The calculator Real net profit per order
what the buyer pays you for the product
what your supplier charges
payment + platform % on the sale (2.9% on Stripe or Shopify Basic, US)
the flat part of the card fee: 30¢ on Stripe or Shopify Basic (US)
total ad spend ÷ orders
Your margin
Where the selling price goes
One order's selling price, split into what you keep and the four things it pays for. If the costs run past the dashed price line, the order loses money. Hover a segment for its figure, or open the table under the chart for every number.
Pricing to a margin that survives the ad bill is the money discipline in Dropshipping: Basics →
How to read it The order has to pay for itself four times over
A selling price feels like income, but on a dropshipping order it has four mouths to feed before any of it is yours: the supplier's product cost, the shipping you cover, the payment and platform fee, and — the one most people forget — the advertising it took to win that order. Net profit per order is what's left once all four are paid.
The margin is that net profit as a share of the selling price. It's the single number that tells you whether the order made you money or merely made you busy. Steer by it, not by revenue: a product can sell all day and still lose a little on every order once the ad cost is counted.
The formula, in full
Total cost per order = product cost + shipping + (selling price × fee ÷ 100) + the fixed fee per order + ad cost per order. Net profit per order = selling price − total cost. Profit margin = net profit ÷ selling price, shown as a percentage. The fee is applied to the selling price because that's the figure the buyer is charged, which is what payment and platform cuts are taken from.
A worked example
Sell at $29.99. The product costs $9.00, shipping is $4.00, the card fee is 2.9% + 30¢ (so $29.99 × 0.029 = $0.87, plus $0.30 = $1.17), and the ads that won the order cost $6.00. Add those up and the total cost per order is $20.17. Take that off the $29.99 and the net profit is $9.82 — a profit margin of 32.7%. Healthy. But watch what the $6.00 ad cost is doing: drop your selling price by a few dollars or let the ad cost drift up, and that comfortable third of the price thins out fast.
Edge cases the calculator handles
- A selling price of $0 shows "—" for the margin rather than an error, because you can't divide by a price that isn't there.
- A negative net profit is shown honestly, not hidden. If total cost climbs above the selling price, the net and the margin both go negative — that's the order telling you it costs you money to fulfill, usually because the ad cost is too high for the price.
Common questions
What ad cost per order should I use?
Your real one: total ad spend over a period divided by the orders it produced, not a hopeful guess. That's the true cost of buying a customer, and on a dropshipping order it's usually the largest line after the product itself. Use last week's actual figure from your ad account, and update it as it moves.
Why is the fee taken off the selling price and not the profit?
Because payment processors and platforms take their percentage of the amount the buyer is charged — the selling price — regardless of what the product cost you. So the fee is selling price × fee%, and it's part of the total cost of the order, not a slice of whatever profit is left.
Is this financial advice or a guarantee of profit?
No. It's arithmetic on the numbers you enter — not financial advice and not a promise that any product will make money. What you actually earn depends on your suppliers, your prices, your ad results and your buyers, none of which this box controls. It just shows you, cleanly, what one order leaves once every cost is counted.
It's one tool from Dropshipping — Basics, which takes someone from a product idea to their first order that's actually in profit — priced so the ad bill and the fees are covered before a penny counts as yours.
See the Dropshipping series →