What's new: a calculator that shows real profit, audit sharing and free checklists

Everything on this site that you can use for free has had work done on it over the last week. None of it costs anything and none of it needs an account. Here is what changed, and why.

The earnings calculator now shows the profit you'd keep

The calculator used to answer "how much could a store like this sell?" That is a fair question, but it is not the one most people are really asking. What they want to know is how much they would keep at the end of the month. A shop can sell ten thousand dollars a month and still lose money once the ads and the bills are paid.

So it now asks for your costs as well as your sales:

• Ad spend — what you pay Meta, Google or TikTok each month. Leave it at 0 if you don't run ads.
• Fixed costs — your store plan, apps, email tool and anything else you pay whether you sell or not.
• Payment fees are added for you, at the usual card rate of about 2.9% plus 30 cents an order.

The big number at the top is now your monthly profit, not your revenue. Underneath, a short breakdown shows where each month's money goes: product cost, fees, ads and running costs, then what is left. If the numbers add up to a loss, it says so in red instead of dressing it up, and tells you what it would take to break even — how many orders, or how much more traffic.

It also compares the three common ways to earn more: converting more of your visitors, raising your average order, or improving your margin. Each one is shown as extra profit per month, worked out from your own numbers, so you can see which is worth your time first. It only calls one "the biggest lever" when it really is.

On a phone it is much easier to use now. Your profit stays pinned at the top of the screen while you move the sliders, so you can see it change as you go, and the sliders are easier to grab with a thumb.

Share your audit and skip the queue

If you have had a free audit and know another store owner who would find one useful, you now have your own share link. When someone requests their audit through it, you get two things:

• Your audit moves to the front of the queue.
• A deeper audit — more product pages, your checkout end to end, and a closer look at speed.

They get exactly the same free audit as anyone else, and I never tell them who sent them. You will find your link right at the top of the audit page after you send your store. If you come back days later on another phone or computer, type your email in the same place and the link is sent to you, with a one-tap Copy button and buttons to share it on WhatsApp, LinkedIn, X or Facebook.

Five free checklists you can do yourself

Not everyone wants someone else looking at their store, and some things you can check in ten minutes on your own. There are now five checklists, written for shop owners rather than developers:

• AI Shopping Readiness — can ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers read and recommend your products?
• Store Launch Readiness — what to check before you open, move platforms or change your theme.
• Product Page & Catalog Content — titles, descriptions, photos and options that help people buy.
• Onsite Search & Merchandising — whether shoppers can actually find what they came for.
• Profit Leak Self-Check — the quiet costs that eat into your margin.

See a real audit report before you ask for one

The audit page now has a clear download bar for a sample report, as a PDF or in other formats. It is a fair way to judge what you would get before you send your own store: how the problems are ranked, how they are explained, and what I suggest fixing first.

Smaller fixes

• On phones, "Audit another store" now takes you straight to the box to type in, with the keyboard open. Before, the box could end up hidden off the screen.
• Reading times on this blog now come from the actual length of each article.
• Two new articles: what a Shopify store really costs to run each month, and whether ChatGPT can recommend your products.

If something on the site doesn't work the way you'd expect, or there is a free tool you wish existed, tell me. Most of the changes above started as someone's question.