Work out what one customer is worth before you go buying any

Margin, repeat business and referrals decide what you can afford to pay for a customer. Put your numbers in and the ceiling comes out, which is the number every advertising decision actually turns on.

Average job value$What it costs you to deliver$Jobs per customer per yearYears they stayCustomers each one refersPayback periodmo

Margin on one job	$240 (60%)
Jobs over their lifetime	4.5
What one customer is worth	$1,080
Most you can pay to win one, within 12 months	$360
What to actually aim forA third of the ceiling, so the business keeps two thirds.	$120

You can afford up to $360 to win a customer and still break even inside 12 months, and $120 is the number to aim at if you want the business to keep most of it. See what that buys in Google Ads, where clicks for some trades run past $80.

How to use it

Put in what a job is worth and what it costs you to deliver.
Add how often a customer comes back, and how many they refer.
The answer is the most you can pay to win one and still be ahead.

What it looks at

Gross margin per job, and what is left after delivery.
Lifetime value: the repeat business and referrals a single customer brings.
The maximum you can pay to acquire a customer at the payback period you choose.

What it will not tell you

Worth reading before the results, because a check that quietly skipped something is worse than one that says it did.

Every number here is yours. We measure nothing about your business; the calculator does arithmetic on what you enter, and a hopeful repeat rate produces a hopeful answer.
Referrals are the number people overstate most. If you have not counted them, leave it at zero rather than guessing upward.
Lifetime value is not cash in hand. A customer worth $2,000 over three years does not pay this month's ad bill, which is why the payback period is a separate input.

Questions

Why does this matter before I advertise?

Because it sets the ceiling. If a customer is worth $180 to you and clicks cost $10, you have about eighteen clicks to win one, and no amount of campaign tuning changes that arithmetic. Most advertising that fails, fails here rather than in the ad.

Should I use profit or revenue?

Profit. Revenue tells you what you can spend before you go out of business, which is not the same as what you can afford.

What is a sensible payback period?

Whatever your cash allows. Twelve months is a common answer for a business with money in the bank and one month is the honest answer for a business without it. The shorter the payback, the less you can bid, which is why well-funded competitors outbid you.

Ontfly builds the site, puts it on a domain and runs what sits behind it. If this turned up something worth fixing, describe your business and see what it makes.