How every number on this site is produced

Small Business Marketing Budget Calculator

How much marketing spend a chosen percentage of revenue actually represents, and how much revenue that spend has to produce before it pays for itself.

Inputs

• Annual revenue — Use last year revenue or a realistic forecast for the next 12 months.
• Marketing investment — A planning percentage of annual revenue. The 8% default is our starting point for this tool, not a benchmark — see the methodology page.
• Average gross margin — Revenue left after direct costs. If unsure, use your best recent average.

Outputs and formulas

Annual marketing budget

annual revenue × (marketing investment % ÷ 100)

Monthly marketing budget

annual marketing budget ÷ 12

Weekly budget pace

annual marketing budget ÷ 52

A pacing figure for ad platforms and production schedules, not a thirteenth of the monthly number.

Gross revenue needed to cover spend

annual marketing budget ÷ (gross margin % ÷ 100)

This is the output most people skip, and the one that decides whether the budget is affordable.

Direct arithmetic?

Every output is direct arithmetic on the three numbers you enter. The calculator supplies no cost data of its own. The 8% default in the marketing investment field is a starting point we chose so the tool loads with a working example — it is not a benchmark, and you should replace it.

Assumptions

• The marketing investment percentage is applied to revenue, not to profit or to gross margin.
• Gross margin is stable across the revenue the marketing produces. If new customers are less profitable than existing ones, the coverage figure is optimistic.
• The budget is spread evenly across the year. Seasonal businesses should run the calculator per season instead.

Excluded from the model

• Sales labour and commission — these scale with closed work, not with marketing spend.
• Customer lifetime value. The coverage figure is a first-purchase test only, so it is deliberately strict.
• Timing. Marketing spent in January may not produce revenue until April; this model has no lag.
• Taxes, financing costs, and owner draws.

Limitations

This is a budgeting frame, not a forecast. It cannot tell you whether any particular channel will work, how long payback will take, or whether your market has enough demand. It assumes the money buys marketing of reasonable quality, which is an assumption the calculator has no way to test.

When to get professional advice

Talk to your accountant or bookkeeper before you rely on the gross margin figure. Most owners have a margin number in their head that differs from the one their books support, and the whole coverage calculation moves with it.

Google Ads ROI Calculator

Whether the gross profit from customers a paid search campaign produces exceeds what the campaign costs in media spend.

Inputs

• Monthly ad spend — Media spend only. Add agency or management fees separately when reviewing total ROI.
• Average cost per click — Use recent account data or a conservative estimate for your market.
• Landing page conversion rate — The percentage of clicks that become leads, calls, forms, or purchases.
• Lead close rate — The percentage of leads that become paying customers.
• Average sale value — Use average first purchase, project size, or customer value for this campaign.
• Gross margin — Revenue left after direct costs.

Outputs and formulas

Estimated clicks

monthly ad spend ÷ average cost per click

Estimated leads

clicks × (landing page conversion rate ÷ 100)

Estimated customers

leads × (lead close rate ÷ 100)

Estimated gross profit

customers × average sale value × (gross margin ÷ 100)

Gross profit, not revenue. Revenue-based ROI makes almost every campaign look profitable.

Estimated ROI

(gross profit − monthly ad spend) ÷ monthly ad spend × 100

Returns 'Not available' when spend is zero, because dividing by zero has no meaningful answer.

Direct arithmetic?

Every output is direct arithmetic on the six numbers you enter. The calculator holds no cost-per-click data, no conversion-rate data, and no industry figures of any kind. Defaults are placeholders to make the tool usable on first load.

Assumptions

• Every click has an equal chance of converting. In reality a branded search click and a broad-match click behave nothing alike.
• All conversions happen inside the month the click occurred. Longer sales cycles will make a good campaign look bad in early months.
• Every closed customer is worth the same average sale value.
• Gross margin on paid-acquisition customers matches the rest of the business — often untrue if you discount to win them.

Excluded from the model

• Agency or management fees.
• Creative production and landing page build or maintenance costs.
• Sales labour spent qualifying and chasing leads.
• Repeat purchases, subscriptions, referrals, and anything else in customer lifetime value.
• Seasonality and auction price movement.
• Wasted spend from irrelevant search terms — that shows up in your real CPC, so use account data rather than an estimate wherever you can.

Limitations

This is a single-period, single-average model. It cannot see auction dynamics, competitor behaviour, keyword-level performance, ad quality, seasonality, or the difference between a lead who is ready to buy and one who is comparing five contractors.

