Why Modern Creator?

Maria Wendt · YouTube

I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

A low-ticket digital seller opens six months of real books — LTV, CAC, ROAS, and the profit margin she says is actually too high.

Posted

March 20th 2025

1 years ago

Duration

34:09

Format

Talking Head

sincere

Views

4.3K

118 likes

Big Idea

The argument in one line.

A low-ticket digital business can run a 60% profit margin and a 2.62 LTV:CAC ratio while converting cold traffic under 2%, because repeat purchases and cheap delivery cover the inefficiency of scale.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You run, or want to run, a low-ticket digital product business and need real benchmark numbers to compare against.
You're past your first few sales and want to know what LTV:CAC, profit margin, and AOV actually look like at multi-million-dollar scale.
You're deciding whether to reinvest profit into ads and headcount instead of taking it home as personal income.

SKIP IF…

You're pre-revenue or still choosing a niche — these benchmarks assume you already have paying customers and real ad spend.
You sell high-ticket or service-based offers, where a single-customer, high-touch model has completely different LTV and conversion math.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

A low-ticket digital product seller opens six months of real financials: a 2.62 LTV:CAC ratio, a 60% profit margin, $2.7M cash collected, and a 2.32 return on ad spend on $6,000/day of spend. Cost to acquire a customer is $61 against a $160 lifetime value and a $117 average order — a gap she flags as her biggest opportunity. Blended conversion rate across roughly a million monthly pageviews sits at just 0.5-2%, offset by a 30% repeat-purchase rate and a 2.22% refund rate. Her conclusion: a 60% margin means she isn't reinvesting aggressively enough into ads and hiring to hit her $10M goal.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 02:21

01 · Cold open

She almost didn't hit record before framing the video as the financial equivalent of getting naked: real numbers most business owners never share.

02:21 – 03:50

02 · What she's about to share

Lists the metrics she'll walk through — profit, revenue per email subscriber, order bump take rate, ROAS, ad spend — for an audience that already knows the terms.

03:50 – 05:24

03 · LTV:CAC ratio: 2.62

Explains the ratio and lands her own number at 2.62 — decent but not exceptional, against a range spanning 1.5 to 11 across businesses.

05:24 – 06:52

04 · Profit margin: 60%

States a 60% profit margin held steady over six months, and previews that this number will later be reframed as a problem, not a win.

06:52 – 08:47

05 · Cash collected & ad spend

$2.7M collected over six months, a 2.32 return on ad spend, and $6,000/day currently spent on ads with a near-term goal of $10,000/day.

08:47 – 10:09

06 · CAC & LTV: $61 vs $160

Blended cost to acquire a customer is $61 against a $160.02 lifetime value — the arithmetic behind the 2.62 ratio.

10:09 – 12:15

07 · AOV & the Starbucks comparison

A $117.28 average order value sitting close to LTV exposes the real opportunity: getting customers to buy again, illustrated against Starbucks' far larger reported LTV.

12:15 – 16:33

08 · Conversion rate reality check

A blended 0.5-2% conversion rate across roughly a million monthly pageviews is unpacked by traffic temperature — cold ads at the bottom, warm community links and lead magnets far higher.

16:33 – 19:33

09 · Why 60% margin is 'too high'

Argues the high margin means underinvestment in ads and headcount, contrasts 2024's $3.6M revenue and $2M take-home against a $10M goal, and notes the roughly 50% tax bill on personal income.

19:33 – 21:44

10 · Email revenue & order bumps

Revenue per email subscriber is $3 against a 400,000-person list built on 10-50 cent email costs; the order bump take rate is 60%.

21:44 – 24:34

11 · Organic vs. paid: 53/47

Attribution software reveals a near-even 53% paid / 47% organic traffic split, framed as deliberate diversification after prior account shutdowns.

24:34 – 29:39

12 · Repeat rate & refunds

A 30% repeat-purchase rate within six months beats the cited 15-20% industry average; a 2.22% refund rate is likely artificially low, prompting a planned no-questions-asked refund test.

29:39 – 31:17

13 · Screen share: feeding the data to ChatGPT

Pastes all six months of metrics into ChatGPT with a 'successful $100M business owner' prompt and reviews the AI's observations, which largely echo her own reinvestment conclusion.

31:17 – 34:09

14 · Closing thoughts

Recaps the tradeoffs of a low-ticket, high-volume model — high margins, low delivery effort, a roughly 15-hour work week — and asks viewers for their own benchmark numbers.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

