The two numbers
- The month's costs: everything from rent share to software to the tax set-aside - the same honest list the rate math starts from.
- What one sale leaves you: the price after platform fees, payment fees and tax - the remainder, not the sticker.
- Break-even is the first number divided by the second. Costs per month, over remainder per sale, equals sales per month.
- That is the whole formula. Everything else is deciding what to do with it.
Run it for your own month
- Write the month's costs, all of them, including the ones paid yearly - divide the yearly ones by twelve so they stop hiding.
- Take your most common sale and work out its remainder: price, minus platform fee, minus payment fee, minus tax set-aside.
- Divide costs by remainder. If the answer has a decimal, round up - you cannot sell a fraction of a file.
- Write the number where you see it. That is the month's sentence: this many, or the savings account pays the difference.
What the number tells you
- It converts anxiety into arithmetic. 'Business feels slow' becomes 'two sales short of the month', which is a problem you can act on.
- It shows which product pulls the hardest: the one with the biggest remainder moves break-even the most per sale.
- It prices bundles honestly: a bundle's remainder per sale often beats two singles, which is why bundles exist at all.
- It warns you early. A break-even that climbs month over month, with flat sales, is the earliest warning a solo business gets.
Where people fool themselves
- Counting the sticker price instead of the remainder, which makes break-even look closer than it is.
- Forgetting the yearly costs - insurance, domains, the accountant - which arrive all at once and wreck the month they land in.
- Using the best sales month as the forecast. The average month is the truth; the best month is a compliment.
- Never re-running it after costs change. A new subscription is a new line in the break-even, on the day it starts.
The free tool for this
A price that covers the cost and leaves something - A price that covers the cost and leaves something. It runs in the page, asks for your own numbers, and sends nothing anywhere.
If you would rather not build it yourself
The Calculator Pack holds this as a living file: costs, remainder and the break-even count, recomputed as the numbers change. Calculator Pack is $12. See it on the shop, and there is a plain page about it here: what it holds.
Questions people actually ask
Does break-even include paying myself?
Yes - your own costs are the business's costs, because you are the business. A break-even that excludes your rent is a number that only works if you do not eat.
What if the number is impossibly high?
Then it has done its job: it has turned a vague worry into three specific levers - lower costs, higher remainder per sale, or more sales. Pull the one you can pull this week, and re-run it.
Read next
How to work out your freelance hourly rate, honestly, What a sale actually leaves behind: fees, tax, the real number.