Etsy Fees and Your Real Profit: What You Actually Keep

Selling on Etsy (or any marketplace) is a great way to reach buyers — but the sticker price and what lands in your account are two different numbers. Between listing, transaction, payment processing, and optional ad fees, a chunk of every sale goes back to the platform. If you price as though you keep the full amount, your real margin is thinner than you think.

Where the money goes

Marketplace fees usually come in a few layers: a small listing fee, a percentage transaction fee on the sale, a payment-processing fee (a percentage plus a flat amount), and — if you opt in — advertising or offsite-ads fees. None is huge alone; together they add up to a meaningful slice of each order.

Figure out what you actually keep

1. 1Start with the sale price (including any shipping the buyer pays).
2. 2Subtract the platform's transaction and payment fees.
3. 3Subtract your product's true cost — materials, labor, overhead.
4. 4Subtract your actual shipping and packaging cost.
5. 5What's left is your real profit on that sale.

Revenue is what the customer pays. Profit is what survives the fees, the materials, and your time.

Price with fees in mind

Once you know the fee bite, build it into your pricing so the platform's cut comes out of margin you planned for — not out of your own pay. The same product can need a different price on a high-fee marketplace than on your own site, and that's fine: each channel should clear its own costs.

Know it per sale, automatically

Tracking fees by hand across dozens of orders is miserable, so most makers just don't — and lose sight of their real margin. Hivara accounts for platform fees alongside your true cost, so you can see what you actually keep per sale and per channel, and price each one to profit.