Is a free tool worth building for traffic, or should you write posts?
Problem
- A free tool costs as much as ten blog posts, and nobody can promise it will rank.
- On ad money alone a tool almost never pays for itself quickly - in our example it takes about 13 years.
Solution
- Compare the tool with the posts the same money would buy, not with nothing.
- Put your costs and the visits you expect into the free calculator below and it shows the visits, the cost per visitor and the break-even.
Key points
- The tool brings 12,900 visits over two years against 10,750 from posts - 20% more in the default example.
- A tool visitor costs R1.16 against R1.40 for a post visitor.
- The tool only wins above 500 visits a month - what the ten posts bring once they rank.
- At 300 visits a month the posts win by 40%.
- The real case for a tool is links, sign-ups and enquiries, which the ad earnings leave out.
In paid ads or content: what a visitor costs we compared buying visitors with writing for them. A free tool - a calculator, a checker, a converter - is a third way to spend the same money. This post asks whether one free tool brings more visitors than the blog posts the same money would buy.
Why a free tool can beat a post
A tool is a page that does a job, not one that answers a question once.
- People search for the job - "transfer duty calculator", "word counter", "load shedding schedule" - every month, not only when a topic is in the news.
- People come back to use it again, and bookmark it, which a post rarely earns.
- Other sites link to tools more readily than to posts, because a tool is useful to their readers too.
- But it has to rank like any other page - Ahrefs found that 96.55% of pages get no traffic from Google at all.
Work out whether your tool is worth it
Type what the tool costs to build, the visits a month you expect once it ranks, what one post costs and the visits it gets, the months to rank, what 1,000 visits earn you and how long to count. The calculator shows the visits from each, the cost per visitor and the visits the tool needs to win, and charts both.
Prefer a full page? Open the free tool vs blog posts calculator on CalcSA. To see what a single post is worth on its own, the blog post value calculator goes deeper.
Worked example: the calculator's defaults
A free tool costs an estimated R15,000 to build and gets an estimated 600 visits a month once it ranks. The same R15,000 buys 10 posts at R1,500, each getting an estimated 50 visits a month once it ranks. Both take an estimated 6 months to rank, and 1,000 visits earn an estimated R160. Counted over 24 months:
- The tool brings 12,900 visits - R1.16 a visitor.
- The ten posts bring 10,750 visits - R1.40 a visitor.
- The tool wins by 20%, or 2,150 visits.
- The break-even is 500 visits a month - below that, the posts win.
- The tool earns about R2,064 in ads over two years, against R1,720 from the posts - neither comes close to the R15,000.
Three more cases, same defaults except the one shown:
- The tool gets 1,000 visits a month: 21,500 visits, twice the posts, at R0.70 a visitor.
- The tool gets only 300 visits a month: 6,450 visits, 40% fewer than the posts, at R2.33 a visitor.
- A simple tool costs R5,000: the same 12,900 visits against 3,583 from three posts - R0.39 a visitor.
Estimates. The R15,000 build, the 600 and 50 visits a month, the 6 months to rank and the R160 per 1,000 visits are assumptions, as in the calculator. Your WebCounter counter shows what your own pages get once they settle.
Two years of a tool against ten posts
Same R15,000, spent on one tool at 600 visits a month or ten posts at 50 visits each:
- Free tool
- Ten blog posts
Show the numbers as a table
| Month | Free tool | Ten blog posts |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1 | 100 | 83 |
| 3 | 300 | 250 |
| 6 | 600 | 500 |
| 12 | 600 | 500 |
| 24 | 600 | 500 |
- The gap is set by one number - how many visits the tool gets against what the posts get together.
- Check search demand before you build - if people do not search for the job the tool does, it will not get 600 visits.
- Count what ads leave out - one good link or ten newsletter sign-ups a month can be worth more than the ad money.
Reading your counter for this
Your WebCounter counter shows visits by page and by source, so you can see what a tool really does once it is live. No counter yet? Get your free WebCounter counter - it takes a minute and costs nothing.
- Visits a post: take the average of your posts that are six months or older - that is your number to beat.
- Returning visitors: a tool people use again should show far more returners than a post.
- Referrers: links from other sites show up as referral visits - the part of a tool's value ads do not count.
- Count bots out - tools attract scrapers, and they inflate the visits.
Sources
- Ahrefs, Tim Soulo, 96.55% of content gets no traffic from Google (2023) - figure as previously cited on this blog, not re-checked for this post.
- The R15,000 build, 600 tool visits, R1,500 and 50 visits a post, 6 months to rank and R160 per 1,000 visits are our estimates - no published benchmark for visits to free tools was found.
- Calculator: CalcSA, Free tool vs blog posts.
Estimates only. Whether a tool ranks depends on the demand for the job it does and the tools already ranking for it; your own counter is the test.
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