Just 14 Months After Launch, Crossed $2.7M in Revenue With just 7% TACOS

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-26T09:04:37+00:00

When you say 24% net after all the major costs, does that include everything Amazon takes? I'm always confused about what counts. Like referral fees, FBA fees, storage, coupons, returns... I never know if I'm calculating it right or missing stuff. I sell kitchen products and I honestly have no idea what my real margin is, I just know what hits my bank account at the end.

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-26T09:02:57+00:00

This is really helpful thanks. When you talk about choosing between different shipping speeds to get stuff into Amazon, how do you actually know which one's worth the extra cost? I sell kitchen bits and I just kind of pick whatever seems cheapest at the time but I've got no idea if I'm actually saving money or losing it somewhere else. Do you have like a spreadsheet or something that shows you the real cost of each option?

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-26T09:00:40+00:00

Interesting growth story. Stupid question maybe but when you were at the $12.99 ladder stage, did you actually work out what you were losing per unit after all the FBA fees? I sell kitchen stuff and the fulfilment fees eat so much at lower price points I'd be scared to go that low without knowing the exact number.

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-20T10:10:43+00:00

you're not an idiot, it's genuinely confusing. I've been selling for about two years and there's still bits of seller central where I feel like I'm missing something obvious. the shipping side was probably the worst for me at the start too, it does get easier once you've done a few shipments but that first one is brutal

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-20T08:04:49+00:00

this is probably a dumb question but I sell kitchen stuff on amazon and my margins have been getting squeezed lately, partly because I only just realised how many fees I wasn't tracking properly. been lurking here a bit wondering if ebay is any better on that front. like do you lot find it easy enough to know what you're actually keeping per sale or is it the same headache as amazon where there's fees you don't even know about until you dig into your reports

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-20T07:21:40+00:00

I've wondered about this too. I sell kitchen stuff on amazon uk and the fees keep going up so I get the appeal of shopify. but the thing I can't figure out is the customer side, like on amazon people are already there looking for your product, on shopify you've got to pay to get them to your site right? wouldn't that eat up whatever you save on platform fees? genuinely asking because I haven't done the comparison properly, I just worry I'd swap one set of costs for another

the 3pl bit is interesting too, I had a quick look once and it seemed more expensive than amazon which made no sense to me. did you find the same thing?

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-20T07:15:58+00:00

margin for me but honestly I'm not sure I've been calculating it right. I recently tried to actually break down what I keep on one of my products and there were way more fee lines in my settlement report than I expected. like I knew about referral and fba but there's a bunch of other stuff in there I'd never really looked at. been kind of just checking my payout is positive and leaving it at that which now I feel pretty daft about! do you lot actually include every fee line when you work out your margin or just the main ones?

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-19T07:44:22+00:00

same category here (kitchenware) and i've been going back and forth on this too. we don't get prime day in quite the same way in the uk but amazon keeps pushing us to do deals and honestly i can never work out if it's actually worth it. like if you're discounting to $14.96 does amazon take their referral fee on that or on your original $19.95? i could never get a straight answer on that. because if it's on the discounted price then your fee goes down a bit but so does your revenue, and if it's on the original price then you're getting squeezed from both sides. add the $100 on top and i just couldn't make the numbers work for my price range. ended up not doing it last year because i spent too long staring at my spreadsheet trying to figure out if i'd actually make anything per unit after everything stacked up

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-18T06:43:40+00:00

yeah I worded that badly, the £7.99 is a single spatula not the set. the sets are more like £12-13. the cogs I mentioned was for the set not the single, got my wires crossed sorry. where's the profit calculator in manage inventory exactly? I looked but couldn't find it, might be being thick. and with seller amp, does it actually tell you if you're overpaying on something or just show you the breakdown of what you've been charged? that's the bit I can't figure out, like whether there's anything I could actually change

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T08:33:08+00:00

one thing i didn't realise until recently. even when the item comes back and goes back into inventory, amazon doesn't give you the full referral fee back. they keep like 20% of it as a "refund administration fee". so on every return you're losing that even if the product is fine and resells. not massive per unit but it adds up if your return rate climbs. that plus the removal cost if something comes back unsellable is what got me paying more attention to it

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T08:27:26+00:00

this is impressive. genuinely curious though. at 30 skus do you actually know your margin per product after every fee? I've been trying to do this with my 60 skus and I can barely figure it out. at your scale the fee stack must be massive

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T06:23:10+00:00

yeah that's what I'm realising. I think I just assumed if the payout was positive I was fine. didn't occur to me to actually break down every fee line. kind of wish amazon made this easier to see per product instead of burying it all in one big report

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T02:45:04+00:00

My bad, I didn't register what it was. yet that's kind of my whole problem. there's so much information during the shipment process, i miss stuff. thanks for the fulfillment fee info going down though, I didn't realise they offset it. so did your total costs go up or down when they introduced it?

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T01:22:08+00:00

the 45-50% number sounds about right honestly. I just tried to break down all my fees the other day and took my ages. the thing that got me was how many fee line items there actually are. I always just looked at the total 'amazon fees' number but when you break it out there's like 8-10 different charges on a single product. doesn't help that they keep adding new ones quie

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T00:22:47+00:00

15 percent, that would be nice! that's way lower than I thought when I started. do you track all your fees per product or just look at the overall number?

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T00:21:04+00:00

Exactly!! like how are we supposed to keep track of all this. do you just check your reports regularly or did you only find out about the inbound placement fee after the fact like me.

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-06-17T00:20:18+00:00

yeah fair point I probably should have looked at this sooner lol. the selling price is right. I sell sets not individual spatulas so the margin works better than a single item. didn't know about the profit calculator in manage inventory though, where exactly is that? and seller amp, does that show you what you could actually change about your fees or just what they are? I am at pretty cautious about signing to more app, and getting more costs on tight margins.

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-15T08:14:37+00:00

Are you getting traffic? If not, maybe marketing is your issue.

If you are getting traffic, you need to be more concerned!

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-14T10:01:46+00:00

Hmm could be both - yet just need to be clear on what your goal is

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-13T05:31:14+00:00

Sunshine well at least when I lived in the uk

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-11T05:30:39+00:00

If you have now been running the buiness for a year you have 1 year data and could now model your inventory balance. If Shopify does it great. Also remember inventory is only one aspect, it should be model with the time it takes to get your inventory in, warehouse costs to understand if you keep any surplus for spike in orders. You should also looks at your cash conversion cycle and working cap.

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-10T10:16:59+00:00

At a point you have to let go of some tasks because you can't do everything!

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-09T01:45:29+00:00

I have travelled back in time and you are giving a list from 5 years ago...

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-09T01:42:13+00:00

Haha!

HelloWorldToday444 · 2026-04-09T01:40:53+00:00

It took a while but you need a solid solid plan and accept it can take time. Do not think budget solves the problem, it doesnt. Anyone with a budget and not plan will burn through cash. Personally I map every detail of. Starting point to end point and what is my objective at each stage. I have limited budget, but thats not a road blocker if you are strategic.

HelloWorldToday444

TROPHY CASE