What you got backfor what you put in.
Return on investment is the cleanest yes-or-no in business: did this make money or not? Enter the cost and the return to get your ROI as a percentage and a multiple, the net profit, and — if it took time — an annualized rate so you can compare it to anything else.
Your numbers
Total you put in — spend, time costed out, or capital.
Revenue or value you got back, in total.
How long it took — for the annualized rate.
The verdict
ROI
200.0%
Return multiple
3.00×
Net profit
$10,000
Annualized ROI
200.0%
Over 12 months.
In vs out
Reverse-solve · hit a target ROI
The return that target demands
Return needed
$15,000
Ahead by
$0
A 200% ROI on $5,000 means getting $15,000 back. You're at $15,000 — already past it.
Sensitivity · ROI by return
What each return multiple yields
| Return | ROI | Net profit |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0× ($5,000) | 0% | $0 |
| 1.5× ($7,500) | 50% | $2,500 |
| 2.0× ($10,000) | 100% | $5,000 |
| 3.0× ($15,000) | 200% | $10,000 |
| 5.0× ($25,000) | 400% | $20,000 |
ROI is just the return multiple minus one. A 2× return is a 100% ROI; 3× is 200%. The multiple is what investors hear; the percentage is what finance reports — same thing.
Your move
Positive on paper, flat in the bank? Let's find out why.
200% ROI (3.0×) — $10,000 net on $5,000 in.
ROI only counts the return you actually caused. Send me the spend behind these numbers and I'll tell you whether the return is real, attributed, and worth scaling — free, on a 30-minute call.
Plain English
One number that judges any spend.
Return on investment is the net profit of a decision divided by what it cost, expressed as a percentage. Put in $5,000, get back $15,000, and you've made $10,000 — a 200% ROI, or 3× your money. It works for an ad campaign, a hire, a piece of software, or a whole quarter, which is exactly why it's the most universal yardstick in business.
The percentage and the multiple say the same thing two ways. A 200% ROI and a 3× return are identical — the percentage counts only the profit on top, the multiple counts everything that came back. Investors tend to think in multiples; finance tends to report percentages. This shows both so you can speak either language.
The trap is ignoring time. A 50% ROI is spectacular in a month and mediocre over five years. That's why this also annualizes the figure — so a fast, small win and a slow, large one land on the same scale and you can actually compare them.
The formula
ROI = (Return − Cost) ÷ Cost × 100
$15,000 back on a $5,000 investment → ($15,000 − $5,000) ÷ $5,000 = 200% ROI (a 3× return). Earned over 12 months, that's a 200% annualized rate; over 6 months it annualizes to 400%.
Read your ROI
ROI is negative.
You got back less than you put in. Before repeating it, find the single weakest link — the offer, the channel, or the cost base — and fix that, don't just scale the loss.
Positive but thin (under ~30%).
It works, barely. Small swings in cost or conversion flip it. Build margin headroom before you commit more capital to it.
High ROI, small absolute return.
A great rate on tiny money. The question is whether it scales — test putting more in before celebrating the percentage.
Looks great, took years.
Annualize it. A big total return earned slowly can lose to a smaller one earned fast, because the fast one recycles into the next bet.
Lift the return
01Cut the cost base
ROI is a ratio — shaving the denominator lifts it as surely as growing the return.
02Raise the return per unit
Higher AOV, better conversion, or upsells grow the numerator without growing spend.
03Speed it up
A faster payback annualizes higher and frees the money to compound into the next investment.
04Kill the losers fast
The quickest ROI win is usually stopping the spend that's underwater, not optimizing it.
05Measure the right return
Count the revenue this actually caused, not what would have happened anyway — attribution decides whether ROI is real.
06Compare like for like
Always annualize before ranking investments of different lengths, or you'll back the wrong one.
The vocabulary
- ROI
- Return on investment — net profit ÷ cost, as a percentage.
- Return multiple
- Total money back ÷ cost (e.g. 3×). The investor's version of ROI.
- Net return
- Return minus cost — the actual profit the investment produced.
- Annualized ROI
- ROI scaled to a yearly rate so investments of different lengths compare fairly.
- Payback period
- How long until the return covers the cost — speed, not size.
ROI questions
Subtract the cost from the return, divide by the cost, and multiply by 100. A $15,000 return on a $5,000 investment is ($15,000 − $5,000) ÷ $5,000 = 200% ROI.
Keep going
A calculator tells you what. A call tells you what to do about it.
Send me the account behind these numbers. I'll tell you straight where the money's leaking and what I'd fix first — free, and you keep it whether you hire me or not.