How to Price Print on Demand Products on Etsy

ByJ.B. Updated on
Modern workspace with laptop, white headphones, eyeglasses on magazine, and tea cup on textured white surface
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Read my full disclosure here.

If you’ve been wondering how to price print on demand products on Etsy for maximum profit margin, you are in exactly the right place. I am a multi-six figure Etsy print on demand seller and I’m going to give you my pricing strategies.

Pricing is the number one thing I see new POD sellers get wrong, and it’s because there is a lot of misinformation and confusion out there.

Here’s the real situation. You spend hours designing a product, you list it, a sale comes through, and you feel amazing. Then you do the math and realize you made $1.47. Welcome to the club that nobody wants to be in, and I was in that club when I first started my shop in October 2022.

Pricing feels like it should be simple. It’s not. But once you understand the full picture, it becomes very manageable, and you can set prices confidently without second-guessing every listing.

Woman in beige sweater writing in notebook at wooden desk with glass of water and books on shelves behind her

This post is going to walk you through exactly how to calculate your real costs, what fees Etsy is taking from every sale, the formula you need to set a profitable price, and how to think about pricing strategically so your shop can actually sustain itself long-term.

Why most POD sellers get pricing wrong from day one

The most common mistake is pricing from the base product cost only. Your POD provider, whether that’s Printify, Gelato, or other, gives you a production cost and shipping.

That’s what they charge to print and ship the item. New sellers look at that number, add a few dollars, and call it a price.

That approach ignores Etsy’s 6.5% transaction fee, 6.5% shipping fee, 3.0% payment processing fee, the $0.20 listing fee, and the one fee that can destroy margins for sellers who don’t know about it: the 12-15% offsite ads fee.

You are running a retail operation with multiple layers of overhead baked into every single transaction. Your pricing has to reflect that reality, or you will stay stuck in the exhausting cycle of getting sales and still not seeing real money.

Pricing from base cost alone is like planning your grocery budget without accounting for rent.

The fix is to understand your total “all in cost” before you ever set a price. Your all in cost is everything it takes to get that product from production to the customer’s front door, plus every fee Etsy pulls from the transaction.

Every fee you need to account for in 2026

Let’s go through each one so there are no surprises hiding in your seller dashboard.

The production cost

This is what your POD provider charges you to print, package, and ship the item. It varies by product type, the specific print provider you’re using within a platform like Printify, and the shipping destination.

A mug printed in the US and shipped domestically costs a very different amount than the same mug shipped to a customer in Germany.

Always check the production cost for the specific provider you’ve selected, not just the default estimate. Prices change, providers update their rates, and if you’re not paying attention, your margins can shrink without you ever changing a thing.

The Etsy listing fee

Every time a listing renews after a sale, Etsy charges $0.20. It sounds trivial, but if you’re moving volume, it adds up faster than you’d expect.

The transaction fee and shipping

Etsy takes 6.5% of the total order value and then 6.5% of the total shipping cost. Offering free shipping doesn’t really help you save on those fees. If you offer free shipping, you should include that price in the cost of the item. Etsy will still take 6.5% of that inflated price. You can’t win!

The payment processing fee

Etsy Payments takes approximately 3% plus $0.25 per transaction. This varies slightly depending on your country, but for US-based sellers, that’s the number to use. So on a $25 sale, you’re looking at about $1.00 in processing fees.

The offsite ads fee

This is the one that most sellers either don’t know about or conveniently forget to price for. Etsy automatically promotes listings through offsite channels like Google Shopping, Facebook, and Pinterest.

If a buyer clicks one of those promoted links and makes a purchase within 30 days, Etsy charges you an additional 12 to 15% of the order total.

The offsite ads fee is 15% for shops that have below $10,000 in revenue. Those shops can opt out of this fee. If you are a shop with over $10,000 in revenue, you cannot opt out of the offsite ads, and you fee is 12% for any sale an offsite ad brings in.

The strategic move is to price every product as if the offsite ad fee will apply to every sale. If it doesn’t fire, you keep that extra margin. If it does, you’re covered.

Woman in white sweater and glasses working on laptop at kitchen counter with glass of water and modern shelving

What your combined Etsy fees actually look like

Let’s put some real numbers together. Say you sell a t-shirt for $25 with free shipping included in that price.

The listing fee on renewal is $0.20. The transaction fee is 6.5% of $25, which is $1.63. The payment processing fee is approximately $1.00. If the offsite ads fee fires at 15%, that’s another $3.75.

