How to use the tools, and what the numbers mean
Direct answers, with links to the method and the relevant tool. Each answer shows its review date.
Ask the FAQ and research source finder, or read the answers below. Every answer on this page is available without JavaScript.
- Choose a questionOpen the tool that fits your task.
- Use matching numbersKeep the dates, currency and units consistent.
- Read the limitsCheck what the result can and cannot tell you.
Can I continue my work in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini?
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Yes. Choose Ask AI in a tool. Review and edit the context, copy it, then open your preferred chat and paste it. Reader notes and page code are optional. Nothing is sent automatically, and your figures are not placed in the provider link. This is a handoff, not a connected account or an AI answer inside Plain Reckoner. The provider may require its own account or plan.
How do I turn my homepage plan into a page?
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Open Build your page. Edit the HTML and CSS, then check the Phone and Desktop previews. Copy code for your website or AI builder, or download a complete HTML file. Nothing publishes automatically. Code stays in your browser; preview blocks scripts and external files. Download a JSON backup to keep your editable work.
How do I use the order profit & roas tool?
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Use one matched order cohort. Separate sales, returned product costs and advertising. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. Contribution is not net profit. Tax, overhead, owner pay and unentered costs are excluded. Enter actual fees, including fees on shipping. Match refunds and cost recoveries to the original orders. Ad-platform attribution does not establish that ads caused every sale.
How do I use the free shipping threshold tool?
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Choose a contribution target, then check the merchandise value needed to cover delivery. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. This is a cost threshold, not an optimized conversion or AOV prediction. Product margin, weight, carrier prices and fee bases can change with the basket. Tax and refunds are excluded. A non-positive marginal rate has no finite threshold in this model.
How do I use the return cost scenarios tool?
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Compare kept and fully refunded orders. Set the costs your own fee schedule actually retains. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. This models full product refunds with no customer-paid shipping for one product/order pattern. It does not predict returns, model partial refunds or replace a cohort profit report. The same rate can hide very different recovery and handling costs. Tax, overhead and unentered costs remain excluded.
How do I use the bundle pricing & stock tool?
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Price two different components and check the stock that limits the offer. Replace the example with your costs. Open Other costs and assumptions before using the result. A price floor is not a recommended price. Customer-paid shipping, returns, tax, overhead and unentered costs are excluded. Bundle discounts may stack with other offers. Real inventory tracking and price updates remain in your store.
Can I explore recent online retail data without connecting a store?
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Yes. The retail market explorer shows a reviewed official ONS snapshot for Great Britain. Compare one-month and three-month spending changes, then inspect the source dates and full monthly series. Market aggregates are context, not individual purchases or a prediction for your product.
How can I check a discount on slow-moving stock?
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Open the inventory markdown test. Enter one product’s current price, cost, stock, completed sales and in-stock days. Add the proposed discount, fees and campaign budget. Compare whole-unit recovery targets with available stock. These are conditional calculations, not a demand forecast. Nothing connects to your store or changes a price.
How do I start using the free tools?
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Choose a collection on the free tools page. Message and homepage tools help you explain your offer, plan a page and ask readers what they understood. Website and store calculators help you check earnings and selling costs. Choose the task you need; no account is required.
Which numbers should I enter?
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Use the counts from your own report. Pageviews, sessions, users and ad impressions are different units. Use the same dates and currency for related figures. Leave an optional unknown field blank; enter zero only when the real value is zero.
Do the message tools send my draft to an AI service?
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No. The message workspace organises your own entries with local templates. Your brief, draft versions and reader notes stay in this browser when storage is available. Exported files contain your entries; shared tool links do not.
Do the reader tools provide people to test my page?
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No. You recruit relevant readers, save the exact draft they see and record their actual answers. A small self-recruited group can reveal confusion, but it does not establish a population conversion rate or guarantee sales.
How should I read a tool result?
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Check the unit, dates, formula and assumptions next to the result. A historical benchmark describes its sample; it does not predict your earnings. Meeting a numerical network threshold does not guarantee approval. A listing benchmark is not a confirmed sale price.
How do I import a daily revenue CSV?
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Open the two-period comparison and choose a CSV under 100 KB with up to 366 complete days. Use the template, or map the date, traffic and USD revenue columns. Confirm the units, check the preview, then apply it. Files stay in your browser.
Can an AI assistant read the tool instructions?
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Yes. The public tool reference lists inputs, units, formulas, limits and worked checks. It is documentation, not a calculator API or proof that a tool has run. An assistant should keep unknown values unknown, cite the relevant page and distinguish its own calculation from a result it actually obtained.
How does the connected analysis workspace work?
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Choose store or publishing website, add an optional public address and enter the figures you know for one month in USD. Only the public address is sent to our checker. Unknown figures stay blank. The results separate public observations from your entered numbers and show the next questions to check. Compatible tools reuse those inputs. Store scenarios and the guided context stay in this browser tab for up to 24 hours; Clear workspace removes them. The checks run for as long as the actual work takes, with no artificial waiting period.
