Over the years as a breeder, I've been contacted by various companies regarding advertising. When I first began as a breeder, I do admit that I was heavy on spending for advertising. At the time that was the only way I knew how to gain internet exposure as well as have an internet presence. As years pass by, a company's presence will build up on its own, and the company can begin to rely on other things like writing articles, blogs, customer feedback, etc.
In one year alone, I realized I had spent nearly $20,000 in advertising fees! For many companies this is small potatoes, but for a private, individual breeder like me with a very small company, that's a huge deal. More and more websites for dog advertising have popped up on the Internet since I began as a breeder in 1996, and it's really hard to know if you are actually making any sales through the websites where you advertise unless a customer specifically tells you that they saw your listing and provide you with the website where they located your link. I would always ask people who called me where they saw my website link, so I could determine which website advertising spot was getting more exposure. After all, why waste the money on an advertising site where you aren't being noticed?
I was unable to obtain enough information by asking; many people would say they could not remember how they located my website link. After realizing that I really could not afford my huge advertising expense--and suspecting that the only people earning money were the ones who owned advertising websites--I decided to just terminate my accounts with many of the advertising companies and do much of the advertising on my own. Lo and behold, I was still getting calls from those who were seeking a Goldendoodle or other types of dogs, because I had enough Internet presence to continue to generate interest in those seeking a family pet. True, my business name, Goldendoodle World, was no longer featured at the top of the pages of advertising websites like other breeders, and true, I didn't have a "star" next to my name, but so what? I was still receiving inquiries for puppies and dogs and that was all that mattered.
I had to chuckle when I'd see a breeder announce on an advertising website that they were a "TOP QUALITY BREEDER," simply because their name appeared first on a Goldendoodle advertising page. They would say they were the "Best of the Best," which made me chuckle because I knew that, in reality, that so-called "Best of the Best" is shown on the top of an advertising website only if they agree to pay what the owner of the advertising website asks. You have to pay the price to be "listed" as the "Best of the Best."
I was recently contacted by a company that told me how much they loved my website, and how it offered so much more information than any other site they had ever seen regarding the Goldendoodle dog. I was, of course, delighted, and explained that I began as a Goldendoodle breeder in 1999, after starting my business in 1996 as a purebred Golden Retriever breeder. My website actually began as a site for Golden Retrievers and only had approximately two or three pages, a very basic, simple website like most you see on the Internet. When I began creating the Goldendoodle hybrid, I could not locate any information for this terrific dog so I began to write about the dog as well as place all of my photos on the website to share with others who might be as interested in the Goldendoodle as I was.
I explained to her that my website had grown over the years, just as I have. While my website costs a lot of money each month to maintain a presence, it is free for those who want to know about the Goldendoodle dog, thousands of whom have viewed my website over the years at one time or another. There were no Goldendoodle articles or blogs available over the Internet back in 1999 when I began creating this lovely hybrid, so I began to write about what I came to know. As my customers started sending me photos, cards, letters, and feedback, I began to share those things on my website. To my delight, some customers kept in touch over the years and continued to send me multiple photos so that I could create individual pages for the dogs they had purchased.
The woman then went on to tell me that she'd love to list me on her website so that I could be "featured," and that her website only listed "the best of the best." I appreciated the fact that she considered me to be the "best of the best," but there was one small catch: to be "featured" on her website, I'd have to pay her a $600 a year fee.
What? I thought she said she wanted to feature me because she enjoyed my website and found it to hold more information for the Goldendoodle dog than any other website she had found, and that my information was extremely helpful...yada, yada, yada! I said to her, "So what you are saying is that you consider "the best of the best" to be the person who agrees to pay the $600 a year fee?" I told her that I understood that she needed to earn an income, but that I was a private, hobby breeder who didn't earn an income through selling dogs or through offering my information about the Goldendoodle dog on my website. I have never been able to earn back the money that I've actually spent selling puppies or dogs. I also explained to her that I was not a commercial breeder and I did not sell entire litters of puppies to pet stores, etc. Nor were sales so lucrative that I could afford to spend $600 a year in advertising fees simply for the pleasure of saying to the Internet world, "Hey look at ME! I'm listed on a website that considers the businesses they list to be the "Best of the Best"! I told her I'd be more than happy for her to list me, but not for $600 a year; that was just not acceptable, especially given the state of the economy right now. My final word: "thanks but no thanks."
Later I began to think about this experience, and realized that it had been true all along that a company or anyone who advertises on other websites are probably NOT the best in reality, judged strictly by the services or products they offer. It's all a facade. A company can simply call itself the "Best of the Best" as long as it can afford to pay what is being asked in advertising fees. It isn't about the service they offer. It isn't about the products they offer. It isn't even about the fact that your website may actually BE the best of the best. My services only qualified to be listed as being the "Best of Best" if I had agreed to the price of $600 a year. Think of it as a spotlight with a price tag.
The more I thought about it, the sadder I got. There's a lot at stake; it's sad for people who are looking for a quality Goldendoodle breeder and visit a website believing that breeder is the best simply because the site is in the spotlight, advertised as "TOP QUALITY" or "BEST OF THE BEST." The reality is, of course, that those superlatives are available to anyone for a fee, so they tell you nothing worthwhile. The sad reality is that many people DO assume the praise is true; let's face it, we're all vulnerable to being taken in by that kind of deception.
The saddest part is that the advertised breeder could actually be a very crappy one who offers no true service at all, or doesn't even provide quality dogs for that matter, but people who see that they are listed as the "Best of the Best" will believe it simply because of that claim. It's quite a wake-up call when you realize that "the best" are only listed that way because they agreed to pay the price!
About the author: Dee Gerrish has been a private, professional breeder since 1996. She has written extensively about the Goldendoodle dog through blogs and various articles since 1999. As a former military person with years of regional management experience, she brings quite a bit of knowledge to the breeder's table.
