Directorist Pay Per Lead New
Turn every listing inquiry into revenue. A visitor submits an inquiry from a listing page, the listing owner sees the non-locked details immediately, and fields you mark as locked - email, phone, whatever you choose - stay hidden until the owner pays to unlock that specific lead. Charge a flat fee per lead, or a commission based on the deal size the visitor submitted. No separate payment setup required - it runs through Directorist's own checkout.
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Product Overview
Directorist Pay Per Lead adds a paywall between your directory's visitors and its listing owners - not by blocking inquiries, but by locking the fields that make a lead actionable. Visitors can always submit their name, their message, whatever you want to collect up front. The listing owner sees that much for free. But the fields you mark as locked, typically the ones that actually let them close the deal, stay masked until they pay. There's nothing to configure outside Directorist itself: no separate merchant account, no new checkout flow. Unlocking a lead creates a normal Directorist order, so it works with whichever payment gateways you already have active.
Stop Giving Away Leads for Free
Every directory eventually runs into the same problem: listings drive inquiries, those inquiries have real value to the business receiving them, and your site captures none of it. A visitor fills out a contact form once, and every detail they submit is free forever to the listing owner, with nothing pushing them back to you. Pay Per Lead changes that - visitors still submit for free, but the listing owner has to come back and pay to see the parts of that lead that actually let them act on it, turning every serious inquiry into a transaction that runs through you.
Two Ways to Price a Lead
You decide how unlocking works, per lead, with two pricing models.
Fixed - every lead costs the same amount, set once in Lead Unlock Price. Simple, predictable, and the right default for most directories.
Commission - the price is a percentage of a number the visitor actually submitted. Set a Commission Rate, and the Directorist looks for a numeric value in a budget, amount, offer, or price field on the lead and calculates the unlock price from it. If none of those fields exist, or the visitor didn't submit a number, the Directorist falls back to your fixed price automatically - so commission pricing never leaves a lead with no price at all.
Build Your Own Lead Form
The contact form isn't fixed - a drag-and-drop field builder lets you add, remove, reorder, and configure every field a visitor fills out, from text and email to date, time, and consent fields, each with its own key, label, placeholder, and two switches: Required and Locked, with Locked being what creates the paywall so anything left unlocked is visible to the owner the instant the lead arrives. Once built, you can rename the whole section to match what you're actually collecting, like Request a Quote or Book a Session, so it reads like a natural part of the listing instead of a bolted-on plugin.
From Locked to Unlocked, Automatically
A lead moves through the same lifecycle every time, with no manual step from you in the middle: a visitor submits the form and the lead is saved as Locked, the listing owner sees the unlocked fields right away with a clear Unlock price next to the locked ones, and clicking Unlock sends them into Directorist checkout with that lead already attached, where they pick from whatever payment gateways you've got active and pay - the instant that order is marked paid, Directorist flips the lead to Unlocked on its own, and the owner can finally see every field they were missing.
See Every Lead, From Every Angle
Listing owners get a dedicated Leads tab in their frontend dashboard, plus an Owner Leads section you can place directly on a listing page, both showing the same All Leads, Locked, and Unlocked views. As the admin, you get your own view that nothing else touches: a full lead table under Directorist, filterable by status, searchable, with every submitted field visible regardless of lock state - because locking only ever applies to the listing owner's side, never yours. Delete a lead from there in one click if you ever need to.
Key Features
- Turn any listing's contact form into a paid-unlock lead form.
- Two pricing models: Fixed price per lead, or Commission based on a submitted budget/amount/offer/price value.
- Automatic fallback to fixed pricing whenever commission pricing has nothing numeric to work from.
- Drag-and-drop field builder - 11 field types, with per-field Required and Locked controls.
- Runs on Directorist's own checkout - no separate payment gateway or merchant account to configure.
- Leads unlock automatically the moment the linked order is marked paid.
- Pay Per Lead Form and Owner Leads sections, available in Directory Builder for any directory - rename the form to match what it collects (Request a Quote, Book a Session, etc.).
- Generate shortcodes for placing the form and leads list anywhere.
- Dedicated Leads tab in the frontend user dashboard for listing owners.
- Full admin lead list with search, status filter, per-lead detail view, and delete.
Key Benefits
- A New Revenue Stream, Not a New Workflow Pay Per Lead sits on top of the listings and checkout you already have. There's no second product to sell, no separate onboarding for listing owners - every inquiry your directory already generates becomes a potential transaction.
- Higher-Quality Leads for Listing Owners When a lead costs something, listing owners stop chasing every inquiry and start prioritizing the ones worth paying for. That's a better experience for them than a free, unfiltered inbox - and a stronger reason to keep listing with you.
- Full Visibility, Zero Manual Work You always see every lead in full, from the admin screen, without waiting on payment. And you never have to manually unlock a paid lead - Directorist does it the moment the order clears.
- Fits the Directory You Already Built Because it's configured per directory and placed through Directory Builder or a shortcode, Pay Per Lead adapts to your existing single listing pages instead of asking you to rebuild them. On multi-directory sites, turn it on for the directories where it makes sense and leave the rest untouched.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Unlocking a lead creates a standard Directorist order, so it uses whichever Directorist payment gateways you already have active - no extra setup.
Create one and map it as your Directorist checkout page under Directorist Settings → Site & Pages → Pages. Unlocking a lead always routes through that page, so it needs to exist and be mapped before owners can pay.
Fixed charges the same Lead Unlock Price for every lead, no matter what was submitted. Commission calculates the price as a percentage of a numeric value the visitor entered, like a budget or offer amount, so higher-value inquiries cost more to unlock.
No, on multi-directory sites the Pay Per Lead Form and Owner Leads sections are added per directory through Directory Builder, so you turn it on for whichever directories you want and leave the rest untouched.
Always. Locking only applies to the listing owner's view before payment. The admin lead list and lead detail screen show every submitted field in full, for every lead, regardless of its unlock status.
The unlock checkout page still shows the listing owner an order summary, but they can't complete payment, so the lead stays Locked. Activate at least one Directorist payment gateway before promoting Pay Per Lead to your listing owners.
Yes. Every field in the lead form builder has its own Locked switch. Fields left unlocked are visible to the listing owner the moment the lead arrives; locked fields stay masked until they pay to unlock that lead. You can lock as many or as few fields as you want, including all of them.
Directorist falls back to your fixed Lead Unlock Price automatically. This happens whenever the submitted form has no budget, amount, offer, or price field, or the value in one of them isn't numeric - so a lead is never left without a price.
Yes. Besides the Leads tab in the frontend dashboard, you can place an Owner Leads section directly on a listing page, or use the [directorist_owner_leads] shortcode anywhere else on your site - both show the same locked/unlocked lead list.
Submissions are rate-limited per visitor and per listing to cut down on spam, on top of standard validation - required fields, valid email/number formats, and matching options for select, radio, and checkbox fields.