What It Costs And What It'S Worth

Let's talk money plainly.

REALISTIC 2026 RANGES

Website build (5–10 pages, home service company):

Ongoing:

WHAT'S A LEAD ACTUALLY WORTH TO YOU?

Do this math once. It changes every marketing decision you'll ever make.

   Average job value                    $ ________
   × Your profit margin                   ____ %
   = Profit per job                     $ ________

   × Your close rate                      ____ %
   = PROFIT PER LEAD                    $ ________

Example — a landscaping outfit:

• Average job: $3,500
• Margin: 35% → $1,225 profit per job
• Closes 1 in 4 leads → 25%
• Profit per lead: $306

So every single lead that walks in the door is worth about $306 to that business, whether it closes or not.

Now: a $4,000 website that generates 8 extra leads a month pays for itself in under two months. After that it's profit.

And the reverse: if your site is generating three leads a month and you're paying $300/month for it, you're getting $918 of value for $300. Also fine! The math tells you.

[FIGURE 8.1 — "What's a Lead Worth?"] Art direction: Fill-in-the-blank worksheet, same styling as Figure 6.2 so they read as a matched set. Big blank lines. Worked example in the margin.

WHEN DIY MAKES SENSE (HONESTLY)

I build websites for a living and I'll still tell you this straight:

Build it yourself if:

• You're brand new and cash is genuinely tight
• You need something up this month
• Your market has little competition
• You've got the patience for a weekend or three

Do it on a builder, keep it simple, own your domain, and pour your energy into your Google Business Profile and reviews instead. A basic DIY site plus a great Google profile beats a beautiful site with an empty profile every single time.

Hire it out when:

• You're doing $250k+ and your time is worth more than $50/hr
• Your market is competitive and you're losing to guys who aren't better than you
• You've tried DIY and it's been "80% done" for eight months
• You want service pages and city pages built properly
• You want to stop thinking about it

The honest middle path: DIY year one. Reinvest into a real build once you can see the leads coming in. Nothing wrong with that sequence. A lot of good businesses were built that way.

THE BUDGET FRAME THAT ACTUALLY WORKS

General rule for home services: 5% to 10% of revenue on marketing. Newer or growing businesses skew high; established word-of-mouth businesses skew low.

At $500,000 in revenue, that's $25,000–$50,000 a year across everything — website, ads, trucks, signs, sponsorships, print.

Your website should be a modest slice of that, and it should be the slice everything else points at. Truck wrap sends people to the website. Yard sign sends them to the website. Ad sends them to the website. If the website leaks, everything upstream of it leaks too.

That's why fixing your website first is the cheapest marketing decision available to you. You're not adding traffic. You're stopping the loss.

DO THIS NOW

Fill in the profit-per-lead worksheet with your real numbers. Now you know what a lead is worth, which means you know what a website is worth, which means nobody can sell you on feelings again.