at all.
@jonathanacohen Hi Jonathan (and Joe) – thanks for raising this.
Actually, Heather’s our Community Manager (you can see her here:http://www.thumbtack.com/who). 🙂
Regarding the email, we look for people who we think would be qualified to list on our site and reach out to them. You can see the amount of business that we’re bringing to people who are listed on our site here: http://blog.thumbtack.com/2011/05/10/bigger-and-better-thumbtack-celebrates-new-milestones/
For the most part people seem to like our service and the business we bring them – so we’re sorry you were disappointed. We hope there’s something we can do to win you over!
@jonathanacohen Hi Jonathan (and Joe) – thanks for raising this. Actually, Heather’s our Community Manager. You can see her here: http://www.thumbtack.com/who 🙂
Regarding the email, we look for people who we think would be qualified to list on our site and reach out to them. You can see the amount of business that we’re bringing to people who are listed on our site here: http://blog.thumbtack.com/2011/05/10/bigger-and-better-thumbtack-celebrates-new-milestones/
For the most part people seem to like our service and the business we bring them – so we’re sorry you were disappointed. We hope there’s something we can do to win you over!
Sander Daniels
Co-Founder, Director of User Happiness at Thumbtack.com
@rjoeriso Hi rjoeriso – Thanks to you as well for raising these issues.
Regarding the search issue – yes, this is a tough technical issue that we’re currently working on. The basic issue is that we show services that are willing to work over the phone or by mail if there aren’t enough florists in your area to fill the search results. We don’t have 20 florists signed up in every town in the U.S. – so in these cases we show florists across the country who have told us they are willing to ship flowers to you. Many local florists are willing to ship flowers nationwide, and I think this is probably what you were seeing.
Regarding the Terms of Use, that paragraph is talking about the one feature on our site that we charge for – jobs posted on our site that we email you about. We think it’s fair to hold you to your word if you sign up for the one feature we charge for. Almost all features on our site are free, which you can read more about here: http://www.thumbtack.com/benefits
We are working every day to become the safest and most trusted marketplace for local services on the Internet. We’re definitely not perfect, but we want to do everything we can to meet your expectations.
Sounds like we didn’t meet your expectations this time – but hopefully we’ll be able to improve our services and win you over in the future!
Sander Daniels
Co-Founder, Director of User Happiness at Thumbtack.com
thumbtack.com is SO SPAMMY! Every single time I place an ad on craigslist.com (it’s the ONLY place I advertise!) I get SPAM from “Heather Madison” representing thumbtack.com. I hope they get sued for SPAMING! Hard working people are on craiglist.com searching for real jobs and we are forced to delete and deal with unwanted and unsolicited SPAM mail from thumbtack.com. If the site was any good, they wouldnt be resorting to illegal tactics in order to draw traffic to their site.
Here is a copy of the latest SPAM I received from thumbtack.com:
Hey there, I just received a request from a user on our site for a housecleaner in San Francisco, and I thought you’d be a perfect fit. Here’s what they need: I have a 2 bedroom apt in the mission that’s ~1000 sf. I do not have cleaning supplies, so I will need the cleaner to provide his / her own. We would like the cleaning to occur during the week and someone can be home during the workday while the cleaning occurs. If you are interested, please respond to this customer now: http://www.thumbtack.com/request/nsrma8h7 Thanks, and I hope this works out for you! ~Heather Heather Madison heather@thumbtack.com 415-545-8225 1001 Page St, Suite #45, San Francisco, CA P.S. Wondering about Thumbtack? We’re an online marketplace for local services. List your service with us here after you bid on the job to get more leads like this! P.P.S. A little tip for you: other housecleaners may also be contacting the buyer about this, so you should contact this person as soon as you can. 🙂
@Sander_Daniels @jonathanacohen
What you’re doing is ILLEGAL SPAMING! Heather Madison is using craigslist.com to find leads to spam to. Does she not read that the cragslist.com ads say….
