Add up what you actually spent on directories last year, not what you meant to spend, and most tradespeople go quiet for a second. It's rarely the number they had in their head.
This isn't an argument to cancel Checkatrade or Bark tomorrow. Both can bring in real work. It's an argument for knowing exactly what you're buying, because most people using them don't, and that's usually the more expensive part.
The bit that never gets totalled upWhat you're actually paying, added up
Checkatrade runs on a flat membership. You pay it monthly or annually, and it's commonly somewhere between roughly £60 and a few hundred pounds a month depending on your trade, your area and how much visibility you've paid for. That fee is the same whether this month sends you five decent jobs or none.
Bark and MyBuilder work differently: you buy credits, spend them to unlock a lead's contact details, and the credits themselves are usually around £1 to £1.50 each. A single lead can cost anywhere from £7 to £40 or more in credits depending on the job size and category. That sounds proportional, pay only for what you use, until you notice the other number nobody puts on the pricing page.
You're rarely the only one who bought that lead. The same enquiry is typically sold to several other tradespeople at once, often four or five. You're not paying for the job. You're paying for the right to compete for it.
Multiply your credit spend by how often you actually win the job against those other four or five, and the real cost per booked job usually lands well above the sticker price on the credit bundle. Most people never run that division. They just notice the credits keep running out.
Why it still feels worth itWhy the cost doesn't feel like a cost
There's a reason directories keep their grip even on tradespeople who've done the maths above and don't love the answer. The spend feels variable, a little here, a little there, rather than one uncomfortable number. It's how you've always got work, so stopping feels like turning off a tap rather than swapping one for a better one. And every so often a great job does come through, which is enough to keep the habit alive even if the average job doesn't clear its own cost.
None of that is a character flaw. It's just how sunk cost works. The fix isn't willpower, it's running the actual numbers once, properly, so the decision is made with your eyes open rather than out of habit.
The maths, run properly
Take a real month. Say you spent £180 in Bark credits and won 3 jobs out of the 9 leads you unlocked, average job value £600. That's £60 spent per lead, £540 spent per booked job once you account for the 6 you lost, against £1,800 of work won. Not disastrous on its own. But now compare it with what that same £540, spent once rather than every month, would buy as a fixed cost instead of a variable one.
A website built to rank for your trade and your patch is commonly a few hundred pounds to set up and £40 to £80 a month after that, all in. Once it's ranking, the enquiries that land on it cost you nothing per lead, there's no one else bidding against you for the same person's attention, and the job is worth the full amount rather than a chunk of it having gone to credits before you even quoted.
A directory sells you a chance to compete. A website earns you a client outright.The part the platforms won't put in the sales pitch
You don't own the relationship
This is the part that matters more than any single month's numbers. On a directory, the platform owns the customer relationship, not you. It decides who else sees the lead, it sets the credit price, and if it changes its algorithm, raises its fees, or lets a competitor pay to sit above you, your enquiries move with it. There's a longer version of this argument, with the full maths on reviews and directories side by side, in why great reviews don't mean much without a website of your own.
A website you own doesn't have that problem. It ranks under your name, in your control, and nobody else's algorithm can quietly move it. That's not a reason to hate directories. It's a reason not to let them be the only channel you have.
How to actually change thisA way off that doesn't mean cancelling tomorrow
Weaning off pay-per-lead spend works better than quitting cold. A sudden stop with nothing built to replace it just means a quiet month, and a quiet month is what sends most people straight back to topping up credits.
- Keep the directories running while you build the owned channel. Don't cut the income you have before the replacement exists.
- Track cost per booked job on each channel, side by side, for one real month. Not cost per lead. Cost per job you actually won.
- Set a proper review date, not a vague "at some point". Three months out is usually enough to see whether the owned channel is pulling its weight.
- Cut your worst-performing directory first, not all of them at once. You'll usually find one is quietly propping up the number while the other is barely paying for itself.
What owning the channel actually requires
Worth being straight about this part. A website doesn't replace a directory the day it goes live. It needs to actually rank for your trade and your area, which takes real page structure, not just a homepage with your logo on it, and it takes a few weeks to a couple of months to start pulling its weight in search, not overnight. It's not magic, it's just a channel you own instead of rent, and like any channel it needs to be built properly to earn its keep.
Directories aren't the enemy. Being the only channel you have is.