Lead generation sells a contractor the chance at work: a homeowner's contact info, paid for win or lose, usually shared with competitors. A job network pays the contractor for the work itself: the job arrives sold, scoped, priced, and scheduled, and the contractor collects a fixed rate for completing it. One charges you for maybes; the other pays you for finished work.
These two models get lumped together because both "bring contractors work." They could not be more different, and the difference decides who carries the risk.
What lead generation actually is
A lead-gen platform is an advertising middleman. It ranks for what homeowners search, captures the inquiry, and sells that inquiry — often to several contractors simultaneously. Its revenue moment is the sale of the contact, which means its incentives end there. Whether the lead converts, whether the job is profitable, whether the homeowner was ever serious: not the platform's problem. Contractually and economically, the contractor is the customer and carries 100% of the delivery risk.
What a job network is
A job network is a general-contractor model applied to service work. The network owns the customer relationship end to end: it markets, sells, scopes, prices, schedules, and supplies the job. It then pays an independent contractor a fixed rate to perform the work. Its revenue moment is the completed job — which means its incentives run through quality, not contact volume. If the work is bad, the network eats the review and the redo. That alignment is the entire point.
The risk ledger
| Risk | Lead gen | Job network |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing spend | Contractor (via fees) | Network |
| Sales & quoting time | Contractor, unpaid | Network |
| Dead/shared leads | Contractor | N/A — jobs, not leads |
| Materials float | Contractor | Network |
| Collections | Contractor | Network |
| Workmanship | Contractor | Contractor (as it should be) |
Notice the last row: a job network doesn't remove the risk a craftsman should own — quality. It removes everything that has nothing to do with craft.
Where the network's margin comes from (and why that's fine)
The network keeps a spread between what the customer pays and what the contractor is paid. That spread funds the marketing, sales, scoping, scheduling, materials logistics, and customer handling the contractor no longer does. A contractor evaluating the model should compare the offered rate not to the customer's price, but to their own net — after lead fees, unpaid quoting, no-shows, and collections. That's the honest comparison, and it's the one the model is built to win.
Loadside is a job network for licensed electricians in Northern Virginia. It's free to join because "free" is the whole category: we pay you.