What Is Pay-Per-Lead?
Pay-per-lead means you pay a set price for each lead you receive. Here's how it compares to pay-per-click and monthly retainers, and what to watch for so you don't overpay for shared leads.
What pay-per-lead means
Pay-per-lead is a way of buying marketing where you pay a set price for each lead you get — and nothing more. No lead comes in, no charge. A lead comes in, you pay the agreed price. That’s it.
The appeal is simple: your money lines up with actual prospects, not with activity. You’re not paying for impressions, clicks, or a marketer’s monthly hours and hoping leads show up at the end. You’re paying for the leads themselves, one at a time, at a price you knew in advance.
For a busy contractor, that’s easy to budget around. If a lead costs a flat price and you know roughly how many you can handle in a week, you can do the math on what you’re spending before you spend it. There aren’t many surprises.
Pay-per-lead vs pay-per-click vs retainer
Pay-per-lead is one of three common ways contractors pay for marketing. They charge for completely different things, which is why the price tags are hard to compare head-to-head until you line them up.
| Pay-per-lead | Pay-per-click | Retainer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay for | Each lead received | Each ad click | A flat monthly fee |
| When you pay | When a lead arrives | When someone clicks | Every month, no matter what |
| Predictable? | Yes — cost tracks leads | No — clicks may not convert | Yes for cost, no for results |
| Risk sits with | The provider (no lead, no pay) | You (you pay for clicks, not leads) | You (you pay whether or not it works) |
| Best when | You want cost tied to leads | You’re running and tuning your own ads | You want ongoing, hands-off marketing |
With pay-per-click, you pay every time someone clicks your ad — even if they never call, never fill out a form, and were just browsing. Clicks can turn into leads, but a lot of them don’t, so your cost and your actual prospects can drift apart.
With a retainer, you pay a marketer or agency a flat monthly fee to handle your marketing. The cost is steady and predictable, but it doesn’t move with results — a slow month still costs the same as a busy one, and the leads it produces are out of your direct control.
Pay-per-lead sits in between: predictable like a retainer, but tied to real prospects like you’d want from any ad spend. The risk shifts toward the provider, because if no lead comes in, you don’t pay.
The catch to watch for
Pay-per-lead sounds clean, and it can be — but there’s one thing that quietly undoes a low price: exclusivity.
Some pay-per-lead providers sell the same lead to several contractors at the same time. You see a cheap price per lead and feel good about it, then realize you’re calling a homeowner who’s already heard from three other businesses that bought the exact same lead. These are shared leads, and they go to several contractors at once, which means you’re competing on speed and price for something you already paid for.
So a low per-lead price isn’t automatically a good deal. A lead that’s yours alone is worth far more than a cheaper lead split four ways, because you can actually book it. Before you compare prices between two pay-per-lead providers, you have to know whether you’re comparing exclusive leads or shared ones. (For a deeper look, see What Is an Exclusive Lead?)
The question to ask is the same one that cuts through every lead pitch: “How many other contractors get this same lead?”
How to judge the real cost
The number on the invoice is “cost per lead.” The number that matters to your business is cost per booked job. Those two can be very different.
Imagine cheap shared leads at a low price each, but four contractors get every one, so you book a small fraction of them. Now imagine exclusive leads at a higher price each, where you’re the only one calling, so you book a much bigger share. Even though each exclusive lead cost more, the cost to actually land a job can come out lower — and you wasted less time chasing people who’d already hired someone.
So when you weigh a pay-per-lead offer, run it all the way to booked jobs. A flat, predictable price per lead is good. A flat, predictable price for a lead that’s exclusively yours is better.
How ConsentResolve does it
ConsentResolve is pay-per-lead at a flat $7 per lead — no clicks to pay for, no monthly retainer, no minimums. You pay for leads, and you know the price up front.
Two things make that $7 different from a cheap shared lead. First, every lead is exclusive: it’s sold to one contractor only and never resold or shared, so you’re the only business reaching out to that homeowner. Second, every lead is consent-first — the homeowner agreed to be contacted before the lead ever reaches you, so your follow-up starts on solid footing.
If you want to see exactly what’s included at that price, the pricing page lays it out.