What a shared lead really costs you at a $275 average ticket
Running the numbers on per-lead fees, shared leads and percentage-of-invoice platforms, and what the same money buys when you spend it on channels you own.
An owner sent me his Thumbtack statement last month. Two hundred and eighty dollars in lead fees, six leads, two jobs, $610 collected. He wanted to know whether that was good.
It is not terrible. It is also not a business, and the reason is not the fee. It is what he owns at the end of it, which is nothing.
The arithmetic on a small ticket
Lead platforms in handyman categories generally charge somewhere between $10 and $40 per lead depending on job type and market, charged when a customer contacts you rather than when you win the work, and the same request usually goes to several pros. Percentage-based platforms take a share of your invoice instead, in the mid-teens, on every job you do through them, for as long as you use them. Terms change often enough that you should check the current numbers before planning around them.
Run it at a $275 average ticket and a realistic one-in-three close rate on shared leads:
- Three leads at $25 each: $75 spent.
- One job booked: $275 collected.
- Lead cost as a share of revenue: 27%.
Take out materials and the drive and you are working a good part of that job for the platform. It is survivable in a slow week. It is not survivable as a strategy, and it gets worse the smaller your tickets are, which is why the first fix for anyone in this position is the minimum charge rather than the marketing. That is covered in the pricing guide.
The part that actually costs you
Here is the real problem. In April 2027, that customer's gate will sag. She will not remember your name, because she met you through an app that is designed for her to remember the app. She will open it again, and you will pay for the lead a second time, competing against three other pros for a customer you already served well.
Compare that with a job you got from your own Google profile. You paid nothing. Her number is in your phone. In April you text her, she says yes, and the second job costs you a ninety-second message. Over five years the same customer is worth several jobs and two or three referrals, and none of it has a fee attached.
That is the difference between renting introductions and building a business. Both can be worth doing. Only one of them accumulates.
What the same $280 buys elsewhere
Take that month's lead spend and spend it differently:
- Missed-call text-back: roughly $30 a month. Recovers a third to a half of the calls you already miss from a ladder. On 50 calls a month with a third going unanswered, that is typically three to five extra jobs. Nothing else in this trade returns like it. See the missed calls guide.
- A review habit: free. The median handyman listing on Google has 3 reviews and 25.6% have none at all. Thirty specific reviews puts you above most of your metro, permanently, and it feeds both the map pack and the AI answers that now summarize local businesses.
- A five-page website, once: $1,500 to $4,000. 48.4% of handyman listings link no website. Listings with one show a median of 7 reviews against 1 without. That is the clearest gap in the category and it is a one-time cost, not a per-lead one.
- Google Ads at $30 a day. More expensive per lead than it looks at first, but the customer is yours afterward, the review lands on your profile, and the search terms report teaches you what your market actually wants. See the Google Ads guide.
So should you quit the apps
No, not on a Tuesday in January with an empty calendar. Use them the way you would use overtime: deliberately, with limits.
Four rules that make them tolerable:
- Set a monthly cap and never raise it in a panic. The month you are desperate is the month the fees do the most damage.
- Turn them off in your busy weeks. Paying for leads in May while turning away work is pure loss, and plenty of owners leave the tap running year round without noticing.
- Track cost per booked job, not cost per lead. The dashboards show the flattering number. Write down fees paid and jobs won each month, by hand if necessary.
- Convert every single job to a customer you own. Get the mobile number, ask for the Google review, add them to your list, and text them in six months. That is the only way a rented introduction becomes an asset.
Rule four is the whole game. A platform job that produces a Google review on your profile and a phone number in your list has paid for itself twice. A platform job that produces neither has paid the platform.
The measure to use
At the end of each month, one line in a notebook: what you paid in lead fees, what you paid for everything else, and how many jobs came from each. Do it for three months. Almost every owner who does finds the same thing, which is that the free channels were producing more work than the paid ones and getting none of the attention.
If you want help shifting that balance, any single service can be run for you free for 14 days, no card, in your own accounts. See the free trial page or text or call (385) 832-6175.