Why are my page RPM and ad impression RPM different?
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They count different things. Page RPM is earnings for every 1,000 pages. Ad impression RPM is earnings for every 1,000 ads shown. In a worked example, $100 from 10,000 pages and 20,000 ad impressions gives a page RPM of $10 and an impression RPM of $5. The money is still $100. Neither number tells us what an advertiser paid.
Can I use ad impressions to calculate ad coverage?
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No. Coverage uses the number of ad requests that returned ads, divided by all ad requests, times 100. Ad impressions are a different count. If you do not know both request counts, leave coverage blank.
How can I make my publisher site easier to find in AI search?
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Make your pages easy to read and reach. Show the facts, sources, dates and how you got your answer. Link to the tool or example. Check that search engines can open the page. These steps can help discovery, but cannot guarantee that an AI service will quote or recommend you. Search access and permission to train AI are different choices.
Is Plain Reckoner free, and do I need an account?
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The message workspace, publisher calculators, public-site checks, research findings and published data downloads are free to use without an account. Source-working requests are separate: availability depends on the records and permissions.
How much data is available, and what feeds the benchmarks?
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The ad-seller directory contains 25,309 checked records from networks’ public files. The background library holds 25,602 observations about internet use, population and pageviews. Each collection counts different things. Earnings benchmarks use a separate historical study; its source page explains the sample. Seller records do not tell us what a website earns.
Does the median RPM predict what my site will earn?
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No. The median describes businesses in a historical, sale-selected sample. It is not a representative census of publishers or a forecast for your site. Country, content, traffic mix and ad delivery can differ. Use your own matched traffic and earnings to calculate actual RPM.
What is the difference between session RPM and page RPM?
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Both divide revenue by a traffic count and multiply by 1,000. Page RPM uses pageviews; session RPM uses sessions. Monetized-session RPM uses a narrower, provider-defined denominator. Compare the same unit and revenue definition before interpreting a change.
Why can traffic go up while ad revenue goes down?
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Revenue depends on both traffic and earnings per thousand. In a synthetic example, 20% more pageviews combined with 40% lower page RPM produces 28% less revenue: 1.20 × 0.60 = 0.72. This arithmetic does not identify the cause of an RPM change; check matched dates, reporting definitions, ad delivery and audience mix.
Are my CSV files and comparison figures uploaded?
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The two-period comparison reads CSV files locally in your browser and does not upload those period figures or keep them between visits. An explicit language switch transfers numeric fields through temporary same-tab storage, which is cleared on arrival. Use its date, traffic and revenue_usd template or map those columns from a provider export. Complete, contiguous days and confirmed USD revenue are required. The separate benchmark panels save their own figures on this device. Shared tool links exclude figures by default; including benchmark figures is an explicit choice.
Can the ad-network checker guarantee Mediavine, Journey, Raptive or Ezoic approval?
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No. The actual-report screen keeps pageviews, qualifying Journey sessions, monthly active users, earned annual ad revenue, Raptive country share and domain age separate. Blank values stay unknown. It checks numerical boundaries, including Raptive’s geography tier, and shows what still needs provider review. The traffic-only illustration below it is a separate hypothetical shortlist. Neither can confirm acceptance, content quality or account standing. Confirm current provider rules before applying.
Is the website value calculator a verified sale price or appraisal?
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It is a historical listing benchmark based on sold-status records and their stated multiples. Final closing prices are not verified. The calculation is not an offer, appraisal or promise that a buyer will pay that amount. Net profit and gross revenue must be kept distinct.
Can I download, reuse and cite the data?
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The public research-sample CSVs and combined JSON are available without an email gate under CC BY 4.0, with attribution to Plain Reckoner and a link to the dataset page. Retain the method, date, row definition and limitations. The expanded RPM file adds calculated columns to the same 123 businesses; it does not add independent observations.
Is Ask the research a live human or generative AI chatbot?
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It is an instant FAQ and research source finder. It matches questions locally to published answers, shows excerpts and links to their sources. It does not generate new claims, diagnose private accounts or connect you to a live operator. Questions are not uploaded or stored; clear the conversation to remove it from this page.
What does the public-site scan inspect?
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The scan reads a bounded sample of public pages and files. For stores it checks declared product prices, currency and availability, plus shipping, return and cart links. It also checks search markup, ad setup and crawler directives. It does not follow cart links, submit forms or test purchases. It does not log into analytics or prove revenue, audience quality, legal compliance or a complete site audit. A missing or unreachable file is not automatically a failed policy.
Can search engines and AI tools read the FAQ and research?
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The FAQ and research findings are served as public HTML with headings, source links and dates; reading them does not require the question widget or an account. The site’s robots.txt permits public content and excludes /api/. Crawler permissions, indexing and selection for an AI answer are separate matters, so accessibility does not guarantee a citation.