How to work out your real profit on eBay
eBay shows you sales, not profit. Here is every cost that sits between the two, how to add them up per listing, and the mistakes that make profitable-looking listings lose money.
Updated · 6 min read
Seller Hub tells you what you sold. Your payouts tell you what reached the bank. Neither tells you what each listing made, and that’s the number every pricing, advertising and stock decision depends on.
The formula
For a single sale:
Profit = sale total − final value fee − per-order fee − ad fee − refunds − postage label − item cost − packaging
- Sale total is the item price plus any postage you charged the buyer.
- The final value fee is a percentage eBay takes of the sale total. The rate depends on the category, whether you’re a business or private seller, and your shop subscription.
- The per-order fee is a fixed amount on each order.
- The ad fee applies when the sale came through a Promoted Listings ad.
- Refunds include full and partial refunds, and the return postage you paid for.
- Postage label, item cost and packaging are what you paid to get the item to the buyer.
A worked example
A ceramic pour-over set sells for £24.99 with free postage:
- eBay’s final value and per-order fees: £3.21
- Promoted Listings fee at a 9% ad rate: £2.25
- Postage label: £3.10
- Returns, averaged across all sales of this listing: £0.62
- What the item cost: £8.40
That leaves £7.41, a 30% margin. Healthy. Now imagine the same listing at a 15% ad rate with a supplier who has put the price up by £2. It’s still a best seller in Seller Hub, and it now makes under £4.
Five mistakes that hide losses
- Using a rate card instead of what eBay charged. Fees vary by category and change over time. The fees on the order are the truth.
- Forgetting ad fees. A listing that sells mostly through ads carries a fee on most of its sales, and it doesn’t show up in the sale price.
- Ignoring returns. One return can wipe out the profit from several sales. Spread the cost across every sale of that listing.
- Treating an unknown cost as zero. If you don’t know what an item cost, its profit isn’t high, it’s unknown.
- Not dating your costs. When a supplier raises a price, the new cost applies to new orders. Last month’s profit shouldn’t change.
Doing it for a whole shop
The formula is simple; doing it for hundreds of orders a month isn’t. You need the fees eBay actually recorded on each order, matched to what each item cost you on the day it sold. Try one sale in our fee and profit calculator, or see how SellerDesk works it out for every order, with a weekly plan of what to fix.