Price it so you actually make money

New sellers price by looking at a competitor and knocking off ₹50. Then they discover that the competitor charges for delivery, never takes cash on delivery, and buys packaging by the thousand. Price from your own costs first, then look at the market.

What one sale really costs

Take one product and add up all of these for a single order:

• The product. Materials and your time if you make it; the buying price if you source it.
• Packaging. The box or pouch, the bubble wrap, the tape, the printed thank-you card. Small, but it is on every order.
• Delivery. What the courier charges you for that weight to a typical city. A courier aggregator such as Shiprocket or Shipmozo shows the rate per parcel before you book, so you can look up real numbers instead of guessing.
• Payment fee. When a customer pays online, the payment gateway keeps a small percentage. SitesPlaced itself takes 0% commission on every plan; the gateway's fee is on its own pricing page. UPI paid straight to you and cash on delivery have no gateway fee, but cash on delivery has a courier handling charge instead.
• Returns and failed deliveries. Some cash-on-delivery parcels come back unopened, and you pay the courier both ways. Even one in ten changes the maths. The COD vs prepaid calculator shows what that does to your margin.
• Your effort. Photographing, replying, packing, going to the courier. Put a number on it, even a small one, or the business will always feel like free labour.

Then choose a price

Add the costs up. That is your floor — the price at which you earn nothing. A healthy first price is well above the floor: enough to survive a returned parcel, a discount week, and a rise in courier rates. The product pricing calculator works through this with you, and the profit margin calculator tells you what percentage you are actually keeping.

Now look at the market price you noted in the last lesson. If your healthy price is above it, do not shrink your margin — change the product, the packaging, or who you are selling to. A ₹600 candle sold as a gift with a card in a nice box competes with gifts, not with a ₹250 candle sold as a candle.

Delivery: charge for it or hide it?

Either works; what does not work is pretending it is free while losing money. Two honest options: a flat delivery charge that is waived above a cart value (which also nudges people to buy a second item), or a price with delivery built in and Free delivery written everywhere. Your store can do both — see Set delivery charges when you build it.

GST, briefly

Whether you must register for GST depends on your yearly sales and on whether you sell to buyers in other states — and selling through your own website to other states can change the answer. The rules and the thresholds change, so check the current ones on the GST portal or with a chartered accountant before your first out-of-state order, and decide whether your prices are inclusive of tax. The GST calculator adds or removes GST from a price so you can see both numbers.

Write down

For your first product: cost per order ₹___, price ₹___, delivery charged ₹___ or built in. Keep this sheet; you will update it after the first ten orders when the real courier bills arrive.