Cost versus leads, worked out.
Three scenarios with the arithmetic shown, using published close rates, lead costs, and job values.
The inputs, all sourced
Every number below comes from the research behind this site.
Scenario one: the retainer
A $2,500 monthly retainer over three years is $90,000, with nothing owned at the end. At a median job value of $13,400, that spend needs roughly 6.7 booked jobs a year to cover itself in revenue terms before materials and labour. On a 20 percent gross margin it needs closer to 34 jobs a year to be genuinely profitable. Whether it delivers them is the question the monthly traffic report does not answer.
Scenario two: the rebuild, amortised
A $50,000 rebuild across three years is $1,389 a month, plus a $200 care plan, so $1,589. Half the retainer, and the site is an asset you own. If the rebuild produces 15 organic enquiries a month closing at 60 percent, that is nine jobs a month at an acquisition cost of about $177 each, or 1.3 percent of a median job. The same fifteen enquiries bought as cold paid leads at a 12 percent close rate would produce 1.8 jobs.
Scenario three: shared platform leads
Shared leads cost $200 to $300 and close at 8 to 20 percent. At $250 and a 14 percent close rate, one booked job costs $1,786 in lead spend alone, or 13.3 percent of a median job, every job, forever. Eighty booked jobs a year on that channel is $143,000 of lead cost, and none of it accumulates into anything you own.
Comparing the three honestly
Over three years: the retainer costs $90,000 and leaves you with nothing. The rebuild costs $57,200 and leaves you with the site. Eighty jobs a year from shared leads costs $429,000. The rebuild is not cheaper because it is a bargain. It is cheaper because a one-time build against a research plan replaces a permanent per-job toll. That is the entire commercial argument for how this practice is priced.
Where these numbers break
They break if your average job is well below the median, if your organic close rate is nowhere near 50 percent, or if the rebuild produces materially fewer than fifteen enquiries a month. All three are possible, which is why the audit comes first: $2,500 to find out what is winnable in your market before anyone commits $50,000 to building it.
Why this page is not a calculator
An interactive calculator needs JavaScript, and this site ships with none by default, because the same discipline that keeps pages fast keeps them extractable by search and answer engines. Substitute your own job value and close rate into the arithmetic above and it works the same way. If a live version is worth building later, it would need a deliberate exception to that rule rather than a quiet one.
The variables that change the answer most
Five inputs, in order of how much they move the outcome.
A margin-adjusted version
Revenue comparisons flatter every channel. On a 20 percent gross margin, a $50,000 rebuild has to generate about $250,000 in booked work to pay for itself, which at a median job value is roughly nineteen jobs across the whole amortisation period. A $2,500 monthly retainer over three years needs about $450,000 in booked work on the same margin. Both numbers are larger than the revenue framing suggests, and the ranking between them does not change.
When the arithmetic says no
If your average job is well under the median, if organic enquiries close nowhere near 50 percent, or if your crews are already booked as far out as you want, the rebuild does not pay and we will say so at the audit stage. That is what $2,500 buys: a defensible answer either way, before anyone commits five figures to a build that the numbers do not support.
Related guides.
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What a roofing website actually costs, from DIY to a $50,000 rebuild, with the ranges published rather than quoted on a call.
Want this run on your market?
$2,500, and you find out what is winnable.