Why nobody serious sells leads on revenue share

It is an attractive-sounding offer: pay nothing up front, pay a share of what funds. The reason serious vendors decline to do it is worth understanding before you accept it from one who will.

The vendor cannot control the variable

Whether a lead funds depends overwhelmingly on how fast it is called, how many times, and how well the file is packaged — none of which the vendor sees or influences. Asking them to be paid on your funded rate is asking them to underwrite your sales floor, and they will price that uncertainty into the share.

Structure	Who carries the risk	What it costs
Pay per lead	You	Known, up front
Pay per funded deal	The vendor	Far more per deal, to cover the unknown
Revenue share	The vendor	A permanent claim on your commissions

What it means when one offers

They may not be generating leads at all, and have no cost to recover if nothing funds.
They may be reselling aggregated data where the marginal cost is near zero.
They may want the funded-deal data, which is worth more than the leads.
Occasionally it is a genuine partnership offer — and those come with the vendor asking about your process, because it is now their problem.

What it costs in practice

Run the arithmetic against your own numbers. At the benchmark of two funded per fifty leads at $60, you are paying about $1,500 per funded deal. A revenue share of even a modest slice of a $6,200 commission is more than that — and it continues on every deal rather than stopping at the invoice.

Questions brokers ask

Serious ones generally do not. Whether a lead funds depends on speed, cadence and file quality — all of which sit inside your business, so a vendor paid on funded deals is underwriting a process they cannot see.

Often that they have little cost to recover — because they are reselling aggregated data, or not generating leads at all. Occasionally it is a genuine partnership, and those come with hard questions about your process.

Rarely, once you run it. At two funded per fifty $60 leads you pay roughly $1,500 per funded deal; a share of a $6,200 commission usually exceeds that, and it recurs on every deal.

Audit rights. A vendor paid on funded deals needs to verify them, which means visibility into your pipeline and commissions and the ability to dispute your reporting.

Only with a vendor genuinely invested in your process, clear definitions of what counts as funded, a cap on the term, and audit rights you have actually read.

Keep reading

Cost per funded deal, and the ceiling you should setOne number decides whether a lead source is affordable.Twelve questions before you sign a lead agreementAsk them in writing. The answers you get are the diligence.What brokers actually earn per dealPoints, splits, and the difference between headline and banked.