How do collecting leads works?

Hi.
I read the forum recently but I found the concept of collecting leads a bit confusing.

Could you please help me by answering some questions that I have about leads to clear my mind?

1) By collecting leads, do you mean collecting contact data (emails, or phone and such) from people interested in a particular service (for example people interested to buy an house in a particular area)?
2) How do you use and collect these leads? Like, do you build a website and then you redirect the leads to the home sellers? If this is the case, how you can be sure the seller won't fuck you if the leads converts? How do you know if one of your leads buy an house from a third party seller or not?
3) Or you keep the leads for yourself and then you promote the third party offers? But again, how do you know if a leads converts?
4) How can you be sure that the leads you collect has not buyed an house already in the meanwhile you're waiting for monetize it?
5) If the seller wants to keep the price confidential or has to give an estimate, how do you handle this insecurity in price with your leads?


Thanks

I sell to a network. I display a phone number and embed a request a quote form. Both of which automatically go to the network. I work in home services like roofing and landscaping.

How you collect and use leads depends on your niche and how you intend to monetize them.

1. Yes, depending on how much you want to qualify them will depend on the amount of data you collect. Could be as simple as contact info or as detailed as asking for questions that are relevant to your niche to qualify them further. The less info the more leads you collect but likely not all are going to be qualified. More info collected, lower the conversion but more qualified leads.
2. Depends on how you monetize. If you sell to a network they handle the leads and pay you. Sometimes pay per lead isn't the best method it really depends on your niche.
3. You can record calls and if you're just selling per lead then conversion doesn't matter. If you're just saying I will sell leads for $10 then all you need is to ensure the leads are qualified and to track the number of them. If you're talking about a revenue share model then that's a whole lot more work to verify and track.

I'm struggling a little to understand your examples so I've tried best to answer for you but if you could maybe rephrase or ask different questions I might be able to help you some more on specifics.

Thanks!