A 2.62 LTV:CAC ratio means every dollar spent acquiring a customer returns about $2.62 over that customer's lifetime — solid but not exceptional.
A 60% net profit margin is roughly two to three times the 20-30% most businesses consider healthy, and can signal underinvestment in growth rather than pure efficiency.
Blended site-wide conversion rate across roughly a million monthly pageviews sits at just 0.5% to 2%, because that figure mixes cold ad traffic with warm community links converting above 25%.
A $61 cost to acquire a customer against a $160 lifetime value and a $117 average order value reveals the real opportunity: getting customers to buy a second and third time, not acquiring them cheaper.
Revenue per email subscriber of $3 on a 400,000-person list, built on emails acquired for 10 to 50 cents each, still delivers roughly a 6x return on that list-building cost.
An order bump take rate of 60% turned a $10 base purchase into a $60 average order six times out of ten.
A near 50/50 organic-to-paid traffic split (53% paid, 47% organic) is a deliberate hedge against a single platform or ad account getting shut down.
A 30% repeat-purchase rate within a six-month window is roughly 1.5 to 2x the 15-20% considered average for digital products.
A 2.22% refund rate is likely understated by a public no-refunds policy — some unhappy customers never ask, even though refunds are quietly granted when requested.
Testing a no-questions-asked refund policy despite an already-thin refund rate is a bet that removing purchase risk increases conversion more than refunds cost in revenue.
As ad and traffic volume scales, per-dollar efficiency mechanically declines — a 5-10x return on ad spend is normal at low volume, and 2.32x on $6,000/day of spend is still profitable at scale.
Doubling daily ad spend from $6,000 to $10,000 was projected to generate roughly $25,000 back, framing constrained ad budget — not lack of profitability — as the real growth bottleneck.
A single prompt into ChatGPT — 'if you were a successful $100M business owner, what would you say about these numbers' — surfaced the same reinvestment gap as manual analysis of the same data.
Going 100% organic on a single platform for over a decade, then losing that account entirely, didn't change the strategy — betting everything on one channel was still judged the better tradeoff than splitting focus across many.

Takeaway

The metrics behind a $2.7M, low-ticket digital business

WHAT TO LEARN

A 60% profit margin is a symptom of under-investment, not just a win — the real signal is the gap between average order value and lifetime value, and how aggressively you close it.

03LTV:CAC ratio: 2.62

A 2.62 LTV:CAC ratio is categorized as 'decent, not stellar' — some businesses hit 11, others sit at 1.5, so context matters more than the raw number.
LTV:CAC answers one question: for every dollar spent acquiring a customer, how many dollars does that customer return over their lifetime?

04Profit margin: 60%

A 60% net profit margin, measured over six trailing months, is roughly two to three times the 20-30% most healthy businesses target.
A margin this high is presented as a weakness, not a brag — it signals room to reinvest in ads, hiring, and growth instead of banking the difference.

05Cash collected & ad spend

$2.7M was collected over six months, with monthly totals landing consistently in the $500K-$600K range.
A 2.32 return on ad spend means every $1 spent on ads returns about $2.32 — solid at scale, even though early-stage advertisers often see 5-10x.
Daily ad spend of $6,000 was capped by operational readiness to spend more, not by profitability — doubling it was projected to roughly double the return.

06CAC & LTV: $61 vs $160

A $61 blended cost to acquire a customer (combining paid and organic) returns a $160 lifetime value — the source of the 2.62 ratio.
Blended CAC only makes sense next to blended LTV; comparing a paid-only CAC to a blended LTV would overstate efficiency.

07AOV & the Starbucks comparison

A $117 average order value sitting close to a $160 lifetime value means most revenue comes from the first purchase, not repeat buying — that gap is the real growth lever.
A far larger LTV benchmark from a consumables business was cited to illustrate that the size of the gap between AOV and LTV, not the absolute LTV number, is what separates business models.

08Conversion rate reality check

A blended conversion rate of 0.5% to 2% across roughly a million monthly pageviews sounds low until you separate cold ad traffic (worst) from warm community links (25-30%) and free lead magnets (up to 75%).
Industry-standard conversion rate at that traffic volume is considered 1%, so a blended 0.5-2% range isn't underperforming — it's typical for a mixed cold/warm funnel.
Years of testing conversion-rate improvements produced no dramatic gains, leading to a working theory that the conversion rate is largely fixed at a given traffic temperature — the real lever is traffic volume, not squeezing the funnel harder.

09Why 60% margin is 'too high'

A profit margin this high is reframed as under-investment: money that could go to more ad spend or more hires is instead sitting as take-home profit.
A prior year's result of $3.6M top-line revenue and $2M personal take-home, against a much larger current-year goal, sets the stakes for why the margin needs to come down, not up.
Roughly half of personal income went to taxes, a detail shared to keep the profit-margin conversation grounded in real take-home numbers, not gross revenue.

10Email revenue & order bumps

Revenue per email subscriber of $3, against email addresses acquired for 10 to 50 cents, is roughly a 6x return on list-building cost even though the $3 figure is self-assessed as low for the industry.
A 60% order bump take rate turned a $10 base offer into a $60 average order six times out of ten — a concrete number for anyone deciding whether a bump offer is worth building.

11Organic vs. paid: 53/47

A near-even 53% paid / 47% organic traffic split, tracked via dedicated attribution software, is treated as a deliberate risk hedge, not an accident.
The split matters because both a primary organic account and a paid ad account had previously been shut down without warning — relying on one channel already proved fragile once.
Attribution granular enough to know the dollar value of a single social post is what makes a near-50/50 traffic split a measured decision instead of a guess.

12Repeat rate & refunds

A 30% repeat-purchase rate within a six-month window is roughly 1.5-2x the 15-20% cited as industry average for digital products.
A 2.22% refund rate is likely understated: a public no-refunds policy discourages some unhappy customers from even asking, even though refunds are quietly granted when requested.
Testing a fully open, no-questions-asked refund policy is framed as a conversion experiment, not a generosity play — the bet is that removing purchase risk grows revenue more than refunds cost.

13Screen share: feeding the data to ChatGPT

Feeding six months of real metrics into a chatbot with the prompt 'if you were a successful $100M business owner, what would you say about these numbers' surfaced the same reinvestment gap as manual analysis.
Using a general-purpose AI chatbot as a sounding board for financial self-assessment is presented as a free second opinion, not a replacement for hiring an analyst.