Add it up and you’re looking at $6.58 in Etsy fees alone on a $25 sale. That’s 26% of your revenue gone before you even account for what Printify charged you to print and ship the shirt.

If your production and shipping cost is, say, $12, your profit on that $25 sale is $25 minus $12 minus $6.58, which comes out to $6.42. That’s a 25.7% margin. Livable, but thin. One increase in production costs and you’re working for almost nothing.

This is why the formula matters.

The pricing formula you actually need

The most reliable way to calculate your retail price is to work backward from your total all in cost.

I also run a 20-25% off sale, so I add that in to my all in cost.

Depending on my product, I price my item so that I am getting $10-$25 profit per sale. So I take the all in cost, add $10-$25 to the price, and that is the cost of the item in my shop.

It is simple and effective. And, obviously, I will go above that $25 if the market will bear it, especially if it is a high profit margin product.

Printify defaults to a suggested 40% margin when you’re setting prices in their platform. That’s a reasonable floor, but experienced sellers aim for 50% or higher, especially because margins need room to absorb ad spend, the occasional discount, and the reality that production costs creep up over time.

A 40% gross margin is the minimum you should be targeting, and 50% is where your shop starts to breathe.

Price for what the market will pay and not what you will pay

Now, if you take nothing else from this post, please at least take this. This is the most important thing that I teach members of my course and community Freedom Unclocked:

DO NOT PRICE YOUR ITEMS BASED ON WHAT YOU WOULD PAY FOR IT!

I would never pay $70 for a blanket. But guess what, there are millions of Etsy shoppers that will. And, people will pay more for personalized, unique, or simply special items that they cannot get anywhere else.

So do not price yourself out. Do not look at another sellers $4.93 t-shirt and think that you cannot sell a t-shirt for $29. Because you can and sellers are doing it every single day.

And, in most cases, those sellers with the $4.93 shirt are not print on demand sellers and are doing the printing and shipping themselves. Or, if you click into their listing, you will see that the actual item that is $4.93 is a youth onesie that they’ve marked out of stock, and the t-shirt in the mockup listing photo is actually $28!

It is an annoying and misleading thing to do. I do not recommend it.

Your profit margin will vary

Returns, refunds, international shipping, product size variations will all impact your costs. Your costs will fluctuate, and will not be static for the most part.

For example, I sold a t-shirt in Germany. The German print provider did not have the color that the customer ordered. So instead of using the local print provider for a fraction of the shipping cost, I had to ship from the US. I may $2 on the shirt.

I was ok with that. The customer was happy. They came back and bought again. Even if they didn’t, truly every sale make me grateful.

But I am still running a business. Always zoom out on your month. Don’t get caught up in the daily sales numbers.

How to research competitor pricing without making a mistake

You should always do competitive research before you finalize a price. Search Etsy for your product type and note what the bestsellers are charging.

Look at shops with hundreds or thousands of sales and reviews, because their prices reflect what the market has actually proven it will pay, not just what someone hoped someone would pay.

Here’s the mistake: copying a competitor’s price without knowing their cost structure. Why?

  • Another shop might have a Printify Premium subscription that gives them 20% off production costs.
  • They might be using a cheaper print provider.
  • They might have been in business for three years and have enough reviews and shop authority that they can charge less and still convert. You don’t know their situation.

Racing to the bottom on price is a losing strategy in any market, and in POD on Etsy it’s especially destructive because your margins are already being squeezed from multiple directions.

The sellers who win long-term are the ones competing on design quality, niche specificity, and buyer experience, not on who can charge the least.

Use tools like E-Hunt and eRank to research what products in your niche are actually selling and at what price points. E-hunt has a great, affordable chrome extension that allows you to see the sales numbers for each item right on the Etsy website.

These tools give you real data instead of guesswork, and they can help you identify the sweet spot between “too cheap to be trusted” and “too expensive for this market.”

Psychological pricing basics

Prices ending in .99 or .95 do tend to convert slightly better than round numbers for lower-ticket items. $24.99 just reads differently than $25.00 in a buyer’s brain, even though the difference is one cent. Use it where it makes sense.

For premium or personalized items, higher prices can actually increase trust. A custom wedding ornament listed at $12.99 might feel cheap compared to one listed at $28.99, especially when the photos and listing copy are polished.

Buyers use price as a quality signal when they can’t physically inspect the product.

Bundle pricing is another way to increase your average order value. Offering two items together at a slight discount gets more money in the door while giving the buyer a sense of deal. This is much smarter than just lowering your single-item price.

