Booking platforms are useful. They're also expensive in a way that's easy to miss, because the fee comes off before the money ever hits your account. Let's do the honest maths.

What the fee actually costs you

Say a platform takes 20%. On a £200 job, that's £40 gone. Do five of those a week and you're handing over £200 a week — over £10,000 a year — to an app. For a customer *you* did all the driving and lifting for.

The really painful part isn't even the money. It's that the customer belongs to the platform. Do a brilliant job, and next time they still book through the app — and you pay the fee all over again.

The difference between found work and your work

Here's the distinction that matters:

• Work the platform found you — fair enough that it takes a cut. It did the selling.
• Work you found yourself — the repeat customer, the referral, the person off your own page — should cost you nothing. You did the selling.

Most platforms don't make that distinction. They clip everything.

The alternative

The model that actually respects your time is: free tools for your own jobs, a fee only on work that's genuinely handed to you. That's how Vanzy works — you keep 100% of the customers you bring, and you'd only ever pay a cut on a job Vanzy sent you that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

How to shift the balance

You don't have to quit the apps tomorrow. Just start moving your best customers off them:

• Send every happy customer your own booking link for "next time".
• Ask for the review on your page, not theirs.
• Take repeat and trade customers direct.

Every job you move across is a job that pays you in full. Do that steadily and the fees you pay shrink month on month — while your income doesn't.