Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Forget the spreadsheet templates with 40 tabs. Unit economics is one question: after one order pays its own bills, what is left? Here is the math on a single $60 order, every line explained.
We pulled the price tag off 20 well-known Theme Store listings, first-party and third-party, and the sample says: free or roughly $300-500, with surprisingly little in between.
Every email platform advertises a starting price for a list you will outgrow in months. We priced the tier that matters, 5,000 contacts, and the spread runs $75 to $100 a month for very different products.
Etsy charges nothing monthly and takes a cut of everything; Shopify charges monthly and takes almost nothing per sale. We priced one identical order on both and found the crossover point.
Most 'average margin by niche' articles quote each other in a circle. We went to the three sources that actually publish numbers: NYU Stern's sector dataset, SEC annual reports, and Shopify's own rule of thumb.
Seven steps from nothing to first order, priced at each stage from official rate sheets. The build itself now costs $14 to $400; everything expensive comes after launch.
Same platform, same features, two prices. The arithmetic of Shopify's billing modes, and the one honest reason to keep paying monthly.