14Closing thoughts

The tradeoffs of a low-ticket, high-volume model are named explicitly: very high margins and low delivery effort, offset by traffic generation being the hard, non-negotiable skill.
A roughly 15-hour work week is presented as a direct consequence of the business model choice — automated funnels and thousands of monthly customers, not thousands of hours of manual delivery.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

LTV:CAC ratio: The ratio of a customer's total lifetime revenue value (LTV) to the cost of acquiring them (CAC). A ratio of 3 means every $1 spent to acquire a customer returns $3 over their lifetime.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): The average cost, blending paid ads and organic marketing, to acquire one paying customer.
AOV (Average Order Value): The average dollar amount a customer spends in a single transaction, not counting any repeat purchases.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): The revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. A ROAS of 2.32 means $1 in ad spend generates $2.32 in revenue.
Order bump: A one-click add-on offer shown on the same checkout page as the main product, before the customer completes their purchase.
Blended traffic: Combining paid and organic (unpaid) traffic sources into a single average metric, rather than reporting each separately.
Low-ticket business model: A sales model built on a high volume of low-priced purchases rather than a small number of expensive ones.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

21:58toolHyros ↗

29:39toolChatGPT

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:16

“I am doing essentially the equivalent of getting naked in front of everybody, which is, as a business owner, sharing your actual hard numbers.”

vulnerable hook that reframes financial transparency as a bigger risk than it sounds→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

04:40

“If it costs me a dollar to acquire a customer, I will take that and turn that into three dollars.”

makes an abstract ratio concrete in one sentence→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

16:33

“Something I've realized is that your business should not have 60% profit margins.”

counterintuitive claim that a high margin is a red flag, not a win→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

24:22

“I'd rather you whole ass one thing than half ass a bunch of different things.”

quotable one-liner on channel focus versus diversification→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

27:16

“If we had a 100% refund, no questions asked, I actually think that would increase our conversion rate.”

reframes refunds as a conversion lever instead of a pure cost center→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

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See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphoranalogy

00:00Okay. I'm a little nervous. I sat down, and I wasn't gonna do this.

00:05I'm literally not wearing makeup. I'm in my disgusting sweat that I've been working in all day. But I have a little bit of courage, and I'm just gonna do this.

00:13I am doing essentially the equivalent of getting naked in front of everybody, which is, as a business owner, sharing your actual hard numbers. The non sexy, actual, like, you show me yours, I'll show you mine data, And no one ever shares this, but I would have killed to have this information, especially not quite when I was a very beginner, because when you're a beginner, you don't even know these numbers, you don't even know what to do with these numbers.

00:38This is for people who are a little bit more advanced, um, who will know what these numbers mean, and will be able to immediately compare my numbers to your numbers, to see where maybe you're doing better than I'm doing, and then to see where I'm doing maybe better than you are doing.

00:56So this data that I'm sharing with you, in case you don't know me by the way, my name is Marie Went. I run a multi million dollar business. I sell digital products.

01:02I'm extremely good at business. I'm extremely good at marketing. I'm extremely good at sales.

01:05I make a ton of very transparent, clearly vulnerable content online because it's the information I wanted when I was getting started. It's the data, it's the education, it's just the trans honestly, it's just the transparency.

01:19When I was working to make my first million, I would have given anything to see these numbers.

01:25And occasionally, in masterminds where I paid, you know, $30,000, $20,000 to be in rooms, I would occasionally get glimpses of this data.

01:35I just want you to have this data for free here online to take it and use it and help you grow your really to hit your first 7 figures or maybe from like your first seven figures to like to like $1,010,000,000, I think.

01:48It's like is all very helpful data to have. So it probably won't make a ton of sense, um, if you're just getting started, but maybe it will. And if not, maybe watch it and you kinda learn like what this looks like at at a higher level.

01:59Okay. So the data that I've collected, I am going to assume that you know what each of these acronyms mean. If you don't know what these acronyms mean, you can go ahead and look it up.

02:08Some of them I might just accidentally clarify what it means, but I'm just gonna assume that you know what these are, um, or if I feel like it will be helpful to clarify, um, I'll explain it, and I'll also explain why it's important for you to have. This is data over the last six months.

02:21Um, I'm gonna share profits. I'm gonna share, um, revenue per email subscriber. I'm gonna share upsell and order bump take rate, return on ad spend, how much you're spending on ads.

02:29I'm gonna be sharing a ton of data with you, and I just want you to know this.

02:35I just, that's my only goal with this video is just to be transparent, be like, these are my numbers, where are you doing worse than I am, and maybe I can teach you something. And then maybe conversely, if you're a peer of mine and you're watching this, where are you doing better than I'm doing so I can learn from you?

02:51Like, if you're like Maria, like, at the volume you have, my conversion rate is way better than yours, cool. I wanna learn something from you.

02:58If your AOV is better than mine, I wanna learn something from you. So, okay, I think the most important thing for you to understand about my business model, my low ticket business model, is that it runs on volume. Meaning, you will not see the best conversion rates with my business, you will not, although I had decent conversion rates, you will not see the best.

03:15There's just some things that are going to be less efficient as you scale, and and that's just a general rule of thumb. It's things you you will make in general, the efficiency of something goes down when you throw volume into it.

