Break-even conversion rate calculator for paid traffic landing pages

You know the CPC from the ad platform and the payout from the network. What you don't know yet is whether the page converts often enough to pay for the click and the builder you host it on. That answer is one division, and the calculator below does it with the builder bill spread over your monthly clicks.

Treat the result as an estimate. It takes the list payout or the margin you enter at face value and leaves out refunds, scrubbed leads, tiered commissions and payment fees. If you are still choosing where the page will live, the comparison table shows which builders can split-test a page and on which plan.

The method: cost per click over value per conversion

Start from cost per acquisition. A thread on r/PPC about forecasting CPA puts it as CPA = CPC / conversion rate. You break even when that CPA equals what one conversion brings in. Rearranged, the conversion rate you need is the cost of a click divided by the value of a conversion.

The same relationship read the other way is the affiliate's break-even bid. Affilorama's PPC affiliate guide writes it as breakeven CPC = payout × conversion rate, and calls payout times rate your earnings per click: pay less than that per click and you profit, pay more and you lose. The calculator adds one line those formulas skip, the software subscription, spread evenly across your monthly clicks:

builder per click = monthly builder cost / monthly clicks
loaded CPC        = CPC + builder per click
value             = payout   (or order value × margin)
break-even rate   = loaded CPC / value
max CPC at rate r = value × r − builder per click
monthly result    = (value × r − loaded CPC) × monthly clicks
lift to break even = break-even rate / r − 1

WordStream's list of PPC formulas uses the same arithmetic to set a target CPC: traffic converting at 2% with a $25 CPA goal supports a $0.50 click. Unbounce's article on making more in AdWords by spending less gets there from clicks per sale: if you can spend $30 to win a customer and it takes 50 clicks to win one, the most a click can cost is $0.60.

The builder line assumes a flat monthly fee. For a builder that bills overage as your traffic grows, get the real monthly figure from the landing page builder cost calculator and enter that here.

Worked example: an affiliate lead offer

An affiliate buys 25,000 clicks a month at $1.20 and sends them to a lead-gen offer that pays $48 per lead. The lander sits on a builder that costs $99 a month.

• Spread over 25,000 clicks, the subscription adds $0.004 to each one, so the loaded CPC is a fraction of a cent above the bid.
• Break-even is the loaded CPC divided by the payout: 2.51% of clicks have to become leads.
• At a 2% conversion rate each click earns $0.96. The campaign loses about $0.24 a click, roughly $6,100 over the month.
• At 3% each click earns $1.44, and that is the most the affiliate could bid before the builder takes its fraction of a cent.

As a sanity check, Affilorama's own example lands where the formula says it should: a $50 commission converting at 4% makes each click worth $2.00. At volume the builder barely moves the answer. On a small test it does: if the same subscription is spread over only 400 clicks, each click costs almost 25 cents more.

Selling your own product: order value times margin

Switch the form to order value and margin and the value per conversion becomes order value × margin. Everything else stays the same. A commenter in an r/PPC thread on maximum CPA walks through it from the other end: at a 5% conversion rate you need 20 clicks per sale, so a $300 margin supports up to $15 a click. A $400 order at 75% margin gives the same $300, and the calculator returns a 5% break-even rate at a $15 CPC.

Use the margin, never the order total. Plugging revenue into the formula makes a losing campaign look profitable by exactly the cost of the goods you shipped.

What to do when the lander sits below break-even

Three levers move the result: the conversion rate, the value of a conversion and the price of a click. Unbounce's advice, when bids cannot go lower without losing the traffic, is to work on conversion or on how much a customer is worth over time.

• Raise the conversion rate with a test. The calculator gives the relative lift you need. Enter that lift and your current rate in the split test sample size and duration calculator to see whether your traffic can prove a lift that large in a reasonable number of days.
• Raise the value. A better payout from the network, a different offer, or a higher-margin bundle on your own product all lower the break-even rate.
• Cut the click. Lower the bid to the max CPC the calculator shows at your current rate, and accept the smaller volume that comes with it.

My take: when the gap is under about 20%, test the page before you touch the bid, since a new headline and offer angle can move a rate that far. When the page needs to double its conversion rate, the problem is usually the offer or the traffic source, and no page test will close it. If more traffic would move you onto a pricier plan, check the individual builder reviews for plans that include testing without a visitor cap.

One limit to keep in mind: the calculator takes a single conversion rate from click to payout. If your traffic hits a presell page first and then the offer page, multiply the two step rates together and enter the result.

Sources and further reading

• Affilorama: PPC affiliate marketing, the breakeven CPC and earnings per click formulas.
• WordStream: PPC formulas, target CPC from target CPA and conversion rate.
• Unbounce: how to make more money in AdWords by spending less, max CPC from allowable cost and clicks per conversion.
• r/PPC: forecast CPA and r/PPC: maximum CPA, the CPA formula and the margin example.

Keep reading: all free calculators for paid-traffic landers, the landing page builder rankings, and how we research builders.