When to get professional advice

If paid search is a material share of your budget, have someone independent audit the account's search terms and conversion tracking before you make a scale-or-stop decision. Broken conversion tracking is common and makes every number on this page wrong.

SEO ROI Calculator

Whether the gross profit from customers arriving through organic search covers what you pay for SEO in a given month.

Inputs

• Monthly SEO cost — Include agency, freelancer, tools, content, and internal production costs.
• Monthly organic visits — Use current organic visits or a realistic future target.
• Visitor-to-lead rate — The percentage of organic visitors who call, submit a form, book, or buy.
• Lead-to-customer rate — The percentage of organic leads that become customers.
• Average sale value — Use average first purchase or project revenue.
• Gross margin — Revenue left after direct costs.

Outputs and formulas

Estimated organic leads

monthly organic visits × (visitor-to-lead rate ÷ 100)

Estimated customers

leads × (lead-to-customer rate ÷ 100)

Estimated gross profit

customers × average sale value × (gross margin ÷ 100)

Estimated net return

gross profit − monthly SEO cost

Estimated SEO ROI

net return ÷ monthly SEO cost × 100

Direct arithmetic?

All outputs are direct arithmetic on your six inputs. The calculator contains no traffic estimates, ranking data, or assumptions about how quickly SEO works.

Assumptions

• The organic visits you enter are attributable to the SEO work you are paying for.
• All organic traffic converts at one rate, which overstates results when much of your organic traffic is people searching for your business by name.
• The month's cost and the month's return belong together — the assumption most likely to mislead, because SEO spend and SEO results rarely occur in the same month.

Excluded from the model

• The lag between work and results.
• The residual value of rankings after you stop paying, which can be considerable.
• Brand and direct traffic that SEO work indirectly supports.
• Internal staff time spent reviewing, approving, and publishing.
• Website rebuild or technical remediation costs that the SEO work depends on.

Limitations

This model has no concept of time, and time is the dominant variable in SEO. It cannot estimate how long results take, how durable they are, how competitive your terms are, or what share of your organic traffic the work is actually responsible for.

When to get professional advice

Before signing or cancelling a retainer, get someone independent to confirm that organic conversions are being tracked correctly and that branded and non-branded traffic are being reported separately. Most disputes about SEO value are really disputes about measurement.

Email Marketing ROI Calculator

Whether the gross profit from orders driven by your email campaigns exceeds the monthly cost of running the email programme.

Inputs

• Email list size — Use active subscribers, not old or unengaged contacts.
• Monthly email cost — Include platform, design, copy, automation, and management costs.
• Campaigns per month — Count newsletters, promotions, and automated sends you want to evaluate.
• Click rate — The percentage of delivered emails that create a website click or offer click.
• Click-to-purchase rate — The percentage of clicks that become purchases, bookings, or qualified sales actions.
• Average order value — Use average purchase, booking value, or first-sale value.
• Gross margin — Revenue left after direct costs.

Outputs and formulas

Estimated monthly clicks

list size × campaigns per month × (click rate ÷ 100)

Click rate here is clicks as a share of the list, not of opens.

Estimated orders or actions

clicks × (click-to-purchase rate ÷ 100)

Estimated gross profit

orders × average order value × (gross margin ÷ 100)

Estimated net return

gross profit − monthly email cost

Estimated email ROI

net return ÷ monthly email cost × 100

Direct arithmetic?

All outputs are direct arithmetic on your seven inputs. No engagement benchmarks are built into the tool.

Assumptions

• Every campaign performs equally and reaches the whole list. Deliverability, unsubscribes, and list decay are not modelled.
• Sending more campaigns produces proportionally more clicks — the assumption most likely to be wrong, since engagement usually falls as frequency rises.
• Each order is worth the average order value, and every order is incremental rather than a purchase the customer would have made anyway.

Excluded from the model

• Your own time writing and scheduling, unless you put a cost on it in the cost field.
• Long-term list value, replies, and the enquiries email produces that never look like a click.
• Deliverability damage from over-sending, which shows up months later.
• Discount cost, if your campaigns rely on promotions — reduce the margin input to capture it.

Limitations

The model assumes linear scaling — twice the campaigns, twice the clicks — which is the opposite of how audiences behave. It cannot see deliverability, sender reputation, list decay, or the difference between a welcome sequence and a Thursday newsletter.

