Everyday AI · Work & business
Calculate real online selling profit margins (Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop)
Are you pricing online items and want to make sure platform fees and shipping do not eat your profit?
Editorial review 2026-09-21 · Pinoy AI Works editorial desk · Editorial provenance and safety-boundary review; not domain-professional certification. · Next review 2026-10-21
What to do
- List your item capital cost (wholesale price + shipping to you + packaging box/pouch).
- State your proposed selling price and the platform you sell on.
- Paste the prompt below to see your net take-home earnings and break-even point.
Try this prompt
Provide each actual fee, its calculation base, and its source/effective period; do not rely on the platform name alone.
Calculate contribution per online order using only my inputs. Do not guess platform fees, tax treatment, or return rates from the platform name.
Platform/category/program: [details]
Item selling price: [PHP]
Seller-funded discount: [PHP]
Product/inbound cost per unit: [PHP]
Packaging: [PHP]
Seller-funded shipping: [PHP]
Advertising allocation: [PHP]
Other variable costs: [PHP]
Fee schedule: [each percentage/fixed fee, fee base, source and effective period]
Taxes/withholdings: [what is known or unknown]
Returns/failed-delivery assumptions: [rates and costs, or unknown]
List missing inputs first. Calculate retained revenue, each fee on its stated base, included costs, contribution, and contribution margin. Distinguish margin from markup. Identify excluded overhead, taxes, returns, and unknown costs; do not call an incomplete result fully accounted net profit.
Calculate break-even or target price only when the fee/discount model supports the formula. Show assumptions and reject invalid denominators. For returns, show explicit success/return/failure scenarios and probabilities only when supplied; otherwise say expected profit cannot be estimated reliably.
Finish with a sensitivity example clearly labelled hypothetical and the facts I must verify. Do not guarantee profitability or invent a safe return-to-sender buffer.See a sample result
Illustrative example. Your answer may differ.
Arithmetic fixture, not a live platform fee: price PHP 300; product PHP 120; packaging PHP 10; seller-funded shipping PHP 20; advertising PHP 15; fixed fee PHP 5; proportional fee 10% of price. Contribution: PHP 100. Contribution margin: 33.33%. Excluded taxes, overhead, returns, and other unknown costs remain explicit.
Before you use it: Verify every fee and its base against your own current seller schedule. A cash withholding is not automatically the same as final tax expense, and missing return costs cannot be replaced with an invented buffer.
Philippine notes
- Shopee and TikTok Shop transaction fees increase if you enroll in free shipping or cashback programs.