The numbers
Lead prices get quoted as a single number, which hides the thing that matters. What you pay for a lead is not what you pay for a job. The gap between those two numbers is where most contractors lose money without noticing.
Shared lead prices vary widely by trade and by market. Emergency and high-ticket trades cost more, because the job is worth more. Restoration and roofing sit at the top. Landscaping and cleaning sit lower. Your market matters as much as your trade, a lead in a dense metro costs more than the same lead in a small town.
Take what you pay per lead and divide by your close rate. That is your real cost per job. If a lead costs $100 and you close one in five, each job cost you $500 in lead spend, not $100. Most contractors know their lead price and have never calculated the second number.
Now the part that stings. Your close rate is not fixed. It is heavily driven by how fast you respond, because on a shared lead you are racing three or four other companies who bought the same contact. Respond first and your close rate climbs. Respond in an hour and you are often bidding on someone who already booked.
You pay for the lead whether or not you reach the person. That is the first hit. The second is that the competitor who answered first is not just ahead of you, they have often already closed it, so your money bought a contact who was never available. You paid full price for a job that was decided before you dialled.
Per-lead pricing puts the risk entirely on you. You pay up front and find out later whether it was worth it. A per-closed-sale model inverts that. 99BOLD charges $29 when a job we booked actually closes. If it does not close you pay nothing, so a bad lead costs you nothing instead of costing you full price.
Three things move the price. Ticket size, because platforms price roughly against what the job is worth. Urgency, because an emergency lead converts better and gets bid up. And competition in your postcode, because the price is set by how many contractors want that contact.
This is why comparing your lead cost to a contractor in another state tells you very little. The number that matters is yours, against your ticket and your close rate.
The sticker price is not the full cost. There is the time spent calling back people who never answer, the fuel and hours spent quoting jobs that were never going to close, and the disputes over leads that were plainly wrong. None of it shows on the invoice, all of it comes out of your margin.
There is a subtler one too. Chasing bought leads is time you are not spending on repeat customers and referrals, which cost nothing and close far more often. A lead platform that keeps you busy can quietly crowd out your best channel.
Start from the job, not the lead. Take your average ticket and your gross margin to get the profit on one job. Decide what share of that you are willing to spend acquiring it. Then multiply by your close rate to get the most you can pay per lead.
A $600 job at 45 percent margin gives $270 of profit. If you will spend a third of that acquiring it, that is $90 per job. At a 20 percent close rate, your ceiling is $18 per lead. If leads cost more than that, either your close rate has to rise or the channel does not work at your numbers.
99BOLD answers every inquiry in seconds, qualifies it, quotes from your price list and books it. $29 when you win the job. Nothing when you don't. Your first 20 won jobs are free.
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