Is Advertising on WeddingWire & The Knot Worth The Money? - A Long Term Professional Review

Intro

WeddingWire and The Knot are two of the most used wedding directories in the United States that many couples turn to to find vendors for their wedding. As a photographer, one of the most common questions I hear in regard to online advertising is, “Is advertising on WeddingWire or the Knot worth it?” My answer? Maybe.

In this article I want to dive deeper into this question by starting off by giving my personal experience with WeddingWire over the 8 year period that I paid for the service and then sharing my thoughts on who may benefit and who may not. It should be noted that WeddingWire and The Knot are essentially the same platform owned by the same parent company - WeddingPro. Also, I do not pay for the service any longer as of September 2024 and have never been sponsored by or endorsed by them.

My Personal Experience Advertising on WeddingWire

I have been a full-time wedding professional since 2018 and have had the immense pleasure of photographing well over 250 weddings to date across the Pacific Northwest and the United States. When I began my journey, one of the most difficult things to do was to get my name out. I had created a website but it just was not getting the traction I wanted because I had no idea how to rank on Google. Then one day a sales representative from WeddingWire contacted me. After talking with them for a short while and listening to their “pitch”, I called a friend who was a professional wedding photographer in my area who informed me that they were legit and that they would likely be worth the investment. At the time, their featured listing (which ensures first page placement) was about $1,500. To a part-time photographer just starting out, it was a VERY large sum of money. It was probably more expensive than all my gear combined at the time. I called the sales representative back and asked about their cancellation policy to which they said I could cancel within the first 6 months and receive the final 6 months as a refund. I very reluctantly decided to pull the trigger. My starting price for weddings that year was $1,250 and my most popular package was $1,500 so the way I figured, I would have to at least book one wedding to come even and two to make it “worth it”.

The year before I went out on my own and paid for a WeddingWire listing, I did a lot of work for my friend who was the photographer I mentioned previously. He allowed me to keep the photos I took for him while second shooting weddings which gave me a pretty amazing portfolio to work with. Combine that with my affordable pricing and I was able to book 25 weddings my very first year of being a full-time professional. Of those weddings, a whopping 15 were from WeddingWire.

The next year, I upped my prices pretty significantly (after hearing many times from couples about how much of a “deal” I was), charging $1,950 for my starting price and $2,500 for my most popular package. The number of bookings from WeddingWire dropped to around 10 yet I photographed 32 weddings. The year after, I charged $2,450 for my starting price and $3,000 for my most popular package. I booked only 6 weddings from WeddingWire but photographed 36 weddings. Fast forward a couple more years to my 2023 season and my starter pricing was $3,500 and most popular option was $4,500. I booked only TWO weddings through WeddingWire and photographed 39 weddings. This season, I decided to happily drop the service as I did not think it worth the money or time… more on my in-depth reasoning later.

Is It Worth It?

As you may have noticed in my personal experience, the number of WeddingWire bookings dropped significantly over time. Why was that?

Though I booked less weddings through WeddingWire year to year, I booked more couples overall each consecutive year. Over time I have only gotten better as a photographer and have offered better customer experiences. The only consistent thing that has changed in a “negative” way is my pricing.

The first year that I advertised on the platform, my conversion rate (number of couples who contacted me and ended up booking me through the service) was pretty decent. I’d say for every 3 couples who contacted me, one of them booked. Why was that? The answer is simple; because I had a great portfolio and (mainly) I was “affordable”. As my prices increased, my bookings from the service and conversation rate dropped. So, here is the takeaway: most couples on WeddingWire are bargain hunting and looking for an “affordable option”. Now, I just want to say that I absolutely do not blame those couples. I am a huge advocate of sticking to a budget and being wise with one’s money. However, I will say as a vendor, the fact that WeddingWire makes interactions and communication incredibly transactional and in no way personal on their app truly sucks. The number of couples who ghost you and don’t even reply is truly depressing. I’ve even asked myself over the years if 90% of these inquiries are even real or just created by the app to give the appearance of being real - what a conspiracy theory.

Claiming that WeddingWire is transactional and impersonal may seem like quite the claim till you fully understand the experience from the couple’s perspective. To fully experience this and write as comprehensive of a review as possible, I created a customer account. As a customer, you find photographers based on the area you are searching in. Once you select an area, you get a list of photographers. The only things you are given from this list is a photographer’s banner image that supposedly represents their portfolio and the photographer's “most popular price”. Without even clicking on the photographer’s listing to see any other work, customers have a button that says “request pricing” which, when clicked, generates an automated message to the photographer that is auto-populated with the customer’s information (wedding date, venue (if you have one), and guest count (if you know)). The message looks something like this:

“We are currently planning for our wedding on (date) at (venue) and would like to learn more about your business. Could you send us some additional information? Thank you!”

Couples don’t even have to write their own messages or look deeper into the photographer’s portfolio than that. It is essentially a two click process. Most couples in my experience don’t even take the time to look at the photographer’s website or full portfolio. They just click the “request pricing” for the photographers whose main image they like and await a reply with the photographer’s pricing and information. This automatic process turns the very first interaction with a photographer into nothing more than a transaction of pricing based off of one banner image for “clickbait”. With this impersonal of a beginning, it is no wonder that only 5-10% of all inquiries write back… Oh and did I mention that probably 50% of those who do write back are scammers? Let me give you some advice.. never accept payment before having a consultation with your couples and then having them sign a contract. Scammers will try to send you money before signing anything or even having a consultation to either get personal information from you or use you to send that money to some other person (as a part of a money laundering scheme). And no, you don’t want to accept this money and keep it. Don’t put yourself at risk.