When to get professional advice

If you handle customer data in a regulated context, or you are unsure whether your list has proper consent, check your obligations before you increase sending. Consent and record-keeping requirements vary by jurisdiction and are not something a calculator can assess.

Website Cost Calculator

A planning budget for a small business website, built from our published cost assumptions and the scope you describe.

Inputs

• Website type — Choose the closest project type.
• Total pages — Count core pages, service pages, location pages, and landing pages.
• Integrations — Examples: CRM, email platform, booking tool, payment provider, analytics, or live chat.
• Pages needing copywriting — Pages where the vendor writes or heavily rewrites content.

Outputs and formulas

Base cost

chosen from site type (see assumptions below)

Extra pages

max(total pages − 5, 0) × $350

The first five pages are treated as part of the base.

Integrations

number of integrations × $600

Copywriting

pages needing copywriting × $250

Estimated project cost

base + extra pages + integrations + copywriting

Suggested contingency

project cost × 20%

Planning budget

project cost + contingency

Estimated monthly care

the greater of (project cost × 3%) or $150

Direct arithmetic?

This is the one calculator on the site whose output is NOT purely derived from your input. Everything above the line — the base costs, the per-page, per-integration and per-copywriting-page values, the 20% contingency and the 3% care rate — are planning assumptions chosen by Silver Shine LLC. They are not survey data, published market rates, vendor quotes, or benchmarks of any kind, and we are not in a position to claim they represent what any particular vendor will charge you. They are published in full below so you can replace them with your own.

Assumptions

• A vendor is doing the work. The figures do not describe a DIY build.
• Design and build are bundled rather than quoted separately.
• Complexity scales roughly with page count and integration count, which is a simplification — one payment integration can cost more than six simple ones.
• Content other than the copywriting pages you specify is supplied by you.

Excluded from the model

• Domain registration and any premium domain purchase.
• Photography, video, illustration, and stock licensing.
• Brand and logo design.
• Content migration from an old site, and redirect mapping.
• Accessibility remediation and formal conformance testing.
• Legal review of policies and terms.
• Ongoing SEO, advertising, and email platform subscriptions.
• Third-party licence fees for plugins, themes, apps, and payment processing.
• Training and handover documentation, unless you count it as an integration.
• Your own time — which on a website project is substantial and almost always underestimated.

Limitations

This calculator produces a planning range from assumptions we chose. It is not a quote, not a valuation, and not a market survey. Real pricing varies enormously with vendor, location, technology, and how well-defined your brief is.

When to get professional advice

For a site handling payments, health information, or regulated data, get professional advice on your compliance obligations before scoping. Those requirements can change the build substantially and are far cheaper to design in than to retrofit.

Break-Even Calculator

How many units, jobs, or orders you must sell at your current price to cover your fixed costs.

Inputs

• Monthly fixed costs — Rent, software, salaries, insurance, utilities, and other costs that do not change much with each sale.
• Price per unit — Average price per product, job, package, order, or customer.
• Variable cost per unit — Direct cost that changes with each sale, such as materials, labor, shipping, or payment fees.

Outputs and formulas

Contribution margin per unit

price per unit − variable cost per unit

Break-even units

monthly fixed costs ÷ contribution margin per unit

Returns 'Not available' when contribution margin is zero or negative, because no volume can reach break-even.

Break-even revenue

break-even units × price per unit

Contribution margin rate

contribution margin ÷ price per unit × 100

Direct arithmetic?

All outputs are direct arithmetic on the three numbers you enter.

Assumptions

• One clearly defined unit with one price and one variable cost.
• Fixed costs stay fixed across the volume range you are considering — true until you need another van, another oven, or another member of staff.
• Every unit sells at full price, with no discounting, refunds, or write-offs.

Excluded from the model

• Any profit. Break-even is the point where you have earned nothing.
• Taxes, loan principal, and owner draws.
• Timing — invoices raised are not cash received.
• Product mix. A business selling several things at different margins has a blended break-even this model cannot see.

Limitations

A single-product, single-price, single-period model. It cannot handle product mix, step changes in fixed costs, seasonality, or the difference between an invoice and cash in the bank.

When to get professional advice

Have your bookkeeper or accountant confirm which costs are genuinely fixed and which are variable before you rely on the result. This classification is where most break-even calculations go wrong, and it is not always obvious.

Profit Margin Calculator

How much of your revenue survives the cost of delivering the work, and then how much survives running the business.

