Definition of LTV for a creator
Lifetime value is the total revenue one student brings over their whole relationship with you. For a membership: the monthly price times the months the student stays, minus refunds. For a one-time program: the price, plus whatever the student buys next through the upsell funnels. Measured per product, LTV tells you which program is worth selling first; measured per cohort (students who joined in the same month), it tells you whether a change in onboarding or pricing moved the number. A worked example with illustrative numbers: 19 EUR per month times a median stay of 6 months is 114 EUR; if a quarter of those students later buy a 59 EUR program, LTV rises to about 129 EUR.
Definition of CAC for a creator
Customer acquisition cost is what you spend to gain one paying student. Per channel it is the ad spend on that channel divided by the paying students it brought, which requires source capture at the quiz and the checkout. Content you produce yourself has a cost in hours; existing clients and followers have a CAC close to zero, which is why the guide on selling to existing clients first exists. In FitCoUp you enter ad spend per channel and the platform divides it by the paying students attributed through UTM and source capture.
Payback: the number that links them
Payback is the number of months until a student's payments cover their CAC. If a channel costs 40 EUR per student and the student pays 19 EUR a month, payback is about two months. If students from that channel stay a median of six months, the channel pays; if they stay two, it does not, however cheap the clicks. FitCoUp shows payback in months per channel next to LTV, so the comparison is on one screen.
How to use LTV and CAC in decisions
Pricing: compare LTV across prices, not the first payment. Ads: spend on channels whose payback is shorter than retention and stop the others. Retention: an extra month of median stay raises LTV for every student and is usually cheaper than any new traffic. Funnels: the OTO, upsell funnels and checkout recovery raise LTV with zero CAC, and the Revenue from mechanics card shows how much each added.
- LTV below CAC on a channel. stop the channel or fix onboarding before spending more.
- Payback longer than median retention. the channel loses money even if the ads look cheap.
- LTV rising per cohort. the retention or pricing change worked; keep it.
- Revenue from mechanics growing. the funnels and recovery are doing the second sale for you.
What FitCoUp computes and what you enter
FitCoUp computes LTV per product and per cohort from payments and refunds, attributes paying students to channels through UTM and source capture at the quiz and checkout, and shows payback in months and revenue from each mechanic. You enter ad spend per channel; the platform does not read your ad accounts. The numbers are yours and export at any time.