Let your fingers do the walking! This was the slogan of the yellow pages. Even today, in the Internet age, businesses advertise in the Yellow Pages.

Are you advertising in the yellow pages?

I'm not! Why, because I tried. I did it for 2 years.

The first year, I did a 1/8th of a page ad. How much business was generated? 0, Zero, Nada, None. Every month, I would get 3 or 4 phone calls, but this was from people trying to get the cheapest deal they could get.

If an eighth of a page is not enough to generate business, what about a quarter of a page? The second year, I took a quarter of page ad. How much business was generated by a quarter of a page? Again 0, Zero, Nada, None. Every month, I would get a dozen phone calls, but again this was from people trying to get the cheapest deal they could get and I am not the cheapest or wanted something I did not do.

Once I was able to actually ask a few questions like where did you get my phone number,… The most important was:

She was phoning 7 photographers to find the cheapest. No portfolio, no photo sample, no reference…

In total, I wasted/lost almost $11,000 by advertising in the Yellow Pages.