The shared-lead trap
Stop renting your customers.
You pay thirty quid for a lead, ring it, and hear you're the fifth to call. That is not bad luck, it is the business model. The lead sites make their money selling the same job to as many trades as they can, and you fight over it on price.
How it works
One job, sold four times over.
A homeowner fills in one form. The site does not send that job to the best trade for it. It sends it to everyone who will pay, all at once. So before you have even said hello, you are in a bidding war with three or four others for a job you all paid to chase.
- One requesta homeowner asks for a quote
- Sold to four tradeseveryone who pays gets it
- A race to the bottomyou undercut to win it
- You paid either waywin or lose, the fee is gone
The bill
What it really costs you.
Every site dresses it up differently but lands the same way: you pay to show up, pay again for each lead, and get nothing back when the job goes to someone else. A busy plumber can hand over four hundred pounds a month and still share every single lead.
| Site | How it works | What it costs | Lead shared? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade | Membership, then a fee per lead | £60-£150+/mo plus a fee per lead | Yes, several trades |
| Bark | Buy credits to reply to a lead | Pay per credit; credits expire after 3 months | Yes |
| MyBuilder | Fee each time you are shortlisted | £2-£35 per shortlist, non-refundable | Yes |
| Rated People | Monthly fee plus per-lead charges | Monthly fee plus a fee per lead | Yes |
Do the maths
The real cost is not the price on the screen.
Say a lead costs £30 and goes to four of you. Win one in four and that is £120 in fees for the job you won, before the hours spent quoting the three you lost. Total your monthly fees, divide by the jobs you won, and that is what each one really cost.
The catch nobody mentions
You are building on rented land.
Here is the part that really bites. Your profile, your hard-won reviews, your spot in the list, none of it is yours. It belongs to them. The day you stop paying, it all disappears, and the work dries up with it.
- Stop paying and your listing vanishes the same day
- Years of reviews sit on their site, not yours, and you cannot take them with you
- They change the pricing or the pecking order, and there is nothing you can do
- Fall out with them and you start again from nothing
Follow the money
You are not the customer. You are the stock.
Step back and look at who wins. The biggest directory is owned by a private equity giant whose job is to grow profit: pack more trades onto every lead and charge them all. The thing that is worst for you, sharing the lead, is exactly what makes them richest.
The bit that hurts both sides
The homeowner hates it too.
Picture it from their side: they ask for one quote and four strangers ring them. They cannot tell good from bad, so they pick the cheapest and hope. Find them yourself, be the only one who answers, and there is nobody to compare you to. They chose you.
The honest bit
But don't the lead sites work?
We are not pretending they never do. You will land the odd job. The real question is what each one costs you once you count the fees, the undercutting and the time, and whether that customer is ever yours.
"I do win jobs off them."
Some, yes. But you win by being cheapest, you pay whether you win or not, and the customer is rented, gone the day you stop paying.
"Aren't ads just as dear?"
Ads cost too, but the lead is yours alone, nobody else is undercutting you, and you can switch them off tomorrow. Get a lead site wrong and you are tied in for a year.
The way out
Own your leads, don't rent them.
There is a better way: your own website and your own ads, so every call comes straight to you and nobody else is sold the same job. The customer is yours to keep, and we will never sell your lead to the four other blokes down the road.
- Every lead comes to you, and only you, never shared
- No race to the bottom, because nobody else got the same job
- The customer relationship is yours to keep, not rented by the month
- You are not one of four names on a list, you are the one they called
Why us
Why take our word for it?
Honestly? Because we will tell you when not to buy. If ads are not right for you yet, we will say so. We make nothing from selling your lead to someone else, because we never do it. We only do well when your phone actually rings.
Straight answers
Questions trades actually ask.
- What is the shared-lead trap?
- It is how lead-generation sites work. You pay to be sent customer leads, but the same lead is sold to several trades at once, so you compete on price for a job you all paid to chase, and the fee is gone whether you win it or not.
- Are Checkatrade leads shared with other trades?
- Yes. On Checkatrade, Bark, MyBuilder and Rated People the same request usually goes to three to five trades at once, so you are quoting against everyone else who paid for it.
- How much do lead-generation sites cost?
- Checkatrade does not publish its pricing. It is commonly reported around £60 to £150 a month or more, plus a fee per lead, so a busy trade can spend several thousand pounds a year. Bark charges per credit, and MyBuilder charges £2 to £35 each time you are shortlisted.
- Do you keep your reviews if you leave?
- No. Your profile, reviews and place in the listings sit on their platform, not yours. Stop paying and the listing comes down, and you cannot take the reviews with you.
- What is the alternative to lead-generation sites?
- Own your leads instead of renting them. With your own website and your own ads, every call comes straight to you and nobody else is sold the same job, so the customer is yours to keep.
Want leads that are yours alone?
Tell us a bit about your business and we'll get cracking. Got a question first? Just message us.