03:29So I'm a low ticket business model. I'm I have literally hundreds of customers a day come in. I think it's two or 300 customers a day.

03:37I think it's $3,000. 3,000 customers a month.

03:42I don't have all the data here, so we'll go we'll go over it. But I basically have thousands of customers a month, and that's how I run my business model. So let's start with the most important this is the most important metric for you to track as a business owner, and I think is my weakest one of my weakest numbers.

03:58I think it's decent. It's not great. And the reason why it's not great is because I'm running a low ticket business model, so the con of a low ticket business model is that it's the pro is that you don't have any work.

04:12You set the funnels up once, you set the automations up once, and it's very little delivery. The con is certain margins, certain numbers are amazing, but I'll kinda go over all of it because I think it's really important for you to have the full picture.

04:27So LTV to CAC ratio. I'm gonna explain what that means in a minute. But my LTV to CAC ratio is 2.62, so slightly under three.

04:38Basically, LTV to CAC ratio, what that means is how much does a customer do I get per customer over the lifetime of that customer versus how much it costs me to acquire that customer?

04:52So if let's just round up. Mine's 2.62. Let's round up to three.

04:56If it costs me a dollar to acquire a customer, I will take that and turn that into three dollars.

05:04Now every business has a very wide range. That's what I would consider decent, not stellar.

05:11Some businesses have an LTV to CAC ratio of 11. Some businesses have a LTV to CAC ratio of 1.5, meaning they will take $1 and turn it into a dollar 50.

05:24I think the really important next metric is my current overall profit margin. Mind you, this is over the last six months of data. So this is data from the last six months.

05:34Profit margin has been very steady at 60%. So I'm taking $1, turning it into $3, and my profit on that $3 is 60%.

05:46My profit margin is 60%. So if I pull in let's just say for easy math, I'm pulling in $500,000 a month.

05:55But let's just say for easy math, it's a $100,000 a month. I keep 60 of that 100,000.

06:03So my LTV to CAC ratio is three, essentially. It's 2.62.

06:11So basically, my lifetime value so so for me, just sharing since you guys can, like, why are we doing this? Why are we talking about this?

06:19My big opportunity is in increasing my lifetime value. So getting my customers to buy from me, which they already have we'll talk about this too later.

06:28They already we already have a great ratio. But for me, just so you know what my focus on, it's increasing that LTV even more.

06:39Um, and if you're curious, I'll I'll be sharing the actual dollar amounts of that later. Um, but my opportunity is to increase the LTV of my customers.

06:50That's my opportunity. Cash collected over the last six months has been 2,700,000, so slightly under 3,000,000, and that's right on track.

06:59So in January so far this year, we've done about 600,000. In February, we did, I think, right about 500,000. I think in March, we're gonna do probably over 500,000.

07:09Definitely not under 500,000. I don't think we'll get quite to 600,000. But in the last six months, we collected 2,700,000.

07:17Our overall return on ad spend is 2.32. Meaning, if we spend a dollar on ads, we'll make basically two and a half dollars.

07:29So that's your return on ad spend. Now this is what I'm talking about where, um, your efficiency as you scale goes down.

07:37So if you're just getting started with ads, you might have a return on ad spend of five, or you might have a return on ad spend of 10, where you spend $1 and you make $10. Um, a rule of marketing is that as you scale, as you have volume, your efficiency goes down.

07:54Our current daily ad spend is $6,000 a day. It's actually not that much.

07:59For someone who's brand new watching this, you might be like, are you kidding me? $6,000 a day? That's insane.

08:06But we talk to people who are spending millions of dollars a day on ads. And so that's like our metric. It's like our first immediate goal is to get that up to $10,000 a day.

08:16Because when you have profit immediately from your ads, not everyone does. We have an immediate profit from our ads. And so when you have an immediate profit, literally your constraint, the thing that's throttling you, is the amount you're spending.

08:28Because if I can spend, um, $10,000 a day, I'm gonna take that $10,000 and I'm gonna turn that into 23,000.

08:37Right? That's how the math on that would work? I think that's how the math on that.

08:40If not, leave a comment and tell me. But I think it it would slightly double it. So, yeah, if I put in 10,000, I would make around 25,000.

08:47So why wouldn't you do that every single day? That's how our profit margins are really good. Um, okay.

08:52Average cost to acquire a customer, I think, is pretty decent. It's $61. So it costs us $61 blended to acquire a customer.

09:01Now that's blended. When I say blended, that means if I take what I pay in ads and I take what I pay in organic and I combine the two and average it out and blend it, that's my understanding.

09:13I could be totally wrong. I'm just talking out of my ass. So if someone again, this is where the vulnerability comes in.

09:17If you know I didn't go to business school. I don't know any of the business terms. I've learned all of them on the fly as best as I could.

09:23And so if you know a better term or I'm using the term incorrectly, and this just goes for all my YouTube videos, like, please tell me. I have no formal education doing this.

09:31I have stumbled my way into a multi million dollar business. I don't pretend to know really anything that I that I I'm sure there's lots that I don't know. So average CAC cost to acquire a customer, $61.

09:42LTV, meaning lifetime value, is a $160.02.

09:48So that's how you get the 2.62 ratio. Right?

09:52Where it's essentially like I'll take it cost me $60 to get a customer, but on average, I make about a $160 from that customer.

10:02So not great, not stellar, decent.

10:06It's categorized as decent. Um, my average order value, my AOV is a meaning, like, average order value is like, you have a customer come in and they buy from you.

