Set any price and cost, and see what is left for you. The numbers below are an example to start from.
WORTH KNOWING
This shows per-unit costs only. To roughly include fixed costs like software or rent, estimate a per-unit share and add it under "Other costs" below. Real numbers vary by category — use your own numbers when you have them.
EXAMPLE: A $50 PRODUCT
Change any number to see how it moves the result.
$50
$18
Product, freight, and duties — the cost of one unit sitting in your warehouse ready to sell. Storage and packaging design are separate, below.
15%
Whatever the platform takes — Amazon referral fee, or Shopify + payment processing if you sell direct. Blend it if you sell on more than one channel.
Amazon charges 15% in most categories, 8% for electronics, 17% for clothing. On your own store, payment processing alone runs about 3%.
$6
Cost to pick, pack, and ship one order to the customer. Not the cost of getting inventory to your own warehouse — that's landed cost.
$1
What it costs to hold one unit until it sells — warehouse space or Amazon storage fees. Most margin math leaves this out.
10%
Share of orders that come back. Combined with the cost per return below, this cost is spread across every sale you make, not only the returned ones.
Apparel commonly runs 23–30%+ (worse in Q4). Most hard goods are under 10%. Category matters enormously here.
$10
What's lost on a single returned unit — restocking, damaged inventory, return shipping.
$12
Blended across every channel — not just paid ads. If you also get organic or repeat sales, a paid-only number will overstate the real cost.
Before you have ad data, one way to estimate: cost per click divided by conversion rate. A $1 click and a 2% conversion rate means roughly $50 to get one customer.
$0
A catch-all for anything not covered above — packaging inserts, insurance, samples, anything else you pay for per unit.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
MARGIN PER SALE
$0
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What this means at $100K a year
These are your estimates. The 100K Test researches the real numbers for your product — what it will actually cost to land, how often it will come back, and what you can afford to pay for a customer.