My experience-based review of Bark.com
So, you need a photographer?
My experience-based review of Bark.com
I’m Tom Scott, I run a company called Atom creates and photography is big part of what I do.
My business is also relatively new, so getting my company noticed is a high priority. I am pursuing this via all the usual means – my website, advertising via my studio shopfront, social media channels, and word of mouth, amongst others.
When marketing a business in 2021 investment has to be made in tools such as Google Adwords, boosted Facebook and Instagram posts, and other services which could lead to more potential clients. Negotiating this space is tricky and involves a lot of testing in order to achieve the best results.
One of the ‘other services’ I am alluding to here is that of Bark.com
Many of you will have come across the platform when searching online for services. They offer a wide variety of providers from cleaners to photographers, and on the surface it appears to be an excellent resource – but is this the case?
Having been signed up to Bark.com for nine months now (as of Sept 2021), and having tried to provide feedback to the Bark.com Team without any success, I believe now is the time to share this experience-based review of the platform.
I am breaking this down as follows:
· The sign-up process
· How it works
· Positives
· Problems
· Suggested solutions
The sign-up process
Anyone who is looking for a service on Bark.com, or anyone who is looking to provide a service on offer via Bark.com, can sign up to the platform.
My sign-up experience as a service provider, however, was a strange one.
I was contacted by someone from Bark.com called Emma. Emma let me know that someone in my area was looking for a certain type of photography service and that I could respond to this person to see if I could secure the work.
What happened in this process, in a very slick way on the part of Bark.com, was that I became signed up for Bark.com.
When I replied to the potential client with the free credits I received, I in turn received the full contact details for the potential client.
An email exchange ensued with the potential client and this person declined my proposal based on it being too expensive (despite the rate being absolute rock bottom for commercial photography work).
I then looked further in to how Bark.com works.
How it works
For the person looking for a service the process is simple.
Say you’re looking for a family portrait session. You register with Bark.com, enter your details, enter the information around your portrait photos and share it to the Bark.com platform.
For the service provider, in this case the photographer, an alert is sent to an area of the service user dashboard called ‘Leads’, and this is also backed up with an email notification if enabled.
Each ‘Lead’ shows the information about the job, in this case the portrait photography job, but it blanks out the person’s surname, email address, and phone number.
The service provider, in this example it is the photographer, has to choose whether or not they want to purchase the ‘Lead’.
Each ‘Lead’ has a certain number of credits assigned to it via the algorithms in the Bark.com system.
Typically, commercial work has the higher number of credits (usually 15-20 credits), then headshots (typically 12 credits), next is weddings (10 credits), and then portraits at the lower end (around 8-10 credits).
Up to five photographers can respond to the ‘Lead’, and the potential client can then choose if they want to hire anyone who has responded.
Service providers are also encouraged to become an ‘Elite Pro’, which means, according to Bark.com, that more people will see their profile.
Positives
All sounds great, right?
Well, there certainly are some pros to the Bark.com platform for the service provider, these include:
· An excellent dashboard and user interface
· Tools to contact potential clients right out of the platform – both via a web browser or via their app
· Integration with HubSpot (CRM system) for excellent lead development capabilities
· Bark.com shows at the top of many search engine results, meaning most people will come across the platform when looking for a service
Of the five credit packs I have purchased, I have gained at least one job from all but one of them to date.
Whilst this sounds good, if you take the credit pack cost out of the amount paid for the job, then the margins are ridiculously low. The hit rate simply isn’t high enough for it to be meaningfully profitable.
Problems
So, as the list above shows, there are some great features to Bark.com. However, there are also some fundamental flaws in how the platform operates for the service provider.
1. Perhaps the biggest flaw is this – the incredible cost of ‘Credits’ for the service provider. When a service provider signs up initially they are subjected to many (many) emails with special offers for ‘Credit Packs’. The offer includes the line that if you don’t book a job from your first discounted credit pack, then you get the 150 credits back. So, what do they cost?
a. Packs cost the following (As of Sept 2021):
i. 50 Credits: €75.00 ex VAT = €92.25 with VAT and €1.85 per credit
ii. 100 Credits €142.50 ex VAT = €175.28 with VAT and €1.75 per credit
iii. 200 Credits €255.00 ex VAT = €313.65 with VAT and €1.57 per credit
b. There is a subscription service, but you get the idea, the cost is incredibly high.
c. Bear in mind that Bark.com will tell you that this equates to about 10 credits per response, but I can tell you for sure that very few are as low as 10 credits (my credit purchase history in my account documents this and shows it to be true and of the 43 ‘Leads’ I’ve purchased to date, 13 were 10 or lower).
d. This means that depending on the job, responding to a ‘Lead’ can cost amount such as:
i. 10 credits = €15.70 to €18.50
ii. 15 credits = €23.55 to €27.75
iii. 20 credits = €31.40 to €37.00
e. As you will read below, this is massively expensive given the low number of people replying, and the majority of clients working on a low budget.
f. Finally, the ‘Elite Pro’ feature mentioned above was offered as a free three-month trial, which I used. When this ended, Bark.com, on top of the ‘Credit’ purchase cost wanted €73.74 a month to be listed as an ‘Elite Pro’.
2. The person looking for a service has no idea that the service provider must purchase credits so that they can respond to a lead. This means that:
a. The person searching treats the search process as disposable. Typically, they do not even reply to acknowledge a message from the service provider.
b. Additionally, their ‘Lead’ listing is often not closed when a service provider has chosen someone or who has decided not to hire via Bark.com. This means that service providers are spending credits to reply, when there is no actual ‘Lead’ to be followed. It’s like throwing between €15 and €37 out the window!
3. There is no way to prove that someone has chosen someone from Bark.com or from somewhere else for their needs to be fulfilled. This means that:
a. Someone can list on Bark.com, the service provider can use their ‘Credits’ to purchase the ‘Lead’, they approach the potential client, the client assigns the job via another means, they close the ‘Lead’ (or don’t), and the service provider cannot claim their ‘Credits’ back. [Note: This happened to me. I did have email evidence from the potential client that they did not assign from Bark.com. I contacted the Support in Bark.com requesting my credits back but they refused to do so.].
4. Those listing jobs on Bark.com are not required to indicate their budget for the work, and many have no idea of the costs involved in having professional photography work delivered. This means that:
a. Many are shocked at the price (despite my own prices being very conservative due to the business being new). This means that again, service provider is wasting expensive ‘Credits’.
Suggested solutions
I actually think that with a few tweaks, Bark.com could be great. But it is a long way from this with the current set up for the service provider.
Here are a few suggestions from me (for what it’s worth!):
1. The credits need to be A LOT cheaper for the service provider
a. Cheaper credits would see more ‘Leads’ responded to and more potential clients on Bark.com having their requirements met
2. The potential client needs to know that service providers pay for credits
a. There needs to be far more respect for the service provider and the money they are spending in order to contact the potential client
3. Rather than offer the opportunity for five service providers to respond, one should be allowed to respond, and if this person is declined by the potential client, then the next service provider should be considered
a. I can’t see another way to stop service providers wasting money on replying to ‘Leads’ that are already assigned
4. Potential clients should be offered an opportunity to indicate the budget they are willing to spend on the work
a. As an example, there is a question the potential client is asked in Bark.com which for wedding photography says: ‘Would you be willing to increase your budget for a more experienced professional?’. Yet there is no where for them to indicate their budget, so the answer as viewed by the service provider is meaningless
Have you any thoughts on Bark.com as a platform from your own experience? Any thoughts or contributions via the comments below are welcome.