10:18What is the average order value of that customer? My average order value is a $117.28. So the gap between my LTV, one sixty, and my AOV, one seventeen, isn't that much, which means my opportunity is in getting my customers to buy again and again, which let me just turn my phone and do not disturb here.

10:45Okay. Which that's the gap.

10:47I would love the thing that I'm working towards is I want an LTV of $400, meaning I want the lifetime value of my customers to be around 400.

10:57So I'll give you a different business example. Starbucks LTV is 14 this is gonna make you sick if you buy from Starbucks.

11:05Not that I have anything political. It's just more just, like, it's a lot of money to be spending on coffee. It's $14,000.

11:11So Starbucks let's just say Starbucks had a customer acquisition cost of $61 like I do. Their LTV is $14,000.

11:23Mine is a $160. So that's my opportunity. That's what they've done really well.

11:30Again, like, it's different it's a different completely different business model because they're selling consumables. I'm selling information. Um, it's a totally different business model.

11:38However, I think we can all agree that my opportunity is in getting my LTV up. There's a lot of different ways you can do that, um, and I'm working on like, I'm clear on the plan for what that looks like.

11:51Um, my immediate goal my first immediate goal is to get that to 200. Like, an LTV from $1.60 to 200, I love it. That's good.

11:57But my ultimate goal is I want $400 as my LTV.

12:02Okay. This one's hard for me to share because I think that along with my LTV and my CAC ratio, the other thing that my metric think that it's hard for me to share, and I'll tell you why, is my click through rate is across all my pages.

12:20So not just my checkout pages, not just certain pages, across every page with something like 300,000 page views per month, maybe even four like, we generate hundreds of thousands of page views a month.

12:36I think when we did it last and we looked last, and we calculated it between, like, our checkout pages, our unbounce pages, any random landing pages we had, any, like, freebie pages. We have, like, half a million page views a month, and honestly, even that seems a little low.

12:52But all of that to say, the average conversion rate of at the top line with that much traffic is point five to 2%.

13:03So meaning, if let's just do easy math, on the worst end of some of my pages, it has a point 5% conversion rate.

13:12Those are typically the highest traffic with the coldest people. So you have to remember we're spending 10,000 no, we're spending $6,000 a day on ads.

13:20So someone sees an ad, they have no idea who I am, they have no idea what I'm selling, they have no idea what I'm talking about, and they click that, they would click away and not buy. They would be contributing to the point 5%.

13:34Contrast that to me dropping a link into my coaching group with my students who know me and love me and enjoy everything that I put out, that might have a 26% conversion rate or a 30% conversion rate. Some of our freebie pages have a 75% conversion rate.

13:51So we take all of that traffic, about a half a million page views per month, um, slightly higher maybe, but just like in general, half a million page views per month, and we take all of that and we blend it, it's point five to 2%.

14:06Now, that's industry standard. 1%, especially at that level of volume, 1% is like average.

14:13The average marketer, average. So we're not I think point five is like some of the pages that have point five. I wish that was better.

14:23However, the all that all that means is that that's our opportunity. Like that's our sorry.

14:28Fiddling with the hamster. That's our opportunity that we can work on.

14:34But you know what's really interesting, and this is where like I'll just share with you guys transparently, like man, we have fiddled with conversion rate so much, and we'll change this thing, and we'll change this thing. And again, like I said, we have a very wide range from like point 5% to like 75, 80%, depending on what it is.

14:50There's so many different pages we have. And generally what we find is that the initial conversion rate is the initial conversion rate, give or take a little bit. But we, and maybe this is just a skill that we lack, we have yet to find a dramatic increase in conversions.

15:09Now that can mean two things. It can mean we just are missing something really big when it comes to big, like, could increasing conversions.

15:16Like, we're fundamentally wrong, or it could just mean it's it is what like, it's not something that most people would fiddle with, and we're not missing anything.

15:29I would be very interested for those of you guys who are more experienced in the comments, I'd actually be really interested to hear your thoughts on this.

15:37I feel like I've heard it said before that the conversion rate is the conversion rate, especially at that level of cold traffic or, like, semi warm traffic.

15:49But I'd be kinda curious to know. We're certainly open to it, but what we found has always worked better for us in our business is just like, okay. So the conversion rate's at 3%.

15:57Okay. That means we need to send 3,000 people to the page to hit our goal, and then we send we send 3,000 people.

16:04Like, we have been able to we can clearly generate traffic like nobody's business. That we can do with our eyes closed or, like, I'm very confident in our ability to generate traffic. I don't love a 5.5 to 2% conversion rate.

16:16I just don't love it. But I don't I also don't know, like, that something that, like, is worth the effort.

16:22So for those of you guys who happen to be watching who are a little bit more experienced, curious to get your thoughts on that. Okay. So, yeah, next one is profit margin.

16:31Like I said, that's 60%. Something I've realized is that your business should not have 60% profit margins. It and that has been like, again, this is data over the last six months.

16:40That has been very consistent.

16:44Oh, one to so 1.5 page this is why I felt like the traffic was low. It's 150,000 page views per month.

16:51So over oh, okay. Yeah.

16:56So it is about so it's about a million. Yeah, so it's lit that's why I literally was like, I know, I like this is how well I know my numbers. I knew that it was right around a million page views, that's why.

17:08Okay. So yeah, so it's with a million page views, which is think about that.

