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Maker Profitabilityby Small Hours Labs

Marketplace order economics

Etsy Fees & Profit: What Sellers Need to Calculate

An Etsy order can show several valid but very different totals: buyer checkout, seller revenue, estimated payout, and business profit. Knowing which number you are looking at prevents revenue from being mistaken for earnings.

Published by Maker Profitability, a Small Hours Labs project.

Follow the order in the right sequence

  1. Build item revenue from unit price and quantity.
  2. Add personalization, buyer-paid shipping, and gift wrapping to seller revenue.
  3. Add sales tax only to buyer checkout and the supported payment-processing base.
  4. Calculate supported listing, transaction, payment-processing, and optional advertising adjustments.
  5. Subtract total fees for estimated payout, then subtract entered product and fulfillment costs for profit.

Price alone cannot answer what an order earns because quantity, add-ons, shipping, tax, fee selections, and seller costs can all affect different parts of the calculation.

What the current calculator supports

The current model covers one U.S. Etsy Payments order in USD with one listing and one or more units. It supports a listing fee per unit, transaction fees, U.S. payment processing, the selected Offsite Ads rate and cap, and Share & Save when applicable. Offsite Ads and Share & Save cannot both be active in one estimate.

Each percentage fee is rounded independently to the nearest cent before fees are totaled. This matters at small amounts and means a single combined-rate shortcut can disagree by a cent. The calculator also keeps sales tax out of seller revenue while including it in the supported processing base.

Worked example

One fictional two-item Etsy order

This fictional example uses illustrative assumptions. It is not a recommendation or an industry benchmark.

Assumptions

  • Two fictional ceramic spoon rests at $25.00 each
  • $5.00 personalization, $6.00 buyer-paid shipping, and $3.00 gift wrapping
  • $4.80 sales tax included in buyer checkout but not seller revenue
  • Listing fees enabled and the supported 15% Offsite Ads selection
  • $8.00 product cost per unit, $5.50 actual shipping, and $1.25 other order cost

Calculation and result

  • Seller revenue$64.00
  • Buyer checkout total$68.80
  • Listing fees−$0.40
  • Transaction fee−$4.16
  • Payment processing−$2.31
  • Offsite Ads fee−$9.60
  • Estimated payout$47.53
  • Entered product and fulfillment costs−$22.75
  • Estimated business profit$24.78

The buyer checks out at $68.80, but seller revenue is $64.00. After $16.47 in supported fees, estimated payout is $47.53. After $22.75 in entered costs, estimated profit is $24.78, or 38.72% of seller revenue.

Mistakes that blur the result

  • Treating buyer checkout, which may include sales tax, as seller revenue.
  • Treating payout as profit before subtracting product and fulfillment costs.
  • Forgetting that listing fees apply per unit in this one-listing model.
  • Combining fee rates and rounding once instead of rounding supported fee components independently.
  • Leaving an optional program selected when the real order was not attributed to it.

Continue planning

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