At 34 dollars a lead and 2 percent to contract, the subscription model rarely works out
Before putting money into buying leads, it pays to model what the seller side actually costs in a given metro. Paid search seller leads commonly land around $34 delivered from vendors, shared with two or three other buyers. Vendors typically present lead to signed contract at 2%, framed as a good number. That puts roughly $1,700 of lead cost into every contract before an hour on the phone or any follow up spend. The seat model is where it gets interesting. The same vendor often offers a flat monthly fee, say $499, with unlimited leads in one county. If that county produces 30 leads a month, that works out to about $16 a lead, roughly half the per lead price. So either the per lead price carries heavy margin, or the seat leads run lower quality in some way that is not obvious up front. Worth comparing notes from anyone who has bought both structures from the same vendor, since the gap is large enough to change the entire lead strategy.
