What a click actually costs you
Cost per click is the number everyone quotes, and almost never the one that decides anything. Here's the maths we run before raising a bid.
Ask what a click costs and you'll get an average - cost per click across a month of campaigns. It's a real number, and it's almost never the one that decides whether search works for you.
Start from margin, not from the market
We work backwards. Margin per sale, times how often a click turns into a sale, gives the most you can pay for that click and still make money. If the auction charges less, everything above the line is profit. If it charges more, no amount of optimisation will save the campaign - the maths was wrong before it started.
- Margin per sale, net of shipping and returns
- Conversion rate from the last 90 days, not all time
- The share of sales that needed more than one click to arrive
Once that ceiling exists, bidding gets calmer. A expensive click isn't a crisis, it's a signal to lower the bid or fix the page - and knowing which of the two is the whole job.
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