How this market actually works.

The federal reporting rule landed in May and left MCAs out. State pressure did not ease.

Market size, default rates, average advance, channel share — with sources.

Which states require disclosure, which require registration, and what is only proposed.

A $1.065bn judgment turned on one question: was it an advance, or a loan?

Brokers funding in Texas must register with the OCCC by 31 December. Most have not.

Three products, three jobs — and when an advance is genuinely the wrong one.

The public record that tells you who already has a position.

Why a second position changes everything about the first.

Why a 1.4 factor is not 40% interest, and what it actually costs.

Where brokers, ISOs and funders actually sit, and who gets paid what.

The whole category explained, from where they come from to what you actually receive.

The three lead types people confuse most, and what each is actually good for.

One is priced on your receipts, the other on your customer’s credit.

If they qualify for SBA and can wait, they should take the SBA.

It relieves the daily payment. It does not reduce what is owed.

Often the same economics under a name that tests better.

Brokers funding a slice of their own deals, and what it risks.

Reconciliation, then collection, then the personal guarantee.

Three publish it as open data. Several sell it. Passing it on is a separate question.

The position is real. The index just does not say whose it is.

What each type really means, and who gets to the merchant first.

Every price band on the market, and the number worth comparing on.

A scorecard you can run on any vendor, including us.

A test you can run this afternoon on data you already have.

The honest cost comparison, including what never shows up in cost per lead.

Ask them in writing. The answers you get are the diligence.

Most tests measure the floor, not the vendor, and nobody notices.

Three vendors use the phrase for three different products.

The only price that matters is the one per deal that funded.

A good policy is narrow, written, and honoured without argument.

One buys you a record. The other buys you a conversation.

Ask for a sample before you sign, not after the first batch.

Untagged leads make every buying decision a guess.

Cheap enough to work at volume, and only for floors built for it.

The same order delivered differently is a different order.

The offer sounds risk-free. Read who is taking the risk.

Five checks, none of which require them to cooperate.

Most vendors worth avoiding are real companies. That is what makes this hard.

What TCPA actually requires, and the questions that expose a vendor who cannot answer.

The four elements a disclosure needs, and the one nobody includes.

A small number of people file most of the claims. They are findable.

The B2B exemption is narrower than the people relying on it think.

Carriers enforce more than the law does, and they enforce it faster.

The one federal rule where B2B genuinely does not save you.

The first four hours, and the one thing that makes it worse.

Florida, Oklahoma and Washington changed how national dialling works.

Almost every claim starts with a flag that did not propagate.

Set the dialler by the merchant’s clock, not by yours.

One state says one party consents. Another says everybody does.

Consent given to a name you have never heard of is your problem.

Nine artefacts. A vendor either has them or does not.

They filled in a form. Open like someone who knows that.

It is almost never about interest. It is a reflex to being called.

You cannot answer it honestly and they will not accept that as an answer.

The single biggest drop-off point in the whole process.

Most brokers stop at two attempts. Most connections happen after that.

Half of those offers are not real, and you can show that without saying it.

Agree to it, then get the one thing that keeps the deal alive.

Six questions, in an order that disqualifies early and cheaply.

The honest conversation is worth more than the placement.

Under fifteen seconds, one reason, and your number twice.

Every night an offer sits unsigned is a night a competitor closes it.

They are not objecting to you. Do not answer as though they are.

Six things, in order. Everything else is detail.

The letters are informal. The distinctions behind them are not.

Most are predictable. Collecting them late is what kills the deal.

Shotgunning is not a strategy, and funders can tell.

The list is shorter than brokers think and longer than merchants hope.

The count matters less than what they consume.

One is an incident. A pattern is a different business.

The most common fixable decline, and it takes one conversation.

Knowing the sequence tells you what a delay actually means.

Faster reads, better stretches, and the benefit of the doubt.

A legitimate product with rules, not a euphemism for stacking.

The record proves a claim exists. The statements prove it is still running.

Distinct secured parties, not distinct filings — and which filings are not positions at all.

What a funder needs, in the order they need it, so it underwrites the same day.

Getting leads into the right hands in seconds, not whenever someone checks.

Headcount, compensation and the metrics that tell you it is working.

The five things that decide an offer, in the order they get checked.

The eight reasons that account for most of them, and which are fixable.

The most profitable deal in your book is one you already funded.

Five questions that decide whether a file is worth packaging.

How commissions work, what a deal is worth, and the maths behind a lead budget.

The one variable that decides whether an order funds anything.

Buy more than your floor can dial and you have bought a slower response.

Whatever you pay on is what you will get, including the parts you did not want.

Anything you cannot act on next week is a report, not a metric.

Your dead pile is the cheapest lead source you already own.

The compliance features matter more than the dialling speed.

Hire for phone resilience. Everything else is teachable in a fortnight.

You lose the ambient supervision. Replace it deliberately.

Five things, and the integrations between them matter more than any one.

The creative is the targeting. Everything else is secondary.

Every field you add is a trade: fewer leads, better ones.

CAN-SPAM permits it. Your domain reputation is the real constraint.

Higher intent than Meta, tighter policy, and a lot more competition.

A twelve-month project that compounds, or nothing.

The cheapest audience you will ever build, and most brokers never build it.

Slow to build, and the only channel with no acquisition cost.

Fewer leads than you think in month one, and more in month six.

Even a winner is gone in a month or two. Plan for that or the account decays.

A referral and credibility channel, not a lead source.

Industry, product, state, revenue tier, use of funds, pain point. Upload everything.

A one-time passcode earns its drop-off. A captcha just drops people.

Free, and the reason funnel decisions stop being arguments.

The pixel is a request for more of the same. Make sure of what “same” is.

The best signal there is, and useless below fifty a week.

The least important number on the list, and the first one to tell you something is wrong.

Above it, the creative is fine. Well under it, and it is still the creative.

A hundred land, five qualify. Under that, the page broke a promise or added friction.

The range depends on what the form asks for, and the number only means anything next to what funds.

Five ticks, five crosses, and every cross moves the merchant down the line.

A walk-in fridge that broke before Labor Day says more than “restaurant owner”.

The ad, the page, the conversion event and the call are links in one chain.

The copy said “business owners”. The photo was a nail salon. The leads were nail salons.

Pulled from the ad account by qualified-lead count, not chosen for how they look.

Your only job is to check that the winner brings merchants, not just leads.

The lowest-risk spend in the account is more of what is already working.

Their generic creative runs on pixel data. Yours has to do the targeting itself.

Step one is qualified. Step 1.5 is better than qualified. Step two is what funded.

Ten steps, and the two that everything else depends on.

One copy gets blocked. The other always arrives. Both carry the same ID.

A server event with no email or phone is noise Meta cannot attribute.

Funding and credit repair on the same pixel contradict each other.

Under it you are not buying leads, you are starving the algorithm.

Watched them reach the step and leave. Removed it. Cost per lead fell.

What each step should produce, and where yours is leaking.

One number decides whether a lead source is affordable.

Days, not weeks — and the delays are almost all on your side.

Points, splits, and the difference between headline and banked.

Seven products, seven price bands, and they are not comparable.

The same leads pay differently depending who is in them.

The ratio matters less than which column the declines fall in.

767 qualified, phone-verified leads. $24.07 each. One campaign, one week.

Say $50K a month and the average submission does $25K. Every time.

Ranked from least indicative to the one everything comes down to.

Where the ad account stops and the floor starts.

Three numbers, one line of arithmetic, and the whole decision about how much to spend.

The floor was $30K a month and $15K requested. The averages were nearly three times and six times that.