Inputs

• Revenue — Sales for the product, service, month, or period you want to evaluate.
• Direct costs — Costs tied directly to delivering the sale, such as materials, direct labor, shipping, and merchant fees.
• Operating expenses — Overhead such as rent, admin payroll, software, insurance, marketing, and utilities.

Outputs and formulas

Gross profit

revenue − direct costs

Gross margin

gross profit ÷ revenue × 100

Operating profit

gross profit − operating expenses

Net margin before taxes

operating profit ÷ revenue × 100

Direct arithmetic?

All outputs are direct arithmetic on the three numbers you enter. Margins return 'Not available' when revenue is zero.

Assumptions

• Direct costs and operating expenses are cleanly separated — the assumption that does most of the work here.
• The period is internally consistent: revenue, costs, and expenses all belong to the same span.
• Revenue is recognised when earned rather than when paid.

Excluded from the model

• Taxes — this is a pre-tax figure.
• Interest, loan principal, and depreciation, unless you include them in operating expenses.
• Owner distributions taken as profit rather than salary.
• Anything about cash timing. A profitable month can still be a month you cannot make payroll.

Limitations

This is a period snapshot, not a diagnosis. It cannot see cash timing, work in progress, seasonality, or which specific jobs are responsible for the numbers. It is a pre-tax management figure and is not a substitute for your financial statements.

When to get professional advice

Agree the split between direct costs and operating expenses with your accountant and use it consistently. If you change the classification between periods, every comparison you make afterwards is meaningless.

Monthly Revenue Goal Calculator

The revenue you need in a month to cover fixed costs and leave the profit you want, and how many average sales that represents.

Inputs

• Monthly fixed costs — Overhead that must be covered before profit.
• Desired monthly profit — Profit target before taxes and owner distributions, depending on how you track your books.
• Gross margin — Revenue left after direct costs.
• Average sale value — Average order, project, appointment, or customer revenue.

Outputs and formulas

Required gross profit

monthly fixed costs + desired monthly profit

Monthly revenue goal

required gross profit ÷ (gross margin ÷ 100)

Average sales needed

monthly revenue goal ÷ average sale value

Weekly revenue pace

monthly revenue goal ÷ 4.345

4.345 approximates the average number of weeks in a month (365 ÷ 7 ÷ 12 ≈ 4.345), so the weekly pace is consistent across months of different lengths.

Direct arithmetic?

All outputs are direct arithmetic on the four numbers you enter.

Assumptions

• Gross margin holds at the higher revenue level. Growth often comes at a lower margin, which makes the goal understated.
• Fixed costs do not rise as you approach the goal — untrue if reaching it requires hiring.
• Average sale value is representative rather than skewed by a few large deals.

Excluded from the model

• Taxes, loan principal, and owner distributions beyond the profit figure you enter.
• Seasonality — this is one flat month.
• Cash timing, so a goal you hit on paper may not be a month you can pay for.
• The cost of the sales and marketing effort needed to reach the goal.

Limitations

A single-month, single-margin, single-average-sale model. It has no view of seasonality, sales cycle length, pipeline, cash timing, or what it will cost you to generate the demand.

When to get professional advice

Confirm your fixed-cost figure against your books before relying on this. Owners routinely omit annual and quarterly costs that need to be spread across the months, which makes the goal too low.

Local SEO Checklist

Whether the practical foundations of local search visibility are in place for a business that serves customers in a defined area.

No calculation is performed. Your progress is stored in your browser so you can return to it.

Excluded

• Paid advertising.
• Technical SEO beyond what a small site owner can reasonably verify.
• National or ecommerce search strategy.
• Any promise about rankings, which nobody can honestly make.

Limitations

This is a foundations checklist, not a complete SEO strategy. It will not diagnose technical problems, competitive gaps, or content strategy for a large site.

AI Tool Selector for Small Business

Which category of AI tool fits the job you want done, your budget, and the sensitivity of the data involved — before you start trialling products.

No calculation is performed. The selector recommends categories rather than named products, and deliberately does not rank or endorse vendors.

Excluded

• Named vendors, product comparisons, pricing, and rankings.
• Any assessment of a specific tool's security, accuracy, or compliance.
• Legal advice on data protection obligations.

Limitations

This selector recommends categories only. It has no data on individual products, no ability to assess a vendor's security or accuracy, and no view of your regulatory obligations.