Wedding photographers, getting published is a huge deal. Not only does it increase your street cred with clients, it also can boost your SEO with back-links. Those are both huge benefits!
Getting published isn’t easy though. The submission process can take forever, and rejections will definitely happen. Especially if you’re newer or haven’t submitted before. We totally understand that it is a scary, emotionally draining process.
There are a few companies though that have come along to help make the process easier. Two Bright Lights & Aisle Society’s Matchology are the two main platforms out there. We’ve tried both, and now we wanted to share our thoughts on which one is easier to use, which one we’ve seen more success on, and more.
To preface, we used TBL for almost 2 years. We actually dropped them, because we didn’t feel like it was worth the money we were paying. Since then they have been purchased and now offer their services for free which is amazing! At the end of 2019 we hesitantly invested in Matchology and have loved it. Our main goal is building backlinks for our business to help our SEO. Most of our business comes from Google, so it’s more important to us than exposure.
The Easiest to Use
Honestly, Matchology barely wins here. While Matchology allows you to upload your gallery link directly where TBL makes you upload to their platform, Matchology takes longer to fill out the forms. We’d say they honestly are both pretty similar in the process. The one factor that made Matchology the winner is their matching system which takes out all the non-fitting blogs. Looking at all the publishers & trying to find the best fit on TBL can take forever & a day.
Which Has More Publications
Two Bright Lights wins here hands down. They do have more big-name publishers like Wedding Wire & the Knot. Matchology doesn’t really come close but remember having big names doesn’t guarantee you’ll be featured on them.
Which Has Lead to More Success
Matchology is the winner here 100 fold. We’ve found much more success with the matching system on Matchology than on TBL. However, our biggest win ever was on TBL when we got featured in the print issue of Southern Bride Magazine for our Oak Meadow Event Center Styled Shoot.
Which Provides Faster Results
Matchology wins here again! Since we’ve been on it, we’ve had every publication respond within a week or two. On TBL we would sometimes wait months, if not a full year and some publications would never respond. We can’t say this is all on the platforms though, those bigger publications often don’t check near as often. Especially if you are wanting a major print publication, they may only take them every 6 months which you can see on their TBL profile. Whatever Matchology is doing though, the responses are SO much faster!!
Of course, if you and are really working on your SEO or just on getting publications, it would be better to have both of them! Especially now that TBL is free (WHOO HOO!). It doubles your chances of success and you can hit way more publications that way. If not, that’s okay too. Weigh the pros and cons of each and make the decision that is best for you.
We hope this gives you a realistic look into what we have experience with both platforms. Again, this is our experience & it is different for everyone. If you have any specific questions, please drop a comment on this post & we’ll make sure to answer them!
Blessings,
Katie & Alec
