Nobody gives you the number because there isn't one. But there is a way to work it out for your case in five minutes, and to know before you start whether the arithmetic holds. That's what this is.
You ask what a launch costs and you get “it depends”. True, but useless — and often it hides that whoever answered has never worked it out either.
It depends on three things, and only three: what you charge, how many people need to see it, and how much of the execution you do yourself. With those three answers the number appears on its own. Let's take them apart.
A launch has four costs. Three are reasonably predictable. The fourth is the one that wrecks budgets, and it's rarely the one people fear.
| Line item | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Video production | USD 1,500 – 8,000 | How many pieces, and whether there's a script and voice direction or just a camera |
| Tools and platform | USD 100 – 400 per month | Email, payments, member area. Almost always less than feared |
| Team and coordination | USD 2,000 – 10,000 | Whether you run it, an agency runs it, or someone is dedicated to it |
| Paid media | The one that runs away | Depends on how many people you need to reach. It gets calculated, not guessed |
The first three you can negotiate and bound. The fourth isn't negotiated: it's calculated. And it's where the money goes, because people assign it a round number up front — “let's say five thousand” — without checking whether five thousand is enough.
The calculator below runs exactly that check.
Move the two sliders. The conversion figures are the ones commonly seen in high-value launches; your case may be better or worse, but it tells you whether the order of magnitude makes sense.
Calculated on two conservative assumptions: out of every 100 people who give you their details, 2 buy; and each contact costs around 4 dollars to acquire. Both vary widely by sector and by how sharp your message is. If your number comes out uncomfortable, that's the value of looking before rather than after.
If you moved the sliders you already saw it: doubling the price doesn't double the effort, it halves it. Selling twenty places at a thousand dollars means reaching ten times as many people as selling ten at two thousand, for the same revenue.
That's why the first decision in a launch isn't the budget or the date. It's the price. Everything else arranges itself behind it.
And the second decision, the one almost nobody makes in time: what happens to the people who don't buy. In a typical launch, between 95 and 98 percent of the people who gave you their details don't buy this time. If that list goes quiet when the cart closes, you paid for it once. If it stays alive, the next launch starts with half the work done.
There are three situations where the arithmetic won't hold no matter the budget. Better to know now:
We work with a handful of brands at a time. The application takes under three minutes, and if your figures tell us it isn't the moment, we'll say so.
Apply to work with us