Where trade work actually comes from: the four kinds of source

Ask around and you'll hear firm opinions about lead platforms — that they're a rip-off, or that they built somebody's business. Both are true, which is a sign the argument is being had at the wrong level.

It's more useful to notice that every route to work is one of four kinds. They behave differently, they fail differently, and most of the disagreement is really about people comparing one kind to another.

The four kinds

Sources you own. Past customers, the people they tell, your reviews, your Google Business Profile, the record of what you've done and for whom. These cost nothing, get better every year, and nobody can outbid you for them. The catch is the one that matters in a quiet February: you can't turn them up. Owned sources answer to work you did months or years ago.

Sources you're granted. The registers that come with something you're already paying for or qualified into — a competent-person scheme, a trade body, an authorisation. Homeowners get pointed at these registers constantly, by councils, by insurers, by every consumer guide that ends with "use a registered installer".

They're the most neglected of the four, for a boring reason: you've already paid, so there's no invoice arriving each month to remind you the listing exists. Plenty of entries have a phone number two businesses out of date. They're also gated, which is their real advantage — the pool of people you're up against is limited to those who cleared the same bar.

Sources you rent. Lead platforms and paid advertising. The defining feature isn't the cost, it's the timing: this is the only kind that can put an enquiry in front of you this week. That's a genuine service and worth paying for. It's also why so many businesses start here — and then never build the other three, because renting works immediately and everything else takes a year.

Rented sources stop the day you stop paying, and the enquiry is usually shared with whoever else paid.

Sources other people control. Architects, letting agents, builders, merchants, other trades, loss adjusters. These convert better than anything you can buy, because a recommendation carries somebody's credibility with it. What they don't have is a volume dial. You can't decide to receive more; you can only be the person who turns up when they ring, and be worth recommending twice.

What decides your mix

Not preference. Job value.

A lead fee is a fixed cost applied to a variable prize, so its weight depends entirely on the size of the job it's attached to. That single fact explains most of what looks like disagreement between trades:

• For roofers, the job-value spread is the widest in any trade — a slipped tile is £150–£600 and a re-roof runs into five figures. The same £40 enquiry is a rounding error on one and most of the margin on the other, so what a source sends you matters more than what it charges.
• For plumbers, the trade splits in half. Emergency call-outs are won on speed and can't carry much of a fee; installs are won on the quote and barely notice one.
• For electricians, the interesting sources are gated — scheme registers, Local Services Ads, EV charging authorisation — and the steadiest work is compliance that repeats on a five-year clock.
• For builders, the fee is irrelevant against a £50,000 extension. The expensive part is the unbilled day spent pricing work you don't win, which makes qualifying an enquiry worth more than sourcing one.

Same four kinds of source, four different right answers. If your typical job is small, rented leads have to be cheap and converted fast, and the owned and granted sources will out-earn them. If your typical job is large, buy the leads and put your discipline somewhere else — into deciding which ones deserve a quote.

So are there free leads?

Not as a feed, no. What exists is a set of sources that cost time instead of money — your past customers, your profile, your register entry, the people who refer you — and two platforms that are free to join and charge only when you pursue a job, which is the closest thing to trying before buying.

If you're looking for free leads because the diary is empty this month, the honest answer is that the free sources won't fix this month. They fix next year. The rented ones fix this month, at a price. Knowing which problem you're solving is most of the decision.

The order most people do it in

Rented first, because it's the only kind available instantly. Then, once it's working well enough, nothing else — because the phone is ringing and there's no deadline on setting up the free stuff.

That's how a business ends up ten years old and still paying monthly for enquiries it shares with three competitors, with a customer list it has never once written to and a register entry showing a number that stopped working in 2019.

The order that works better isn't complicated. Fix the granted sources first, because they're an afternoon's work on something you already pay for. Keep the owned ones alive by writing down who you worked for and what you did. Rent what you need in the meantime, and judge it on what a won job costs rather than what a lead costs. Be worth recommending, and the fourth kind takes care of itself.

If you want the specifics for your trade, start with the four posts above, or with what Checkatrade actually costs and how the four big platforms compare if you're weighing up a membership right now.

One thing carries across all of it. Whatever mix you land on, you can only judge it if you know which source each enquiry came from and what happened to it — and that record is the one thing no platform will keep for you.