I sell a one-time product, not a subscription. Do unit economics and LTV even apply to me?
The short answer
They absolutely apply, but LTV comes from repeat purchases and referrals rather than a subscription, so your key questions become purchase frequency, repeat rate, and average order value over a customer's life. If people buy once and never return, your LTV is basically one order and your CAC has to be tiny to work. As a starting point, measure your 6 to 12 month repeat rate before scaling ads, because most one-time-product businesses live or die on whether customers come back on their own.
Go deeper, your way
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Why we picked it
This is a plain, visual walk through the same formula for a founder who assumed lifetime value was a subscription-only idea: average order value times purchase frequency times how long a customer stays. It is from Shopify itself, so it speaks in the language of a regular store selling one-off products rather than a recurring plan. Watch it to get the math straight, then go build the number on your own order history.
Even with no subscription, a repeat customer has a lifetime value: it is just how many times they come back multiplied by what they spend each time.
The three inputs you actually need are average order value, purchase frequency, and average customer lifespan, all pullable from your order data.
Aim to keep customer lifetime value comfortably above acquisition cost (a rough 3 to 1 is a common target) so your ad spend is not quietly losing money.
Why we picked it
If you sell a one-time product and think LTV is a SaaS thing, this piece does the reframe cleanly: for a physical-goods brand, LTV is just AOV times purchase frequency times how long people keep coming back. It is honest that a lot of brands lose money on the first order and only turn a profit on repeat buyers, which is exactly the mental shift a one-time-product founder needs. Treat it as a starting point for wiring your own numbers, not a set of benchmarks to copy blindly.
LTV for a non-subscription store is AOV multiplied by purchase frequency multiplied by customer lifespan, so repeat rate is the lever, not a subscription button.
A 5-point lift in repeat purchase rate usually out-earns a 10 percent bump in average order value, because the second and third orders carry near-zero acquisition cost.
Split LTV into a 60-day and a 12-month view so you are planning against real cash flow, not an inflated lifetime projection.
