I saw no difference too for a number of months after I started the pay program. I called and talked to them about it, their answer was what you got to pay more for the larger program. I said no and waited. Then everything started to ramp up somehow after I stop watching it.
The last few times I talk to the Yelp sales people they pushed me to buy the bigger program and I told them I already have more work than I can do and Im not paying for what I can't use. Once I continued to tell them I don't need them they left me alone.
But most importantly you have to build up a five star rating. What I noticed is the more reviews you have and the more stars you have the more work comes in.
One thing I notice is some customers would give me a five star review, it showed up for one day and then disappeared.
It got dropped back into a category of reviews called questionable.
I thought they were holding my reviews back because I wasn't paying more maybe maybe not I don't know.
I discovered it was because these people never used yelp before then all the sudden they're giving a review first time user reviews are usually held back.
You can always have friends and relatives load reviews too
Every time I have a customer that is very happy with the work I always ask them to give me a Yelp review. Even if they didn't find me through yelp. I also have a box on my estimate sheet to login where the work came from. Very important for tracking advertising dollars.
I pay $500 a month for yelp I don't remember how many paid clicks they give me but I do get a notification from them once sometimes twice a month showing me how many people viewed me on yelp.
Usually for me it's about 40. Sometimes it spikes up to like 25 or so in one week and they'll send me a notification.
As far as the unpaid yelp account when they showed other advertisers on my front page, non of them were ever stone restoration company's. I remember disputing with a sales Rep telling me these others are competing for your work. I kept insisting we don't do the same work! She was a ding dong.
I hope this may help some of you