Content Cost and ROI Calculator: what your content costs and earns
Work out what your content costs a month, a piece and a word, and when your own estimates pay it back.
- Free to use
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
Add your plan
Type how many pieces you publish a month and the writer's rate. The cost appears as you type; add your visit and sales estimates to see when the plan pays back.
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About the Content Cost and ROI Calculator
Type how many pieces you publish a month, how long they are and what the writer charges, then editing, images, tools, your own time and any promotion. You get the cost a month, over the plan, per piece and per word. Add the visits you expect each piece to bring once it settles, your conversion rate, close rate and the value of a sale, and the calculator shows the visits, leads, sales and money your numbers give over 24 months, the month the plan pays back, and how many visits each piece needs to break even. It runs in your browser with plain maths: there are no industry figures in it, only yours.
How it works
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01
Fill in the plan: pieces a month, words per piece, the writer's rate per word or per piece, and whether the writer adds GST. Choose how many months you will publish.
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02
Add the other costs: editing and images per piece, tools and promotion a month, and the hours of your own time with what an hour is worth.
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03
Add your own estimates of visits, conversion rate, close rate and sale value, then read the payback month, the chart and the month-by-month table, and copy the summary or download the CSV.
How the return is worked out
Each piece earns nothing in the month it goes live. From the next month its visits climb in a straight line to the figure you typed, reached after the months to settle, and then stay there. Visits times your conversion rate gives leads, leads times your close rate gives sales, and sales times the value of a sale, times your margin if you give one, gives the return. The plan pays back in the first month in which everything it has returned so far is at least everything it has cost. These rules are our maths and assumptions, shown so you can judge them.
What has to be true
The calculator also turns the question round: with your conversion rate, close rate, sale value and margin, how many visits a month must each piece bring once it settles for the plan to pay back within 24 months, or within 12. If that number is far above anything your existing pages get, the plan needs a cheaper way to write, a better offer or topics closer to what customers search for before it is worth the money.
What this tool cannot do
It cannot tell you how many visits a piece will get or how many readers will buy: those are your estimates, and the tool has no industry averages to fill them in. It assumes pieces keep their visits once they settle, while in practice some fade and need updating. It gives no tax advice: it uses the GST rate you type from the writer's invoice, and whether you count that GST as a cost is your accountant's call. Gross figures only: rent, salaries and other overheads are not included unless you add them as your own time or tools.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate the ROI of content marketing?
Add up everything the content costs over a period: writing, editing, images, tools, promotion and your own time. Then work out what it brought in: visits times the share that become leads, times the share of leads that buy, times the value of a sale and your margin. ROI is the return minus the cost, divided by the cost. This calculator does that month by month, with a ramp-up while new pieces gain visits.
Where do I get the visits figure?
From your own site. In Search Console, open the Performance report, choose the Pages tab and look at the clicks for articles you published some months ago; Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months. Use a figure you have seen on similar pages, not a hope. If the site is new, try a low and a high figure and see how the payback month moves.
Should I include GST in the cost?
Tick "The writer adds GST to the invoice" only if the invoice shows GST, and type the rate printed on it; the field is empty by default because the tool gives no tax advice. Leave "Count the GST as a cost" ticked unless your accountant tells you that your business gets this GST back.
Why does the calculator not show typical figures?
We do not have official figures for writer rates, visits per article or conversion rates that would fit your business, and averages from blogs and vendors vary widely. Your own Search Console data, enquiry records and quotes from writers are a better guide, so every estimate in the tool is yours.
What does "months to settle" mean?
It is how long you expect a new piece to take to reach its usual visits a month. With 6, a piece gets a sixth of its visits in its second month, two sixths in its third, and its full figure from the seventh month after it goes live. This straight-line ramp is our assumption, not a rule from Google; type 0 if you expect a piece to reach its visits in the month after it goes live.
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