17:13A million page views, a million views on a page between all of our pages, the conversion rate is point five to 2%. So clearly, we're very good at generating traffic.

17:23Conversion rate is standard. It's industry standard. One to 2% is considered industry standard.

17:29Back to the profit margins. It's 60%. A business should not have 60% profit margins.

17:36That's too high. What that means is we're not growing fast enough. We're not in we should be spending more money on ads.

17:40We should be bringing on team members to help us. 60% profit margin is very, very high. We could be growing and scaling faster to my goal of 10,000,000.

17:50If we temporarily took home I mean, that's insane. Like so, like, just to give context, let's say for example, hit my goal of $10,000,000.

17:58Right? That's my goal for the year. It's like 10,000,000.

18:02That would mean I take home 6,000,000. Last year, I took home 2,000,000. I made top line 3.6, and I took home 2,000,000 in personal take home income.

18:13So my and that was last year when we had even less good margins. This year we're having even better margins because we're making more money and our costs are are somewhat fixed. So profit I feel that 60% profit margin is too high.

18:25I don't see any business having that. I mean, it's great. I'm not complaining.

18:28I love the checks I write myself every month. However, I actually think that if I reinvested more in the business, we would ultimately grow, which is really what I want, is I want a bigger business.

18:39I wanna be able to reach more people. Wanna be able to help more people. I wanna be able to get my products in the hands of more people.

18:44And that could mean hiring more people and spending more on ads. Like, that is what that means. So profit margin, 60%.

18:48That's extremely that is like just to give context, most businesses are happy with like a a 20 to 30% net profit. My net profit, just so we're all very, very clear here, my net profit is 60%. I pay myself 60%.

19:03So if I again, just like, let's just say, I made a $100,000 in a month, I would net profit and pay myself 60,000 in that month.

19:12Now I have to pay 30,000 of that to taxes because I literally have to pay 50% taxes. Like, it's insane. Of that 2,000,000 that I made, I paid almost a million dollars in taxes last year on my personal take home income.

19:24Um, so but in terms of the business, net profit, what I pay myself, what I take home is 60%. It's very high.

19:30It's like two to three times higher than the average. Okay. Revenue per email subscriber, $3.

19:36So basically what that means is, I mean, we have a massive list of like 400,000 people. The I can't remember how we got this number, but like the projected revenue per email subscriber is $3. I think that's very low.

19:48I think that's like 10 times lower. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's 10 times lower than the average.

19:57I think I remember reading somewhere, again, this is why it's problematic to get your money, like your information off the internet because you have no context into the business. Um, for us though, like, here's the crazy thing, is like we get email addresses for free, or we get email addresses for like 10¢, or we and maybe that's our problem, I don't know.

20:14We get email addresses for like 50¢. So like, if I pay 50¢ for a good email, like a let's just say it's a good email address.

20:20I pay 50¢ for an email address, I can turn that 50¢ on average spread over 400,000 email addresses, I can turn that into $3.

20:29I'm six x ing my return on ad spend. So I'm taking $1 and turning it into $6. So I don't have much commentary on that.

20:38We haven't focused too much on email marketing because I was focusing on, like, getting the business to a million dollar run rate, and I just didn't do that. I didn't worry about emails at all for the first, like, twelve years of the business.

20:49Um, so it's kinda new to us. Upsell and order bump take rate. So, um, an order bump is, um, that first offer that you see on the same page as the main offer.

21:00So, like, you check out and you got that little thing down towards the bottom, and it's like, hey, would you like to add Maria's scripts or Maria's templates? Check it.

21:08And then it adds, like, $50 onto the order. Um, our take rate for that is 60%, which is, I think, pretty decent, actually.

21:15I I think that that means, like, let's say that we have an order for just again for easy math. Let's say we have an initial product that's $10, then the order bump is $50.

21:2860% of the time, we're actually making $60 per order. The $10 initial order plus a $50 order bump, 60% of the time, we're making $60 instead of $10. So it's pretty decent.

21:40Um, okay. So organic, I get this question all the time.

21:44Organic traffic versus paid traffic split. So how much is of that traffic, that million page views, how much of that comes from organic? How much of that comes from, um, paid traffic?

21:55Now we track this meticulously. Have this software called hiros.com. I I'm gonna put a link in the description for you.

22:01It's very sophisticated software. It will literally tell me how much I make from my content down to the real, down to the Instagram story. I literally know how much each individual Instagram story makes me in dollars.

22:14So that's how I know, like, I'll tell you right now, for every reel I make, I make $2,500. It's motivating. When you know you're making $2,500 from an Instagram reel or Carousel, you make Instagram a Carousel reels, and it like, it compounds.

22:30Um, so same thing with like our ads.

22:33I know this ad, this specific ad video that I filmed and that Rose uploaded and monitored and optimized made me x amount of dollars. So hiros.com, I highly recommend it.

22:44I'm gonna put a link down below. I can't remember if we have an affiliate for them or not, be honest. Either way, I'm recommending them because that has been a game changer for us.

22:53Okay. So here's the split. It's bonkers.

22:56It's 53% ads, 47% organic.

23:00And what's really interesting is Rose and I are such a team, and so it's like we both are pulling our weight perfectly. That I I couldn't believe we just pulled this data about a week ago. And then I like suddenly got the nerve to like film it and share it with you guys.

