After a few months off, I have chosen to get back on this board. I originally got involved with this site because someone was talking about our website on this site and started making a bad name for our company. Hence, I feel compelled to make a comment or two on this topic.
Our website, eBaseballClub.com, is NOT a recruiting service. We go to conferences and clinics to discuss our site with high school coaches and people confuse us with these other recruiting services that you are discussing in this forum.
What we offer is a TOOL in the recruiting. Our website enables players to post a complete resume of themselves online for hundreds of college coaches to review. We will also place a video of their skills on their webpage. That is what college coaches have told us they are looking for.
As a company, our philosophy is that players and their parents can do 90% of the work that they pay recruiters $100s or $1000s to do. The letters, the phonecalls, the videos are all things parents and players can do if they have some time on their hands. We still encourage players to attend showcases, play Summer ball, and go to camps held by colleges in addition to subscribing to our website.
This is not to say that their are some legitimate recruiting services out their and they certainly have their place in our "industry". I am not trying to endorse my company, as we have planty of marketing opportunities to do that for ourselves, but rather I am helping people differentiate tools players can use in recruiting with services that can cost a lot of money.
I would agree with TR when he stated originally that there are so many recruiting services popping-up that coaches are growing tired of hearing from them. My experience has seen that. When we call a college coach to register to use our site, they automatically assume that we are a recruiting service and tell us that they already use one or that they get calls everyday from services ask him to sign-up. Then when I explain our site to him, he relaxes and many times we get coaches saying they prefer our site to recruiting services.