Cost & profit calculator
Find out whether it's a business before you print a page.
Change the price, the subscriber count, the per-copy cost, the churn rate or the acquisition cost and watch every figure update. Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere; it is a worksheet.
All figures are estimates until replaced by your provider's quote
Your publication
Assumptions — edit anything$
200
02,000
$
$
%
$
$
%
%
$
Estimated monthly contribution
$5,736
Margin
74%
Revenue after printing, postage, card fees. Before your software fee and acquisition spend.
- Per subscriber
- $28.68
- Annualized
- $68,832
- Breakeven
- 2 subs
Monthly breakdown
| Subscription revenue | $7,800.00 |
| Less refunds | −$78.00 |
| Printing (200 copies) | −$900.00 |
| Postage | −$800.00 |
| Card processing fees | −$286.00 |
| Contribution | $5,736.00 |
| Platform software fee | −$49.00 |
| Acquisition spend | −$375.00 |
| Estimated net operating result | $5,312.00 |
- Revenue per subscriber
- $38.61
- Variable cost per subscriber
- $9.93
- Expected subscriber lifetime
- 25 months
- Lifetime value (contribution)
- $717
- Acquisition cost
- $25.00
- CAC payback
- 0.9 months
Estimates only. Print and postage figures are illustrative assumptions and will be replaced by your provider's quote once your publication is set up. Taxes are not included.
How these numbers are calculated
Every output, in plain English.
The same definitions appear as tooltips in the publisher dashboard, where the figures come from real charges and real invoices instead of assumptions.
- Subscription revenue (MRR)
- What your current subscribers pay in a month. Annual subscribers are counted at one-twelfth of their annual price, so a January rush of annual sign-ups does not make January look better than it is.
- monthly subscribers × monthly price + annual subscribers × (annual price ÷ 12)
- Printing and postage
- The per-copy print cost and per-copy postage you entered, multiplied by the number of paying subscribers. One copy per subscriber, every issue. Until you have a provider quote these are assumptions, and the calculator says so.
- subscribers × (print per copy + postage per copy) + any fulfillment markup
- Card processing fees
- What your payment processor keeps from each reader payment: a percentage plus a fixed amount per charge. Annual subscribers pay once a year, so they incur the fixed fee less often; the calculator accounts for that.
- (monthly price × rate + fixed fee) × monthly subscribers + (annual price × rate + fixed fee) × annual subscribers ÷ 12
- Contribution
- Revenue after the costs that scale with each subscriber: printing, postage, card fees and any platform revenue fee. It is what each issue leaves behind to pay for everything else. It is not profit.
- collected revenue − printing − postage − card fees − platform revenue fee
- Margin
- Contribution as a share of revenue. Below 30% the calculator warns you: a postage increase or a few returned envelopes can erase it. Below zero you lose money on every copy you mail, and no number of subscribers fixes that.
- contribution ÷ collected revenue
- Breakeven subscribers
- How many paying subscribers you need for contribution to cover your fixed monthly costs — the software fee and anything you entered under other costs. Below this number you are funding the publication yourself.
- fixed monthly costs ÷ contribution per subscriber, rounded up
- Expected lifetime and LTV
- If a share of subscribers cancels each month, the average subscriber lasts roughly one divided by that share (4% monthly churn ≈ 25 months). Lifetime value is the contribution one subscriber generates over that time. It is an average over many subscribers, not a prediction about any one of them.
- lifetime (months) = 1 ÷ monthly churn; LTV = contribution per subscriber × lifetime
- CAC payback
- How many months of a subscriber's contribution it takes to earn back what you spent to acquire them (ads, promotions, referral rewards). If payback is longer than expected lifetime, growth costs you money.
- acquisition cost per subscriber ÷ contribution per subscriber
- Net operating result
- Contribution less the software fee, acquisition spend and other monthly costs. The closest thing on this page to a monthly profit figure, before taxes and before your own time.
- contribution − software fee − acquisition spend − other costs
Assumptions and what the calculator leaves out
- Per-copy costs are placeholders. The default print and postage figures are round illustrative numbers, not a quote. Replace them with a provider's figure for your format — the printing & mailing page gives published list prices with their dates — and the dashboard replaces them with your actual quote once your publication is set up.
- One copy per paying subscriber. Complimentary copies, proofs, replacements for returned mail and extra copies for yourself are not included. Add them under other monthly costs if they matter to you.
- Steady state. The monthly view assumes the subscriber count you entered, not growth within the month. The growth tab applies churn and new subscribers to lifetime and payback only.
- Card fees are an input, not a fact. The default rate is a common published US card rate; your processor's actual rate depends on your account and card mix.
- Taxes are excluded. Sales tax on your subscriptions, income tax, and tax on our fees are all outside the calculation.
- Your time is not a cost here. Writing, editing and design time is the largest real cost of most newsletters and is deliberately left for you to weigh.
- Rounding. All money is calculated in whole cents. Small differences from a spreadsheet are rounding, not a different formula.
Like the numbers? Set up the publication and get a real quote.
Publication setup shows the same economics with your actual format, and the dashboard replaces every estimate with the provider's quote.