Weddingwire.com

Anybody here use weddingwire.com ?

It's a website that post your wedding portfolio and makes it more available to prospective couples for a fee.

I used WW about 5 years ago for a couple of seasons. I found it more useful as a tool to network with other vendors than a way to secure bookings. I got lots of enquiries but many of them were not serious and I suspect were just other newbie vendors trying to check pricing etc. I stopped paying for it because the ROI was almost non-existent but I still maintain a profile there. I earned WW badges 2 years in a row so I use those as part of my marketing even now. In reality, if you shoot a certain number of weddings a year and get clients to rate you on WW, you will get the badge. The couples don't have to have found you on wedding wire. The only criteria is that you shot the wedding that year, if I recall correctly.

 

It may be worth it for some but I suspect not in the way that it gets sold to you by WW.

I had to stop paying them myself. In my opinion these people are crooks. First they try to get you to sign a yearly contract to use their services by making it sound much more profitable than it really is. Mine was $80 per month ! I did get a few calls from prospective clients, but these were for bookings 2 years or more into the future. I also had problems trying to contact some "clients" that supposedly were interested. I would call the number they posted to my page only to find out that their phone was disconnected or did not even exist. After a few of these, I backed out of the whole thing.

IMHO those directories can be a bit hit or miss. Some work better than others but in general it's usually just as @markonestudios said, it works as a marketing stand point. 

 

We design wedding albums for brides and ask our clients to post reviews on Wedding Wire/The Knot magazine.  It's a good place, we thought, in that lots of prospective clients go there to shop for wedding album services, and it's a good place to host the reviews. We put a referral medallion on the website to link to the Reviews on WeddingWire.com.