What Boat Dealers Pay for Marketplace Leads: Boat Trader, YachtWorld, and the Outcome-Priced Alternative
Boat marketplaces sell dealers listings, placement and lead products, priced by boat value or inventory count and never on a public rate card. Here is how those products work, how to calculate what a lead actually costs you, and how to compare them with an outcome-priced marketplace.
By Joey Bouza, Founder, US Marine Connection · Updated September 29, 2026
If you sell boats, you already pay for leads. The question is whether you know what each one costs, and what it is worth. The big marketplaces price their dealer programs privately, bundle placement with software and reporting, and measure success in "connections" that include everything from an email to a click on a map. This guide explains how those programs are built, how to turn your own numbers into a cost per lead and a cost per boat sold, and how an outcome-priced marketplace compares.
How the big marketplaces charge dealers
Boats Group (Boat Trader, YachtWorld, boats.com) sells dealers a tiered program, Advantage, AdvantagePlus and AdvantageSelect, priced by the value of the boats listed and spanning all three sites. The tiers bundle lead-routing and lead-management tools, a listing optimizer, market-insight reports, sponsored and featured placement, a dedicated call and text number, dealer websites, and a financing referral product. Pricing is not published; a sales representative quotes it against your inventory.
Trader Interactive (Boat Trader's sister sites in RV, cycle and equipment) publishes its lead-generation menu in a media kit but not its prices. Dealer packages are based on inventory level, from a handful of units to hundreds. On top of the package sit Premium and Featured placement, a Premium Select tier that sits above both, in-search inventory carousels, a one-dealer-per-market homepage sponsorship, dealer websites, managed search-engine marketing, display and social retargeting, geofencing, and a Buy/Order bundle aimed at capturing trade-ins and factory orders. Its RV media kit describes the audience as 6.5 to 6.9 million monthly visitors, nearly 200,000 listings, and about 449,000 monthly "leads and connections" sent to dealers, a figure that counts emails, phone calls, chats, texts, driving directions and website referrals together.
Two things follow. Most of what you pay for is placement against other dealers on the same site, and the reported lead counts are not counts of buyers who asked about a boat.
What a lead actually costs you
Work it out from your own invoices and your own CRM, not the marketplace's dashboard:
- Total the monthly spend on each marketplace, including package, placement upgrades and any add-on products.
- Count the leads with a name and a contact method that arrived from that source in the month. Exclude directions clicks, website referrals and anonymous chats unless they became a conversation.
- Divide. That is your cost per real inquiry from that source.
- Count sold boats attributed to that source over a longer window, three to six months, because boat sales lag inquiries.
- Divide spend by sold boats. That is your cost per boat sold from that marketplace.
We do not publish industry benchmarks for these figures because we have not measured them across dealers, and the marketplaces do not publish them either. Your own numbers are the ones that matter, and most dealers who run this exercise find the second figure is far higher than they assumed.
What placement upgrades buy
Premium and Featured placement move your boats above other dealers' boats on the same site. They do not create buyers; they reallocate the existing ones. In a market where three dealers all buy the top tier, the tier cancels out and the marketplace keeps the difference. Upgrades are worth buying when your competitors are not, and worth reconsidering the moment they are.
Retargeting, search-engine marketing and geofencing products are different: they buy reach outside the marketplace. They are also products you can buy directly from Google and Meta without the marketplace's margin, if you have someone to run them.
An outcome-priced alternative
US Marine Connection runs the other way round. Your inventory is already listed here, mirrored from your website, with photos and pricing kept in sync. We run buyer advertising against it in your metro at our cost. When a buyer inquires about one of your boats, you are told, and you claim your dealer account to see who it is. The 30-day trial starts when you claim, not when we start marketing, and needs no card up front. After the trial, you subscribe if the leads were worth it and walk away if they were not.
The comparison to make is not audience size, where the big marketplaces win by orders of magnitude. It is cost per real inquiry and cost per boat sold, measured from your own CRM, source by source.
Questions to ask any marketplace rep
- What is the price for my inventory count or value, in writing, and what is excluded?
- Of the "leads" you report, how many include a name and a phone number or email?
- How many dealers in my market are on the same placement tier I am being offered?
- Can I see lead counts for my listings for the last twelve months before I sign?
- What is the cancellation term?
- Do you pass buyer inquiries to me directly, or through your lead-management software?
| Brand | Median asking | Lowest | Highest | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yamaha | $15,599 | $3,999 | $186,249 | 415 |
| Sea-Doo | $18,149 | $4,999 | $41,997 | 153 |
| Skeeter | $86,150 | $20,998 | $129,311 | 107 |
| Sportsman | $149,995 | $37,995 | $513,335 | 95 |
| Bennington | $58,900 | $9,999 | $532,790 | 68 |
| Robalo | $116,775 | $29,977 | $592,340 | 66 |
| Stingray | $40,470 | $6,995 | $88,946 | 62 |
| Bayliner | $32,436 | $500 | $119,930 | 40 |
| Scout | $84,900 | $31,000 | $1,373,549 | 35 |
| G3 | $24,997 | $10,999 | $50,628 | 34 |
| Harris | $55,371 | $5,495 | $192,657 | 33 |
| Key West | $74,977 | $34,977 | $338,505 | 25 |
| Sea Pro | $114,977 | $29,977 | $309,977 | 25 |
| Pathfinder | $144,924 | $24,000 | $375,986 | 22 |
| Sea Ray | $70,498 | $3,835 | $425,500 | 22 |
Frequently asked questions
- Does Boat Trader publish dealer pricing?
- No. Boats Group prices its Advantage tiers by listed boat value and quotes them through sales representatives.
- Does RV Trader or Boat Trader charge per lead?
- Their published programs are packages and placement products, not per-lead pricing. Cost per lead is something you calculate from your invoice and your own lead count.
- What counts as a lead in a marketplace report?
- On the Trader media kit, emails, calls, chats, texts, driving directions and website referrals are all counted as leads and connections. Only some of those are a buyer who asked about a boat.
- Is a free dealer listing worth anything?
- A listing with no buyer advertising behind it depends on the site's organic traffic. On this site, your listings are mirrored for free and we run advertising to them in pilot metros at our expense; the paid part starts only after you claim and after the trial.
- How do I measure which marketplace sells boats?
- Tag every inquiry in your CRM with its source at the moment it arrives, then attribute sold boats back to the first source. Measure over a season, not a month.
- How do I get my dealership on US Marine Connection?
- Most dealers are already listed; search the dealer directory. If you are not, or you want to claim your account, start at for dealers.
About the author
Joey Bouza — Founder, US Marine Connection
Working musician and founder of Prospects International, a marketing firm that runs lead and appointment campaigns for dealers — including boat dealers — across the country.
Prices and counts in our guides come from live listings on this site and are recalculated hourly. Where we quote industry-typical figures (transport quotes, survey fees, winterizing, repower quotes) we say so, and we never publish a number we haven't measured or sourced.