Tradie leads:
where the good jobs come from.

Ask a builder or a sparky where their best jobs came from and the answer is rarely an ad. It's a past customer, a neighbour who saw the ute out the front, a real estate agent, or a builder who subs work out. Paid channels fill the gaps between those, and the trick is knowing which gap each one fills.

Here's how the mix typically works for a local trade business, from cheapest per job to dearest. Your order may differ. The only way to know is to ask every new customer where they found you, and write it down.

hipages is the biggest name. Its NRMA member offer page describes Starter, Advanced and Premium packages, says every lead is capped at 3 businesses, and lists what a business needs to join: an ABN, a current licence where the trade is licensed, and ID. Oneflare works on a similar idea. When someone posts a job, it notifies businesses that service the area and offer the service, and they can quote or say they're interested.

So what you're buying is a seat in a contest. The homeowner has already asked for more than one price. That isn't a bad thing: plenty of tradies fill a slow month this way. But it changes the maths. If three of you quote and you win your fair share, you're paying for three leads for every job.

Read the subscription terms before you sign up. Packages can run for a fixed term and then renew, so check how long you're committing to and how to cancel, and put a reminder in your phone a fortnight before the renewal date.

Put in what you pay a lead site, how many leads you get and how many you win. Use the last three months if you have them. The starting numbers are made up.

Twenty leads a week sounds better than five, until you count the evenings spent quoting. A lead costs you something even when it's free: the drive, the site visit, the hour writing the quote. For a builder pricing a bathroom renovation in Woy Woy, a bad lead can burn half a day.

Good leads tend to share a few traits. They're in suburbs you service, they describe a job you actually want, the timing is real, and the budget is in the right range. You can ask for most of that up front. A short form, or a two-minute phone check ('What suburb? When do you need it done? Have you got plans yet?'), saves a wasted site visit.

Then track it the boring way. A spreadsheet with source, suburb, job type, quoted, won and job value, filled in every Friday, will tell you more than any dashboard. After three months you'll know which source brings the jobs you want, and which one brings tyre-kickers.

Plenty of jobs are lost after the quote, not before it. The homeowner gets three prices, goes quiet, and picks whoever explained theirs best or rang back. A call two or three days after the quote, asking if they have questions, is the cheapest lead generation there is. The how customers choose a tradie page covers what goes into a quote that wins.

In NSW the paperwork is part of the sale. Building Commission NSW says residential work over $5,000 including GST needs a written contract. Jobs over $20,000 need a full home building contract with a cooling-off period of 5 clear business days and a home building compensation insurance certificate, and the deposit can't be more than 10 percent. Other states set their own thresholds, so check with your state's building regulator.

Use that as a selling point, not just a rule. A quote that says 'written contract, 10 percent deposit, insurance certificate supplied' tells a nervous homeowner you know what you're doing.

Every lead ends in a call, a text or a knock on the door, and each has its own rules. They're national, and they apply to a one-person plumbing business as much as a big builder. The ACCC is also looking hard at how leads are made. In July 2026 it reported widespread non-compliance in unsolicited selling, noted some small solar businesses said up to 80% of their work came that way, and recommended bringing lead generation explicitly into the rules. If your work comes from door-knocking or bought solar and home improvement leads, expect tighter rules.

• Texts and emails: the Spam Act needs consent, your business name and contact details, and an unsubscribe that works, honoured within 5 working days. Replying to someone who asked you for a quote is what they asked for. Putting them on a monthly promo list is marketing.
• Cold calls: numbers on the Do Not Call Register can only be called for telemarketing with consent. Every telemarketing call has to keep to the permitted hours: 9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, with no calls on Sundays or national public holidays.
• Door-knocking: a sale that follows an uninvited visit or call is an 'unsolicited consumer agreement'. The ACCC says visits are allowed 9am to 6pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, with a 10 business day cooling-off period. A customer returning your missed call can still count as unsolicited.
• Bought lists: many tradies under $3 million turnover aren't covered by the Privacy Act. But buying a list without the consent of everyone on it is what the OAIC calls trading in personal information, and that brings a business under the Act whatever its size.