01Merch marginCalculator · runs in your browser
Margin first, design second.
The question every creator product line dies at, answered before anything is designed. Four costs in, what is actually left out, and the units a month that make the launch worth having done.
Fill the first four boxes. The margin appears here.
02The workingPlain English
How it is worked out.
- The platform fee is a share of the price, so it is worked out first and taken off the top. Check whether yours applies to the shipping the customer pays too.
- What is left per unit is the price, less the cost to make, less the shipping you pay, less that fee. Payment processing and a returns allowance belong in the cost to make if you know them; they are real, and always forgotten.
- The share you keep is what is left divided by the price. The article’s rule is around half, not because half is magic but because it leaves room for a cost that comes in above the quote and for paying for reach. Under about a third, you are one shipping increase from working for free.
- The price that would keep half is the costs divided by what remains after the fee and the half. If that price is wrong for your audience, the answer is a different product, supplier or run, not a different price. The price is the last lever.
- Units to your month is the profit you want divided by what is left per unit, rounded up. That is the number that tells you whether to spend on reach, and almost nobody has it before launch.
An audience is not a market until it has been asked for money. Fewer products, priced from this table, sold to people who already trust you, beats a catalogue priced against other creators who are guessing too.
No deck. No discovery theatre. One metric, one date, in the contract.