Paying for leads that never pick up? Do the maths

That’s how paid contacts and paid leads on job portals work: you pay for a chance, not for a job. Below we look at why so many of them go nowhere, how to work out the real cost of one finished job, and what to check before you pay for a request. At the end we explain how it works with us, including what we don’t promise.

Why paid leads go to waste so often

A portal that sells contacts earns on every number it sells. Whether the call turns into a job is your problem. So it has no reason to give one request to one tradesperson. The more people buy the same contact, the better for the portal.

• Several tradespeople buy the same contact. The client gets five calls in an hour, books the first or the cheapest, and everyone else paid for nothing.
• Some people aren’t looking for anyone to hire. They want a rough idea of the price, then do it themselves or ask a friend.
• Requests go cold: a few days old, the description out of date, sometimes filled in just to see what happens. Some are outright fake.
• The client found someone ages ago, but the form is still up and their number is still on sale.

All the risk sits with you. You pay before you know whether the client exists, whether their price expectations are anywhere near reality, and whether the photo shows what really needs doing. A subscription is the same thing spread over time: the fee goes out every month, whether you earned anything that month or not.

Price ranges and offers from tradespeople: handyman in Warsaw.

What one won job really costs you

The price of a single contact tells you very little. What matters is how much you spend per job you actually did and got paid for. A notebook or a spreadsheet and one month of honest notes is enough.

1. Write down everything that went on finding clients that month: bought contacts, points, credits, subscription, paid boosts for your listing.
2. Count how many of those contacts ended in a job that was done and paid for. Not “booked”, not “almost certain”.
3. Divide the first number by the second. That’s your cost of winning one job.
4. Add your time: calls, messages, quotes, trips to look at jobs that led nowhere. Multiply the hours by what you charge for an hour of work.
5. Set the result against what you keep from a typical job after materials and travel.

Say you bought twenty contacts in a month and got three jobs out of them. Each of those three jobs is carrying the cost of the other seventeen contacts, plus the evenings on the phone. Plug in your own amounts.

It helps to split the result by type of work. Often small jobs from paid leads don’t pay off at all and you only make money on the bigger ones. If winning work eats a big slice of what you earn, luck has nothing to do with it. That’s how the model works.

How to filter a request before you pay or reply

Not every request is worth your money and your evening. Before you hit “buy contact” or sit down to price it, run through a short list:

• The description is specific: what, where, how many pieces or square metres. “Small repairs in the flat” with no details usually means an hour on the phone and a quote in the dark.
• There are photos. Someone who took two shots, one close up and one from further back, usually means business.
• The request is fresh. The older it is, the more likely the client has already booked someone.
• The address fits your route. Crossing half the city for a small job can wipe out the whole margin.
• There’s a date. “Sometime, maybe in spring” is more often curiosity than a job.
• The work is within your qualifications. With electrics and gas, don’t take on anything you aren’t qualified for, even if you’ve already paid for the contact.
• You know how many tradespeople see the same request. If the portal doesn’t show it, assume a lot.

Before you name a price, ask the things you can’t price fairly without: what the wall is made of, which floor, is there a lift, who’s buying the materials. A client who answers properly is usually a real client. Someone who replies to every question with “so how much?” is most likely shopping around. Letting that request go is a perfectly sound business decision.

Which model is fairer for the tradesperson

A platform can charge a tradesperson in three ways: per contact, per subscription, or per job you actually won.

With contacts and subscriptions you pay for access. The portal earns even when you earn nothing. With commission on a chosen job, you only pay once the client has decided you’re the one doing the work. Then the platform and the tradesperson want the same thing, because neither earns until a deal happens.

Commission has its downsides, and you should know them from the start. You pay it on every job you win, including ones that might have come your way anyway. Your offer sits next to other people’s, so the client sees your price against theirs. And nobody can tell you in advance how many jobs you’ll get in a month. What you do get is a cost you can calculate: you know what you’ll hand over on a specific job before you even send the offer.

Check one more thing: can you pay for a higher spot in the list? If you can, clients see whoever paid first, not whoever does good work.

How it works on HandyMan24

HandyMan24 brings clients and tradespeople together. Every tradesperson works for themselves and picks their own business form and paperwork. The client posts a job with a description and photos, and tradespeople in that category and area send offers with their own price. Signing up and sending offers is free.

• You pay commission only if the client picks your offer. It comes off your HandyCoin Account, which you top up in advance, and you see the amount before you send the offer. The rate depends on the job value.
• The client pays you directly for the work, in cash or by card. The money doesn’t pass through the platform, and you issue the receipt or invoice yourself.
• Before the choice is made, you talk in the platform chat. Both sides see the phone number and address only after the choice, so your number doesn’t end up in other people’s databases.
• You can’t buy a place in the list of offers. The client compares price, rating and reviews themselves.
• If the client goes quiet after choosing you and you can’t agree a time, you can cancel the contract for that reason. The first such case in the period set out in the rules isn’t counted as a breach, and the commission goes back to your account.

What we don’t promise: a number of jobs or any level of earnings. The client decides, and that depends on your price, your reviews and how you write your offer. Most jobs right now are in Warsaw and the surrounding area. We take client jobs across Poland; outside Warsaw there are fewer of them for now. You choose your city when you register and see jobs from it.

Without identity verification you can hold at most two active contracts at once and you won’t see urgent jobs. Once verified, those limits go and you get a bonus towards commission. All the rules are on the jobs for professionals page.

Common questions

If you’re tired of paying for numbers that never pick up, create a tradesperson profile. Signing up is free, and you only pay commission on a job you’ve actually won.