Per-listing margin tracker. Find what's actually making money — and what to kill.
| Listing | Price | Sold/mo | Materials | Ship Cost | Ad Spend | Mins/Order | Profit/Order | Margin | Verdict |
|---|
If you sell on Etsy, you've probably done this math in your head: list a candle for $32, materials cost $7, "I'm making $25." Then Etsy charges $2 listing + transaction fees, the credit-card processor takes $1.10, shipping eats $4 of margin you forgot to include, and you spent 45 minutes packaging it. Your "$25 profit" is really $11 per candle, your time is uncompensated, and you're confused why selling 200 candles a month doesn't feel like a business. This calculator runs the actual math.
Etsy sellers — handmade goods, vintage resellers, digital downloads, print-on-demand — who want to know their true per-item profit and use that number to set prices that actually work.
1. Enter the listed price. What customers pay before shipping. The number you see at the top of the listing.
2. Enter materials cost. Raw materials only — wax, wicks, vessel, label. Don't include overhead yet; the calculator separates them.
3. Enter time spent per unit. How long it takes you to make ONE — measured honestly, including the slow days. The calculator multiplies this by your target hourly rate to surface the labor cost.
4. Set your target hourly rate. This is what you want to earn per hour for YOUR time. Not minimum wage. Not what feels reasonable. What you'd accept as a contractor doing this work for someone else. Most makers undervalue at $8-12; the math here usually says you need $25-40 for the business to work at scale.
5. Enter shipping cost and packaging. The cost of the box, padding, label, and the actual shipping if you're absorbing it. (If you charge shipping, set it to zero — but Etsy buyers convert better with "free shipping" baked into the price.)
6. See your real profit per item. The calculator runs:
Price - (materials + labor + shipping + packaging + Etsy listing fee + Etsy transaction fee + Etsy payment processing) = your real take-home per unit.
7. See your break-even and price recommendation. The tool surfaces three numbers: your current per-item profit, the price you'd need to charge to hit a 30% margin (the industry sustainable threshold), and the price for a 50% margin (the "this is a real business" threshold).
Never sell at less than 2× cost of goods. If your COGS is $7, your floor price is $14 just to cover Etsy fees and break even. Below that, you're paying Etsy to take inventory off your hands.
Time-track for one full week. Whatever you THINK it takes you to make a candle, multiply by 1.4. That's reality. You forget the trips to the supply store, the failed pours, the label-printing problems.
Bundle for higher AOV. A $32 candle has a thin margin; a $90 set of three has a much fatter one because shipping and processing are flat per-order, not per-item.
Revisit prices quarterly. Materials inflation is real (soy wax up 19% since 2023). If you set a price in 2024, you're probably losing money on it in 2026 unless you've updated.
The sample uses generic Etsy fee rates. Your version is configured for YOUR fee tier (Star Seller bonus, Etsy Plus subscription, your country's payment-processing rate), your average order shape, your specific product portfolio. $19 personalization, $97 fully custom at yoursaas.diy. Excel-compatible, runs offline, yours forever.