How to See if a DJ Agency is Legit
There was outrage in 2012 when MixMag exposed a DJ agency scam. The scam agency (DN4DJs) tricked DJs by contacting them online promising lots of gigs. They did not give any sort of service and just stole money. It wasn't until the article came out that people saw how big the scam was.
So how can you be sure if a DJ agency is a scam or legit? Before you sign up with any agency, we suggest you think about the below key points below.
1) Do they guarantee you gigs?
OK, let's get this straight. No DJ agency in the world can guarantee you work or a certain amount of work. Unless you are a big name like DJ Tiesto who is already in high demand no one can guarantee you gigs. All any agency can do is market you, nothing more. If a company guarantees you work, that's a big sign they're a scam.
2) Did they contact you online?
Avoid any agency that contacts you direct by phone or email when you have never contacted them before. That's not a real agency. You can find a top agency on the first page or two of Google. If you get a random email, phone call or message via social media, say thanks but no thanks. It's a scam.
3) Are they a real company with a proper address?
Something to always look out for is an address. There's lots of scams that pop up all the time. They tend to hide their address by using a PO box. Always check to see if the company has a real address on their website. We're not saying all using PO boxes are dodgy, but hiding their address may mean they're a scam agency.
4) Do they claim high web traffic stats?
Quite a few agencies claim to have really high web traffic. Most are lying. Always do some research before buying into their claims.
We have seen agencies saying they get 20K site visits a month. That is a total lie. How do we know this? Because we are one of the busiest booking sites in the world - and we do not get that much traffic.
We get our traffic through our SEO skills and high Google rankings. For example, in Google UK we beat big job sites like Indeed for many jobs related searches.
Some of our other high results in Google include:
- DJs wanted - 1st
- DJ jobs - 3rd
- Club DJ Jobs - 2nd
- DJ booking - 1st
- DJ work - 2nd
- DJ agency - 1st
- DJ vacancies - 3rd
We could list lots and lots more, but you get the idea.
There's not many DJ sites that get as much traffic as we do. So be very aware of so called online agencies and their web traffic claims.
As a further example, using a leading SEO tool (AHREFS) we compare our visibility in Google vs other agencies. As you can see, we are much more visible in Google for search terms - by a large margin. This is for all key terms such as "DJ jobs" and "DJ hire prices".
DJ Agency vs other agencies in Google (search term visibility June 19 - July)
We are also happy to show our yearly page views direct from Google Analytics. Over the last year we have had over 485,780 page views (which is great for a DJ site). Make sure you look into this and ask for proof of traffic before joining any online agency.
Our Page Views in Google (last 12 months)
5) Are their DJ jobs real or fake?
Let's put this out there. Anyone can post a job on their website. That does not mean they are real.
But how can you be sure they are real or fake? Let's go back to the previous section for a moment. If a DJ site works really hard on their SEO and gets high "targeted" rankings, it's easy to get job requests. However, if their web traffic is not very high or their keywords right, where are they getting these jobs? They must be fake.
We have seen quite a few DJ sites posting fake jobs. As a result of this, we sometimes get asked if our jobs are real. As you can see by our web traffic and SEO, yes, they 100% are. We are top for DJ jobs and DJ hire prices, so of course we are going to get jobs :-)
As well as good SEO we take the time to contact venues to see if they need DJs. It's always good to be proactive. Please be careful and do not always buy in to job posts as most are fake.
We are always happy to show our job requests and have added some screenshots below of some recent one we have posted on the site.
Screens are for recent jobs sent in to us. Some were added and some were not.
Summary
There are many top DJ agencies online. Just make sure you take all the things we covered into account before joining one. Have a good look round first before paying any money. Please remember, like any job industry, no one can guarantee you anything. If you would like any advice, send us an email and we'll be happy to help.
Thanks for reading,
The Team at DJ Agency.