Revenue Planning
Part of Evaluating creator revenue offers
Comparing revenue with the time an offer requires
Count setup, sales, delivery and support hours, then compare them with a clearly defined amount retained from an offer.
Compare what an offer earns after defined cash costs with all the hours needed to sell, deliver and maintain it. Use a common period for money and time. The amount per hour is a planning measure, not a profit figure, wage or price recommendation.
Count the whole job
Record work against the offer, separating setup from work that repeats. A workshop may require initial design, then promotion, preparation, delivery and questions for each run. A download may need access help and later updates. Record shared work once when it serves several offers.
| Time group | Examples | Question |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Research, production and checkout preparation | How much has already been done? |
| Per sale or session | Briefing, delivery, feedback and administration | What will another buyer add? |
| Continuing | Updates, access help and issue resolution | What remains owed after payment? |
Include hours already worked and a separate estimate of hours still owed for those sales. Do not spread setup time across hoped-for future orders and present that as an observed result. Show future volume as a labelled scenario.
Steps to Compare Revenue with Time Required for an Offer
- Identify setup timeresearch, production and checkout prep
- Record per-sale or per-session tasksbriefing, delivery, feedback, admin
- Track continuing workupdates, access help, issue resolution
- Separate hours already worked from estimated future hours
- Avoid spreading setup time across future sales; use labelled scenarios instead
Define the money figure
Start with the amount the creator is entitled to under the selling arrangement. Account for refunds, fees and other deductions only if they have not already been removed from that starting figure. Subtract the direct cash costs you have chosen to include.
Show shared overhead separately or allocate it by a stated method. Keep unpaid amounts separate when assessing cash available for bills.
Divide the defined amount after cash costs by the recorded offer hours. Label it, for example, ‘amount after direct cash costs per recorded hour’. Future delivery, shared costs, tax and payment timing can still change the decision.
Suppose a hypothetical offer has A$900 of creator receipts after refunds, A$180 in direct cash costs and 24 recorded hours in one cycle, with all figures excluding any applicable GST. That leaves A$720, or A$30 per recorded hour. If six promised support hours remain, a 30-hour planning denominator gives A$24 per hour. Neither figure is a typical rate or profit.
Interpret the result
Compare similar cycles and read unusually demanding orders. An average can hide extensive revisions or a repeated access problem. Ask whether the work was promised, caused by a fault or added voluntarily. Do not treat a correction needed to supply the agreed result as a paid extra.
Compare the offer with another realistic use of those hours while allowing for buyer demand and current commitments. A lower amount per hour may be a deliberate choice for an objective you can name. If the work keeps growing, identify whether better instructions, narrower scope, a different price or fewer new sales address its cause. Recheck using the same definitions.