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
????????????????????????????????????
It’s NOT okay to use craigslist.com to SPAM!
If anyone gets a SPAM from thumbtack.com, through craigslist.com, just forward it to:
abuse@craigslist.com as well as support@thumbtack.com. Let them know it’s NOT OKAY to break the law in order to draw traffic to your web site.
I certainly wont be using them. All I REALLY know about them is that they don’t care about the law. God only knows if they put tracking on your computer or would sell your information? I wouldnt put it past them. The SPAM is a huge red flag that something is amiss!! I wouldnt use thumbtack.com if you paid me!
I too, just received SPAM from Heather Madison <heather@thumbtack6.com>:
Hey there,
I’ve been searching for swimming instructors, and I was excited to find you.
It’s too hard to find trustworthy, quality service providers, and Thumbtack is changing that. We’re growing really fast, we need more swimming instructors, and I think you’re a perfect fit!
Posting on Thumbtack is a great way to advertise yourself and it’s completely free for service providers like you.
All you need to do to post your information is visit thumbtack.com.
Thanks!
~Heather
I did not ask for the service, nor did I put my eMail address out for this sort of spam. I am reporting the site to the FTC as spam and unsolicited marketing.
@FireFly927 I would report them to the FTC, if they are using your eMail address on Craigslist and the ad says “it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests” then they are breaking the law. Also, report them to Craigslist.
Thank you! I will report them to the FTC! I hadn’t thought of that, good idea. I did report them to: abuse@cragislist.com and with my email service provider. Thanks again!! @blazespirit
@blazespirit I will report them to the FTC! I hadn’t thought of that, good idea. I did report them to: abuse@craigslist.com and with my email service provider.
Thanks again!
I got a notice from Google my Email may have been hacked into. Later found the IP address and it is Thumbtack out of Dallas or possibly Arizona. IP 50.23.214.220 I think they are data miners. I don’t trust them.
@scarlettsmommy According to Arin.net that IP belongs to hosting company Softlayer Technologies. http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-50-22-0-0-1/pft
That said I am concerned about the Spam emails that some of the previous readers have complained about for sure. Did you contact Softlayer and did they implicate Thumbtack?
@Sander_Daniels There is growing concern over the solicitation Emails people are receiving from Thumbtack. I would like to speak to someone at Thumbtack about it. Can you use the contact form on this blog to drop me a note with some contact information? Thanks.
I did not contact Soft Layer, I did receive a unsolicited Email invite by Thumbtack to join. Here is the Email from madisonh@thumbtackmail2.com
“Hey there, I’m reaching out to you because Thumbtack is getting a lot of job leads for furniture refinishers, and I’m looking for another furniture refinisher who is interested in taking on more clients. After checking out your website I think you are a great fit for Thumbtack and I’d love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I’ll start forwarding you potential new clients. If you have any questions about what Thumbtack can provide, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks, Heather
— Unsubscribe Link: One-click unsubscribe. 1001 Page St, Suite #45, San Francisco, CA This message is an advertisement.” Seems she has sent me 9 unsolicited Emails since April 9th, same email with different jobs like “payroll providers.” I am surprised my Google “Spam” didn’t catch it.
I hope she didn’t get my contacts and start spamming them. They have a privacy policy. The “import of prospects” was still working hours later, so I am hoping the import was not successful. The evidently send Emails to all my contacts asking for reviews.
This is not a good idea if you can’t edit the imports because the reviews will go to everyone in your Email box, competitors, suppliers and customers whom you have had disputes with. Then you can get a negative review and then you will have to try to hire someone to remove it.
I have a SEO who very recently has preformed spammy SEO, with low hanging keywords no one will search. I want them to take it down and give me a refund. I doubt they will do this and it will probably rank confusing my prospects. What should I do?
@blazespirit Recieved another eMail from Heather Madison:
Hey there,
I’m reaching out to you because Thumbtack is getting a lot of job leads for swimming instructors, and I’m looking for another swimming instructor who is interested in taking on more clients.
