Cost comparison
Lead cost against link cost: a contractor's side-by-side
Portals charge per lead. A bought link is a one-time purchase. They are different tools, and this page lines them up honestly.
Four ways to get a phone to ring
| Lead portals (Angi, Thumbtack and similar) | Search ads | Bought backlinks | Supplier and association links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How billing works | Per lead or per month | Per click | One time per placement | Dues or favours |
| Stops when you stop paying? | Yes | Yes | No, placement stays | Depends on membership |
| Who else gets the lead? | Often several rivals | Whoever bids higher | Searcher chooses among results | Searcher chooses |
| Speed | Fast | Fast | Weeks to judge | Slow |
| Control over target page | None | Full | You pick it | Limited |
| Price range here | Not ours to say | Not ours to say | $1 to about $500 per link | Not ours to say |
The honest limits of a link
A link does not generate a lead on its own. Patience is the cost. It raises the odds that your page is seen when someone searches, and that is a slow effect you measure in weeks.
Portals and ads give you a faster start. Their cost keeps recurring. Many firms use both, with ads covering the slow months and links building what stays.
We cannot say your cost per lead will fall, or by how much. Track it yourself in a spreadsheet: calls from search, jobs booked, and the date each link went live.
Ahrefs and Semrush show what rivals appear to rank for in search. Only estimates, though. Treat those numbers as a rough map. Your own phone log is the record that counts, and Search Console shows which searches brought people to the page.
Write the comparison on paper once a quarter: portal spend, ad spend, link spend, and calls booked from each, so the next decision rests on your own record instead of a vendor's pitch.
What a portal lead really costs you
Pay-per-lead looks cheap per call, and a lead cost vs backlink cost comparison starts from that feeling. The catch is the sharing. Several rivals can receive the same enquiry, so you compete on price before you have spoken to the customer.
A search visitor who finds your own page is usually comparing a short list, and you may be the only contractor they phone. That is the case for putting some money into pages you own, even though it takes longer.
We do not know your numbers, and we do not quote portal prices. Your records are the answer. Pull your last three invoices from Angi, Thumbtack or HomeAdvisor and divide by the jobs you actually booked. That figure is yours alone, and it is the right yardstick for a link at $1 or $500.
Do not guess. Count it.
Build a lead cost vs backlink cost table in one afternoon
You do not need software for this. A sheet with one row per channel and the months across the top is enough. Four steps fill it.
Pull the portal bills
Gather the last three months of portal invoices, exactly as they were charged. Note any per-lead fees and any fixed monthly amount, since the two behave differently.
Pull the ad and link invoices
Add search ad spend from the platform's billing page. Add the marketplace invoices and proforma invoices for each link order, since the account makes both available.
Count the booked jobs
Use your phone log or scheduling tool. Count only the jobs that came from each channel, and leave out the calls you never converted.
Divide and compare
Divide each channel's spend by the jobs it booked. Read the three figures side by side, then set next month's budget from that record rather than from memory.
Cash flow: who waits for the money
Timing matters as much as the sticker price. Some owners say large clients pay late, so a contractor should not pay anything up front either. Cash timing is the question. Others point out that a portal charges before a single job is booked. Both views are about when cash leaves, and that question is separate from which channel works.
Keep the two questions apart when you decide. A channel can be cheap and still drain cash at the wrong time of year.
Paying a portal every month
A portal bill repeats each month whether or not a job came in. Say you pay that bill for a full year. The total then sits in the same ledger as your other fixed costs, and it does not shrink when the season slows down.
A basket of links is paid once, from your balance, and the placements stay. The difference changes cash flow more than the headline price does.
Pay attention to the fixed part as well as the per-job part. A monthly charge is easy to forget when the calls are coming in well.
Deposits you collect versus money you pay out
A deposit from a customer comes in before you buy materials. A link order goes the other way: you pay before the placement goes live. Writing both down on the same calendar shows the gap clearly.
If you set aside a fixed amount each month for marketing, the link orders fit inside it. Nothing about the order should force you to borrow against the next job.
Where the money gets recorded
Whoever keeps the books needs one place where every channel appears. One place, one format. That place can be a simple ledger, an accounting package or a shared sheet. What matters is that the portal, the ad platform and the link orders all land there in the same format.
Ask your bookkeeper which expense categories to use before the first invoice arrives. A week of setup is easier than a quarter of corrections.
One ledger, several lines
Record each channel as its own expense line in whatever bookkeeping tool you use. File the link invoices next to the portal bills. Then the comparison reads from one place rather than from three inboxes.
A quarterly review with the bookkeeper
A review every quarter catches what the monthly view misses. A portal fee charged twice, or an invoice filed under the wrong month, is easy to miss until the year-end totals look strange. Bring the sheet from the afternoon exercise to that meeting.
Ask the bookkeeper to flag any channel whose cost per booked job moved more than you expected. A flag like that is cheap to check and expensive to miss.
What we would do
Keep one portal, test a few links, track the calls
Do not drop a channel that pays its bills. Add two or three bought links aimed at your best-paying service page and write down the date. After a few weeks check Search Console, then decide whether to add more.
- Keep the portal while you test.
- Record calls by source for a quarter.
- Read the roofing calendar if your busy season is close.
- See how the city page rules decide where a link goes.
When the answer changes
The same comparison can point in different directions for different firms. Context changes the math. The table above is a starting point, not a ruling. These three situations change the answer more often than the price does.
A slow season that hits the phone
If your work is heavy in spring and thin in winter, a portal may be the more useful tool for the quiet months. Compare each channel over the same weeks, not across the peak and the lull. A fair comparison uses matching periods.
Otherwise a busy spring makes every channel look better than it is.
A page that already ranks near the top
When your service page already sits near the top for its phrase, a placement can add to a strong position, though nothing guarantees a shift. In that case the link is a small addition to something that works. The portal may then be the thing to trim first.
Check the page's position in Search Console before you decide. Do not rely on memory.
Three rivals on every lead
If three or four rivals appear beside you on every portal lead, the price per call tends to climb. Count the calls you still win, not only the ones you receive. A win rate that falls while the bill rises is a clear signal to test a different channel.
Before you switch a channel off
Cutting a channel is a bigger move than adding one. Timing is the risk. A portal can stop sending calls the same week you cancel, and a rival in your town may take the freed slot. Plan the switch for a quiet period, not in the middle of your busiest month.
Keep the old channel running until the new one has shown a result in your own records. Only then does the cut tell you something useful, and the sheet from the afternoon exercise makes the comparison fair.
Leave a month of overlap
Running two channels for a month costs more, but it gives you a clean before and after. Say you plan to drop a portal in January. Keep both going through December, write down the calls from each, then decide with the overlap data in hand.
Numbers to write down before you start
- Calls per month from organic search, from your phone log.
- Average ticket for the service you want to push.
- What you pay a portal or ad platform each month.
- The date of every link order.
- The Search Console impressions for the target page before the first link.
