How to Price Products After Fees
By Selling Fee Tools team ·
Most selling fees are a percentage of the price, plus sometimes a fixed fee per order. That means you can’t just add your fees to your cost: raise the price and the fee rises with it. The way round it is to work backwards from the profit you want.
The formula
For a fee of p% of the price plus a fixed fee per order:
Price = (cost + fixed fee + profit you want) ÷ (1 − p%)
where cost is everything you pay per order: product, packaging and the shipping you pay. Several fees stacked together, such as a transaction fee and a payment fee, add up their percentages.
The same product on five channels
A product costing $20, with $5 of shipping you pay, sold with free shipping. What price leaves $10 profit on each? Worked out with each platform’s fee rules for US sellers:
| Channel | Price needed | Fees at that price |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon (FBM, Professional, 15%) | $41.18 | $6.18 |
| eBay (most categories, no Store) | $40.97 | $5.97 |
| Etsy (with the $0.20 listing fee) | $39.18 | $4.18 |
| TikTok Shop (6%) | $37.23 | $2.23 |
| Your own store with Stripe (2.9% + 30¢) | $36.35 | $1.35 |
Plan fees aren’t included: Amazon Professional costs $39.99 a month, and your own store has its own platform costs and needs its own traffic.
Then add advertising
Ads are a cost per order too. At $41.18 on Amazon, the fees are $6.18 and the product and shipping $25.00, which leaves $10.00 for advertising and profit: the order’s contribution margin. Spend more than $10.00 in ads to win the order and it loses money, so $10.00 is your max CPA, and $41.18 ÷ $10.00 = 4.12 is the break-even ROAS at this price.
If your ads need, say, $6 per order to make a sale, add it to the cost in the formula and the price rises to keep the same profit. The break-even ROAS calculator works this out for your own numbers, along with the target ROAS for a chosen profit.
Watch the extras
- Sales tax raises eBay’s and Etsy’s fees in the US, because both charge part of their fee on the tax the buyer pays.
- International buyers add fees: 1.65% on eBay, and 1.5% on Stripe for cards issued abroad.
- Promoted listings and offsite ads are a percentage of the sale on eBay and Etsy; Etsy’s Offsite Ads take 15% of an order that comes from one, or 12% for larger shops.
- Payouts: Stripe’s standard payouts are free; Instant Payouts cost 1.5%.
Tools
Every fee calculator on this site has a “price needed for a profit of” box that does the working backwards for you:
- eBay, Etsy, Amazon and TikTok Shop fee calculators
- Stripe fee calculator, with a “What to charge” mode
- Break-even ROAS calculator