After checking out your website I think you are a great fit for Thumbtack and I’d love to start sending you job leads. Please fill out a few details about your skills and rates, and I’ll start forwarding you potential new clients.
If you have any questions about what Thumbtack can provide, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Thanks,
Heather
—
Unsubscribe Link: One-click unsubscribe.
1001 Page St, Suite #45, San Francisco, CA
This message is an advertisement.
I came here after searching for “heather madison thumbtack”.
Seem’s they’re doing some scraping and contacting people.
However they didn’t get my email from CL, but from my site. I for one am not concerned about this because I regularly contact other webmasters for links, guest posts, and offers to buy their sites or sell them one of mine.
As long as I don’t continue to get any more emails from Thumbtack then I’m fine with that.
Actually signing up for Thumbtack now, so I have no problems with them.
I’d watch the CL scraping though 😉
There’s a reason most networks won’t accept CL traffic since there’s so much shady marketing going on over there.
@iBBYB1 I actually owe Thumbtack a call back, I played phone tag with someone that called after reading the comments in this post. I need to follow up! I will bring up your concerns as well. Thanks!
At this point I have to say that I would *not* recommend Thumbtack.com as a good way to generate work. To be sure, you will get *tons* of quote requests – there’s no doubt about that. I think I average about 10 a day. 10! That’s a lot of people supposedly finding me and wanting to see if I will do work for them. What’s the problem with that? Well, first of all, it’s difficult to weed out the serious requests from the “are you kidding me?” type requests. Most requests are extremely vague. As in “I want some design work…I don’t know when I want it.” If you dig a little – for instance, looking up the person’s name, or phone number, and their location, you can sometimes find out a little bit about what kind of company is making the request and decide if they’re reputable or not. You can ask questions for free, but if you want to submit a quote, you have to purchase credits, which cost about $1.67, with a typical quote costing between $4.99 – $14.99. I quickly became VERY selective about which requests I would give a quote for. If the potential client seems shady, difficult or otherwise clueless, or the project seems in *any* way problematic, either technically or ethically, I immediately “pass” on the project. However, even with being super selective, so far, I’ve only gotten a responses to a few quotes. The biggest problem is, while they make their vendors jump through many hoops to verify that they are serious and on the up-and-up (including paying money for background checks), they do next to nothing to screen the people making the requests. So far, most of the people I’ve run into fall into the following categories: 1. Not seriously looking, and won’t even bother to respond to quotes. 2. Design firms looking to outsource work for super cheap (not going to respond to anyone that isn’t quoting $10/hour for graphic design work) 3. Private citizens who don’t have any understanding of the going rate for design work, and think a website should cost $200. 4. People who have no concept of how Thumbtack works – either asking YOU for work, or in some cases, requesting quotes from people on the East Coast when they’re only interested in local service providers 5. Students looking to outsource their school work (read: cheating). I’ve responded to dozens of quote requests, spending at least $130, and so far, I’ve received three actual responses: One that said I was exactly what they were looking for, later told me I was on their short list and should hear back within a week, and then, after NOT hearing from them, I inquired about the job only to have them tell me they’d gone with an internal candidate. Another told me they were only looking for local candidates, despite my profile CLEARLY showing I was on across the country from them. I did have one request that did result in a single $50 job. So between the money I’ve spent on credits and setting up my profile, I’ve lost about $92 on the venture. With the almost impossible number of quote requests I’m seeing daily, I’m beginning to wonder if Thumbtack.com is actually creating shill accounts to generate at least some of these requests, to generate money. I’ll probably going to see how my last three quotes play out (since I’ve paid for them already) and if they end up like the rest, I’m closing my account. I spend way more time hitting “pass” than I do actually responding to quotes.
I find thumbtack to be a scam. Â No way to know if the leads are genuine or just BS. Â This site will not attract good talent, thus people who actually need work done wont find good people. Â This has some money backing it, but its a total rip off.