23:15But I couldn't believe it when we because like on the one hand, thought that I had done a lot more with organic, and then on the other hand, thought she had done so much with ads, maybe it was like slightly more ads. But 53 ads, 47 organic, basically fifty fifty.

23:31I think that's incredible because what that means is that like, let's say, god forbid, our Facebook ad account got shut down, or my Instagram account got shut down. Like that's happened to us before on both accounts, where I've had an organic account shut down, and I've had a paid ad. Like it just it just happens, and it's very diversified.

23:46I would love to see a three three three split where it's like SEO is 33%, ads are 33%, Paid, um, or organic traffic is 30%.

24:01But this is where you have to balance diversification with focus.

24:05For the first ten, eleven years of my business, it was a 100% organic and a 100% on one platform. And I get so much push back from that, Maria, what if your account got shut down?

24:14It literally did. And I would do it, I did it again, and I would do it again, because you're trying to optimize eight things at once, and it's not working.

24:22You've to go all in on one thing, and do it well. And so that's why I say like, be mindful of where you're pouring your focus, because I'd rather you whole ass one thing than half ass a bunch of different things. Okay, repeat customer rate.

24:36Now this is very interesting because this data is low. So our I think our overall repeat, like spread over a few a period of a few years is like in the 60% range.

24:46So we actually have a really good six I think my general manager reported something like 65, 66% of repeat customers, which is excellent.

24:54I think, like, industry standard is like 20. When we pulled this data, we wanted a very narrow bit of data, which is what percentage of our customers will buy will rebuy in a six month period?

25:05That's very narrow. So you buy a course of Maria's, what percentage is likely to buy again in a six month period?

25:12So it's much lower than 66% because with the 66%, I think that's like over the that's like over the lifetime of the customer experience. So like someone might buy, who has purchased from me in 2021, might buy something that I put out more recently.

25:26I still, however, was very happy with the repeat customer rate, even though it was much lower. It's 30% of our customers. The the industry average, I'm gonna quickly Google this, but I think it's like 20%.

25:39Yeah. I googled it. It's 20%.

25:42Like 15 to 20%.

25:46I'm saying 15%, 20%. So for us to have repeat customer rates at 30% within a window of sixty of six months is, I think, crazy good, which correlates to the last data point that I pulled, which is the refund rate.

26:07The refund rate is 2.22%. Very low. We have very some of our products, we don't like, we we say, like, we don't offer refunds.

26:14So for us, it depends on the product. Um, typically, if a customer is unhappy, um, even though we say, like, no refunds, we still will, like, we'll give refunds, um, because it's we want to discourage people who are like this is the dilemma with refunds, and I'll just, like, share transparently.

26:30We've done all kinds of different tests with it. In general, for digital products, we do not do refunds, and that is our policy.

26:38And the reason for that policy is that we have people who will download our who buy our products, download everything, and then immediately ask for a refund. However, if a customer is unhappy and emails us about it, we refund them.

26:52Because that to us feels like a good balance of discouraging the people who, like, would buy and then just to download and get their money back. And then, again, like, 2% of people are genuinely unhappy with it and say we refund.

27:07However, what I find really interesting is like, okay, one, that data might be slightly lower. The refund data might be slightly lower because people who were unhappy but didn't think they could refund didn't email us.

27:17So that's the first thing is like that number might be already because two percent's insanely low. Like, think 6% is average. So it's our policy our public policy is probably artificially pushing that down a little bit.

27:27However, I have been wanting to experiment with testing, and and we'll probably do it this year.

27:34I am very interested in testing just like a 100% refunds. Because one, our profit margins are so good.

27:42We could absolutely swing it. Two, I actually think it will make us more money, because I think that a bunch I think that and I wonder, like, oh, our conversion rate's a little low.

27:54I wonder how that would increase it. If it's like, look, like, if you're unhappy, 100% refund. No questions asked.

27:59I don't mind doing that. Like, I I've never minded doing that. I hate the people who download my stuff, and then I can see, like, can log in and see, you have gone through 100% of the course, I know you downloaded it to your computer, and like, you whatever.

28:11Like, so be it. Like, you've like, and the reason I know they, like, they went through and watched eight hours of material and downloaded eight hours of material, and I can see that you ordered you checked out, like, thirty minutes ago. So whatever.

28:24We can let that be. I think that if we had, like, a 100% refund, like, problem no questions asked, I actually think that would increase our conversion rate.

28:33And Neil Patel did a study on this, and he published a study on this, and I read it back in, like, 2018, and I cannot find it. I cannot he did a long study on how he tested things, and he and his his conclusion was that offering maybe, like, as I say it out loud, maybe it was Pat Flynn.

28:53I don't know. One of those one of those OG guys did a big test. Maybe it was Pat Flynn.

28:58I don't know. Either Neil Patel or Pat Flynn. Pat Flynn did a big long study, and they actually made overall overall, their conversion rent weight went up.

29:12And because they had really good products, which we know I have very good products, because my 30% of my customers will buy in a six month window, we know we have a good good data, especially for low ticket.

29:26That's just excellent. Like, that's unheard of. And so all of that to say I'm experimenting with that.

29:32So a couple of takeaways for for Rose and I, just looking at this data, was I wanna show you I'm gonna quickly share my screen here.

29:42I wanna show you something very interesting, because I wanna show you what we did once we put all of this data into ChatGPT, and I wanna just kinda, like, show you what happened. Was very cool.

29:51Zoom. Okay. Here we go.

