how long until a customer pays off?

Winning a customer costs money. Each month they stay, they bring some back. Enter three numbers and see how long it takes to earn back what you spent.

Your customers

What it costs you to win one new customer $ Profit you make from one customer in one month $ Out of 100 customers, how many are still buying next month? %

Not sure about the last one? Count how many of last month's customers bought again this month, and divide by last month's total. Example numbers are made up.

verdict

Months to earn back the cost

Counts the customers who leave along the way.

Profit from one customer over their life

Everything one customer is worth to you, before the cost to win them.

Out of 100 new customers

Month	Still buying	Profit per customer so far

The link holds your numbers. The card is a paper-ground PNG of the verdict.

How it works

The arithmetic

share who leave each month = 1 - retention months to pay back = ln(1 - cost x (1 - retention) / monthly profit) / ln(retention) lifetime profit, roughly = monthly profit / share who leave

Plain version: some customers leave every month, so the profit from a new customer shrinks over time. The page works out how many months of that shrinking profit it takes to add up to what you spent to win them.

Read this before you act on the number

Retention is held steady here. Real customers often leave fastest in the first month, then settle. Use an average from your own data if you have it.

Use profit, not revenue. Revenue makes every customer look more valuable than they are.

Include everything in the cost to win. Ads, discounts for the first order and the time spent on sales all count.