Have you advertised in the yellow pages? If so, how was the return. I'm looking at being a featured business on the yellow pages website. It's only $55/month. Which usually I would just do but my husband and I just found out we are pregnant with our first child! 
So money seems to be a little more needed now.
Anywho...
Any advice or opinions you have of the yellow pages would be great. Oh, and I'm talking about yellow pages online.
jewelykaye, That is really $660 a year!!!! 
You could buy a lot of other things with that much money. And, if your money situation is about to change. 
, you may want to pass on that one. Like JoAnnB said, if someone types in your business name, you will still come up on all the directory sites. Congrats also on your good news! CindiM
we don't really use phone books much any more with the internet so handy....I'd spend the $50.00 per month advertising on the net....
melody
Yep, I agree. For $4.99 per month I have a pretty nice website, I think. If you put your meta tags in right, you will come up close to the top of the list with a simple search in your area.
Save your money, baby is gonna need new shoes! Congrats!
Not to hijack this thread but......what are meta tags? I have a website www.cherrylanecakes.com and now I'm wondering if my "meta tags" are in right. Advice, suggestions?
As long as you've got a registered domain name on the web, your business should come up when googled. If you already have a website, I'd try to google yourself and see where you come up. It may be that you don't need to do anything more than what you're already doing ... you might be surprised to see where you're at!
First, congratulations to you and your hubby!
I have actually had good success and exposure through my yp ad. I got 2 display ads costing more than twice what you would have to pay. I get calls regularly from folks who saw my ad in the yp. I guess it depends on your community though, folks around here use it. You also have to check out what your competition is doing. If they have large display ads it is usually for a reason, IMO. I don't see any harm in trying it. If you don't see a return, don't renew. We have to put ourselves out there and it can't all be free or low cost.
For me, my website is #1, yp ad at least #3 in terms of getting me business and exposure. Again, all my opinion/experience. HTH!
PS- wishing you a safe, healthy, and easy pregnancy! 
I'm talking about putting in keywords so that when someone in your area googles for a cake, they will hit your website. Like if someone puts in "birthday cake rossford ohio"...they would hit your website first if you put keywords like that into your meta tags. Maybe someone else can explain it better. I put in every possible combination I could think of that someone would google when looking for sugar cookies. I also have Google Analytics and can see where people are and what they are googling that brought them to my website. Very interesting.
You're right on MichelleM77 -- most people that search will probably do it through google and use what's commonly known as keywords. I not only suggest that you use the typical keywords that you would normally use as your meta tags, but any possible miss spellings of the keywords that you think of. At a convention for work last year, they even suggested using possible misspellings for competitors in your meta tags (tricky, tricky!). Don't underestimate any word! The better the list of key words you've got, the higher placement google puts you in their search results. Pictures, maps, address, phone, store hours, also help raise your placement (google ranks your site for the amount of information you have on it). Shopping carts put you first, but that's pricey! If you're in a small market, you could easily be #1 or 2 in the google search. I find that most of the people I work with have never "searched" for themselves before and are quite surprised when they see where they are.
Good ideas smoore! I think they pull most of their info from your home page, so it's good to put where you are located and a bit of info on that page and not just an "enter our website here" link. I google myself all the time, along with different keyword combinations just to see where I am on the list. Lots of times I am #1. 
Personally I think yellow page ads are a waste of money. You have to be real careful with how you spend your money. A regular business listing in the book if usually sufficient. As far as the internet YP, I think google is what most people go to. I learned the hard way in my first year of business, and spents thousands with YP, kept a log of how customers found me so I could see if my money was working right. Most of my business prospects came from "word of mouth". The ads never paid for themselves. The same thing applys to newspaper ads, people just don't read them and when they do they aren't looking to read the ads, unless of course it is the food section and they can get coupons or good specials. Depending on what you are doing, I know there are many ways to advertise via the internet that are more cost effective. Also well placed business cards, the chamber of commerce, floral shops for weddings, bridal shows are a great way to get the word out. At least this has worked for me.
My business has had some awful experiences with advertising. My two cents speaking from personal experience just say no to yp ads!!!!!! We signed up for a full color $200 per month ad and it was worthless! All the calls came from less than affluent areas and distribution was very low. The yp business is dying and the phone companies are panicking even admitting that the yp business will not survive the future so their sales promises don't match up to their practices.
We also signed up with google for their ad program called ad-words. Big mistake! They charge per click or a huge set amount per month. We opted per click & were able to set the area we wanted our ad to be in & who would see the ad based on geographical area, sounded good. But when you start this program there is no way to dispute what they call malicious clicks. In 1 month we had over 725 clicks at .20 cents each that was $145 in clicks and no real customers to show for it! They refuse to refund any amount & refused to stop the ad program until we paid the bill! What? So not only did we have to pay for bad clicks but we were racking up new charges until we paid the bill. It looked like a vicious cycle that would never end. So even if you think you paid then off they would bill you for new charges over & over. This went on for over a year finally frustrated that there was no end in site I closed our business bank account & reopened a new one to stop the cycle.Thankfully our bank understood the problem and was very helpful.
so lesson learned pay with a real credit card not a debit card, the protection is not the same with debit. Once a debit transaction is made the funds are gone forever.
We have had great success with local bridal magazines & bridal shows I do agree that a good website with meta-keys will do wonders. Networking with other wedding pros in the area will also help tremendously.
Another good point -- why pay per click when you can still get good google placement without it. (free search results are on the left, pay per click are on the right) Most people use the search results on the left anyway - logical, seeing how we learned to read left to right. One other thing to be careful of for those that did place yellow page ads -- once you commit to an ad, you'll be solicited non-stop by mail for a new ad in not only the same book you've already paid for, but other books in your area. It can become overwhelming (and confusing) because the "renewal" forms don't make it easy to see which book it actually is for. There's a lot of different yellow pages out there and I know you don't want to be in EVERY one in your area, especially since people aren't using yellow pages anymore.
Thanks everyone for your input! I really appreciate it. We have decided not to do the YP add. Like someone said, "Babies gonna need new shoes!"...lol.
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