29:53Oh my goodness. Look at this. Do it lower.

29:55Okay. Let me share my screen. Sorry guys.

29:57Okay. So this is what we put into ChatGPT.

30:01We put all this data in, and then it says if you were successful 100 this is the prompt. If you were a successful $100,000,000 business owner and I shared this data, what would they say?

30:12So they would analyze these numbers. Good.

30:20And then, like, it was this was amazing. This was like, question.

30:26Question. Question. And look at this.

30:28Look at what they're picking up on. How aggressive is the reinvestment into ads and scaling organic growth? Oh, I don't know.

30:34We're profiting 60%, so we're not really that aggressively in reinvesting into ads and scaling organic growth.

30:40Maybe we should do that. So again, it literally goes through everything, all the data that I just shared with you.

30:49Yeah, many this is a huge strength, many businesses struggle to hit 30%. So a lot of what I was saying, chatty biting, and like feeling, and just from my own knowledge of the industry, chatty biting confirmed.

31:03Yeah, observation one is low, two is okay, can it be pushed to 3%, what friction exists? Yeah, there's a lot of real just just like a lot of really good stuff here.

31:12And so that's the prompt that I would put in if I were you. Guys, I don't have any takeaways. The whole point of this video is just to share vulnerably.

31:21I think you guys know that in general transparency is my the name of my game.

31:26You've seen if you've seen me on Instagram, you've seen a lot of transparency on Instagram. Um, I just share this data because this is the transparency and the pulling back the curtain, especially for me as I scale to, you know, you know me. I'm gonna hit 10,000,000, and then I'm gonna hit a 100,000,000, and then we'll go from there.

31:42I'll figure out the next thing after that. Haven't thought past that. But, you know, as you guys follow me, as you are subscribed to me, or you follow me on Instagram, or you're on my email list, like, as you are watching this, what you're seeing is all I'm doing, I'm not pretending to be smarter than I am.

31:57I'm pretending that I have stuff figured out. I know that I have clearly, you can see my data points now, you know, that I don't have everything figured out.

32:04But I wanna just keep pushing myself to share the information that I really really would have loved to have someone just say, hey, you don't really know exactly what's going on, or you're just getting started, like, this is what I would you know, this is the stuff I wish I would have known, that would have been helpful to me to know.

32:22It would have let me know just like where I was doing better, where I needed to improve, like what I should expect. Again, all of this to say this business these data points, many of them apply only to low ticket.

32:35So if you have a high ticket business, your data points are gonna be insanely different. For example, you might have a really high LTV, but a really, really, really low, like, like, your customers, you have like six customers a month.

32:47Right? And so for me, I have like thousands of customers a month. The advantages of a low ticket business are clearly very high profit margins, 60% nuts, especially at like $5,000,000, $6,000,000, which is where we're at now.

33:01I'm very quickly scaling to 10,000,000, that's freaking nuts in my opinion. And then my other, like the other advantage is like I don't have work. Like, I I don't even work fifteen hours a week.

33:10So it's a very chill business, which is perfect for me as a single, essentially stay at home mom. I I work, like, maybe fifteen hours a week, if that total. Like, I should just track my hours sometime because it's like, it's little two hour pockets here, two hour pockets there.

33:25Ellie's with her dad on Wednesdays, like half a Thursday half a Tuesday, half a Wednesday, and that's it. Like, that's it.

33:32So that's the advantage for me in general is of a business like this is very high profit margins, very easy work, like, then the the downside is you have to be really, really good at driving traffic, which I am clearly a fiend at.

33:48A million page views in a, whatever, six month period is really good. So I'm very interested to get your takeaways on this.

33:57If you have areas or ideas for improvement, anything that stood out to you, I've I've never done a style video like this before, so I'm kind of very interested to know what you think of it. Let me know if you like this and what you think.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

She opens by admitting she almost didn't hit record — no makeup, still in her workout clothes — before doing what she calls 'the equivalent of getting naked in front of everybody': sharing the real profit-and-loss numbers behind a multi-million-dollar low-ticket business.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

04:27concept

LTV:CAC Ratio

Compares a customer's lifetime revenue value to the cost of acquiring them; her own benchmark table treats below 1.5 as poor, 3 as decent, and 10+ as exceptional.

Steal forany paid-acquisition business deciding how much it can afford to spend per customer

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

21:58toolHyros ↗

Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

cold open

hookcold open00:00

data preview

setupdata preview02:46

LTV:CAC ratio

valueLTV:CAC ratio04:03

profit margin

valueprofit margin05:46

cash collected & ROAS

valuecash collected & ROAS07:03

CAC & LTV breakdown

valueCAC & LTV breakdown08:45

AOV & Starbucks comparison

valueAOV & Starbucks comparison10:28

conversion rate reality

valueconversion rate reality12:36

why margin is 'too high'

valuewhy margin is 'too high'16:52

email revenue & order bump

valueemail revenue & order bump19:51

organic vs paid split

valueorganic vs paid split21:59

repeat & refund rate

valuerepeat & refund rate26:15

ChatGPT screen-share analysis

valueChatGPT screen-share analysis29:57

closing thoughts

closeclosing thoughts33:56

Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

cold open

Frame at 00:38 from I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

Frame at 01:04 from I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

Frame at 01:29 from I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

Frame at 01:55 from I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

Frame at 02:20 from I'm Exposed: My Real Numbers (Profit Margins, AOV & More)

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