So let’s bring this back into my personal experience… it has always bothered me that WeddingWire was set up in this way. Yes, it does make the customer experience quick and easy but from a vendor’s perspective, it is honestly quite annoying and feels transactional and not at all personal. Over my last year of paying for a listing, I had maybe 50 brides contact me looking for information on WeddingWire. Of those brides, maybe five even wrote back after my initial reply; and of the ones who did not write back, about 95% ghosted me further when I sent them a follow up message (as an aside, I do not generally chase customers but I had a feeling after that year I was going to discontinue the service. I was simply curious if the leads were even real or if they would even reply to a follow-up message). Compare this to my conversion rate on my website being probably a 95% inquiry to book rate and it really makes WeddingWire seem like a waste of time and money. Brides who come to my website spend time looking over my portfolio, pricing, packages, and sometimes even my blog before they write me. They actually take time and effort looking into me and my business and our first interaction is personal and INTENTIONAL.

This all being said, there is a small silver lining. A VERY small number of couples use WeddingWire as a directory and then go to a photographer’s websites to view their portfolio and learn more about them. If the couple likes what they see, then they will reach out to the photographer via their website instead of WeddingWire. I have seen this to be the case with about 2-3 brides a year and I truly appreciate that they do this instead of just clicking a button and sending an automated inquiry. I also collect information on how people find me in my contact form to best keep track of this.

Who Can Benefit?

So, who would benefit from listing their business on WeddingWire and is it worth it? If you are just starting off and are priced affordable with a good portfolio, you will likely get a lot of bookings. That being said, the price of WeddingWire for a featured listing is $3,600 for the year I originally drafted this article (2020-2021); and the pricing has only gone up since then (by over 10% some years). So it is likely that it may take a few weddings (assuming you are “affordably” priced) to get back the money you are paying for the service… just something to keep in mind.

Though the price is expensive, I always encourage people to ask for a discount. Often times they will concede and give you a pretty decent discount. When I quit my service, they offered me a 25% discount to my pricing just to come back. Furthermore, the rep will try to sell your their top tier advertising spot till they are blue in the face which is never worth it in my opinion. I personally used to pay for that listing (I fell for their trap when I first started) but came to the realization that the “pro” tier, which is their cheapest paid option, got almost just as many leads and so I swapped to that after a couple years when I wisened up. Now, there is one caveat to this which is first page placement. On Google, it is well known that only 5% of all people (or less) make it to the second page of search results. It is likely the same for WeddingWire. When paying for a featured listing, you are guaranteed first page placement in the directory. If you pay for a pro membership, you will show up between the free listings and featured ones without the guarantee of being on the first page. However, in my area, there are not enough paying members and so both pro and featured listings show up on the first page. This is another reason why I decided to pay less for the pro listing instead of the featured listing. I had no problem being below the “featured” options because I was still on the first page. Here are some graphs for you all below showing that in my area, there was not a large difference in the number of visitors based on level of membership.

My listing is the orange line, the dark purple is the featured listings, the light purple is the pro listings, and the lighter line at the bottom are the free listings. As you can see, my overall leads as a pro were not that much different than the featured listings. This was a graph from the 2023 season.

The decline in storefront visits when WeddingWire does not rank on the first page of Google - average was about 14 per month when on the first page of Google and 5-6 per month when it was no longer ranking. And this is just visits, not actual conversions… Over the course of a year, this would have been 168 when the average was 14 and 72 now that the average is 6.

Who (Likely) Won’t Benefit?

So then, who is less likely to benefit? If you are more established like I am and have higher and less “affordable” pricing you likely won’t benefit as much - though it will take much less bookings to pay for the advertisement. Furthermore, if your website is ranking strong on Google and generating a lot of leads or you have a strong amount of leads from social media, you also won’t likely benefit much. Generally, if you are truly established and already get more than enough leads, then I don’t think that it would benefit you the same as someone who is less established and is looking for more bookings or not ranking high on Google with their website. I personally rank in the first two spots (it depends on the day) for photographers in my area and have been there since 2019. I generate more leads than I can even book and so I do not find WeddingWire to be worth the time or cost. Furthermore, WeddingWire does not even rank on the first page of Google for my area any longer so that is another large reason I think it not worth the time or price in the slightest. The drop in leads after they lost their first page status can be seen in the graph on the right above… pretty significant.

When I first wrote this article a few years ago in 2020 I did pay for a listing on WeddingWire and it was worth it to me. Since then, a lot has changed and I no longer pay for the service. I wanted to write this article to help you all attempt to answer the question I always asked myself when paying hundreds of dollars every month for this subscription - “is this worth it?”. I am beyond happy to not be paying for it any longer and never plan to go back; but for some of you it may be a decent option to look into if you are just starting off. However, my best recommendation to any of you would be to learn how SEO and ranking on Google works because it is free and when you get on the first page and know how to stay there, it requires little to no work to maintain. Let me be the first to tell you that you will be blown away with how much business it can bring and how much more meaningful your interactions will be when compared to WeddingWire or The Knot. For the record, I posted my own analytics for my website below to show you how powerful it can be to learn how SEO works and how to rank on Google. Some day I plan to create a masterclass on this that can be purchased and will post that link here for you all if you are interested on growing your own leads. I have helped many people do this over the years and it is truly life changing.

The impressions and site visits of couple's looking for a “wedding photographer” on my website alone.

Total number of site visitors for my website over the last year for all inquiries. I have done a lot of work and if I did nothing new and kept the same average I’ve had over the last 3 months, I’d have 200K site visitors. This is why learning SEO is an absolute must in my mind.

Is Advertising on WeddingWire & The Knot Worth The Money? - A Long Term Professional Review

Written by: Zach Nichols

November 2020 - Updated November 2024

Zach NicholsNovember 17, 202013 Comments