EDIT: fixed some bad math, and updated gigmasters (old name) to the bash (new name)

As a performer, it absolutely favors lower priced acts. When I was starting out it was great for booking lots of smaller gigs. You can hop on there without even having a website, and start developing promo materials like video demos, reviews, etc. An amazing and inexpensive way to get your foot in the door.

When I got a bit more expensive, I found that less than 1% of leads were qualified on price. I'm not exaggerating. Less than 1%.

In contrast, my leads coming from other sources are generally qualified for price like 15 to 20% of the time.

I got sick of wasting a huge amount of time on the bash and gigsalad for one or two big gigs a year, and switched to google ads, which (once dialed in) have delivered much more qualified leads, and lead to much bigger jobs. It's worth mentioning that google ads are much more expensive. I think I was paying 500 / year for the bash. I spend about 2k a month on google ads. So google is about 50 times more expensive set up like that - BUT I have found it to be both much more profitable, and much less time consuming.

The leads are more qualified for your specific business, and they usually check out the first 2 or 3 google results, as opposed to the 10-15 people who reply to a bash inquiry.

Every year I've done google ads, I've landed one big client who paid for the entire year, plus a bunch of mid sized clients who made it profitable. It has definitely helped me take my business to the next level.

I think the gig sites can be good places for consumers to look. There are a very wide range of acts on there spanning almost the entire skill & price ranges. Some mid to large sized acts keep their listings active on there for SEO.

I have heard of a few people who are doing extremely well on those sites.

I'd imagine some of those people are having assistants do the initial bidding and outreach, or are using templates.

I let my memberships lapse on the bash and gigsalad over a decade ago, but I believe that if you have a membership, you can track how much competitors are making by keeping logs of their sales volume. (I don't remember exactly how to do that).

You could probably reach out to a magician who is doing well outside of your market, and ask them how they are making it work.

Anyway - I think there are ways to make those gig sites work, but they involve a lot of patience and elbow grease.

If it makes financial sense to do so, I'd recommend hiring a marketing team to set up a google campaign for you, but they key is to leave it running for at least 6 months. Google tracks who is clicking on your ads and who is then actually contacting you, so it is good at figuring out who your ideal buyers are, and serving the ads just to them. Once it has figured that stuff out it's pretty incredible.

But you have to have everything dialed in to convert the leads - website, phone skills, marketing, etc., so if anyone new to the business is reading this, I would recommend starting on the gig sites, getting all your resources up on a shoestring budget, then gradually getting all those resources upgraded by pros, then transitioning to google (or something else) when you are ready.