What Does It Actually Cost to Market a Trade Business in Australia?

A custom website built by a web design agency in Australia costs between $3,000 and $10,000 for a basic small business site. More complex sites with booking systems, SEO-optimised service pages, and ongoing maintenance run $10,000 to $30,000 or more.

On top of that, most agencies charge ongoing fees for hosting, maintenance, and SEO. Expect $100 to $300 per month just to keep the site functional and updated.

The result can be genuinely good, but it's a significant upfront investment with no guarantee of search visibility unless SEO work is included and executed properly. Many local service businesses have paid these amounts and received a site that doesn't rank for their trade and suburb.

hipages, the dominant Australian tradie marketplace, operates on a subscription model with most Australian tradies paying around $99 per month as a starting point, with ARPU data from hipages showing actual average spend of around $198 per month across their user base.

The subscription gives you access to leads, but those leads go to multiple tradies simultaneously. You're competing with others for the same enquiry. Reviews on independent platforms describe lead quality as inconsistent and the cost-per-converted-job as frequently higher than it initially appears.

Airtasker operates differently with no subscription fee but takes a commission on completed work. Lead quality varies significantly.

Australian businesses running Facebook ads for local services see cost per click ranging from $1.15 to $3.20, with cost per lead averaging around $18.75 for service businesses. A campaign producing 20 leads per month at that rate costs approximately $375 before any conversion work, landing page optimisation, or time spent managing the campaign.

Facebook ads can work well for specific campaigns and promotions. For ongoing lead generation, the cost accumulates without the compounding benefit of organic search visibility.