Organized workspace with white keyboard, coffee, glasses, marble notebooks, phone, and design samples on wood desk

Which products actually give you the best margins

Pricing strategy is easier when your product category gives you room to work with. Not all POD products are equal when it comes to margins, and choosing the right products is part of building a business that doesn’t require you to sell at high volume just to see a few hundred dollars at the end of the month.

Personalized and custom items are where the real pricing power lives. Custom mugs, personalized ornaments, name-specific gifts, and custom pet portraits all carry higher perceived value.

Buyers are looking for something specific, and they expect to pay more for it.

Wall art and prints have some of the best margin potential in the entire POD space. The production cost relative to what buyers will pay is favorable, especially for digital art, illustration, and photography prints.

Premium apparel is also worth considering. Customers shopping for a Comfort Colors tee know it’s a different product than a generic tee, and they’ll pay more for it.

Generic t-shirts in saturated niches are the hardest category to work with from a margins standpoint. They require volume to make sense, and the competition on price is relentless.

If that’s where you’re starting, it can work, but know that you’ll need to be smart about design differentiation and niche selection to make the numbers work. I recommend starting with other products before jumping into t-shirts.

Other common pricing mistakes to stop making immediately

Underpricing to get initial sales and then not raising prices later is a trap many new sellers fall into. Etsy’s algorithm does pay attention to conversion history, but there are ways to gradually raise your prices without destroying your listing performance.

Starting too low and staying stuck there is much harder to recover from than simply pricing right from the beginning.

Offering free shipping without baking the cost into the product price is another one. Free shipping is a great conversion tool. But if you’re absorbing $5 to $8 in shipping costs that you haven’t priced for, you’re shaving a significant chunk off your margin with every single order.

Finally, not revisiting prices when your POD provider updates their rates.

Printify, Printful, and other providers adjust their prices periodically. If your pricing was set a year ago and production costs have increased, your margins have shrunk. Build a habit of auditing your top-selling listings every quarter to make sure the numbers still work.

When to raise your prices

Raising prices feels scary, especially when a listing is already getting sales. But there are some clear signals that it’s time.

If you’ve been in business for a while, built up reviews, and developed a recognizable shop identity, your pricing should reflect that. You’re not a brand-new shop with zero social proof anymore.

Buyers who see 500 five-star reviews are not going to balk at a price that’s a few dollars higher than a competitor with 12 reviews.

Minimalist workspace with laptop, coffee mug, notebooks, pen, glasses and mouse on wooden desk with natural lighting

Final thoughts

Pricing your Etsy POD products correctly is genuinely one of the most important things you can do for your shop. Not because it’s a magic fix for slow traffic or weak designs, but because even the best designs and the most optimized listings won’t build you a freedom-first business if the pricing is working against you.

Get clear on your total landed cost. Price for offsite ads every time. Target a minimum of 40% gross margin and push toward 50% wherever your niche allows. Do your competitor research but stop copying prices without understanding the full picture.

Your shop can be a real source of income that gives you actual choices in your life. How you price your products today determines how much freedom that shop can eventually give you. Take it seriously.

If you want to go deeper on building a POD shop that actually makes money, check out Freedom Unclocked, my course built specifically for Etsy POD sellers who are done guessing and ready to build something real.

The Best SEO and Design Tools for an Etsy Shop:

These are the only tools I use for my shop!

Canva: Canva is the most amazing tool. It is user friendly, and always improving! The tools that Canva has have evolved so much since I first started using it in 2022 for the better. I use it almost everyday. I use it to create designs, to edit AI designs, and to create product mockups.

Ideogram: Ideogram is an AI design tool that generates high-quality graphics with exceptionally accurate text rendering, making it ideal for creating quote-based and typography-focused designs. I also use the prompt based editing for mockups, making it a wonderful alternative to Photoshop, which is expensive.

Midjourney: Midjourney is an AI image tool that blows my mind every time I use it. It takes some time to get the prompts down. Once you play with it, you will get better at creating images and art to include on your print on demand products.

E-Hunt: E-Hunt is fantastic for competitor research and some light keyword research. My favorite aspect of E-Hunt is the Chrome extension that allows you to see the sales amount for an individual item on Etsy. Check out this article to see an example.

eRank: eRank is an SEO data tool that also allows you to search the competition and will also give you key words for your Etsy listing. It is also a low cost tool that will help you find low competition and highly searched niches.

Printify: Printify is a print-on-demand (POD) service that allows individuals and businesses to create and sell custom-designed products without needing to manage inventory or handle fulfillment. I put my designs on products offered by Printify. When an item sells, Printify prints and ships to my customer.

📌Share on Pinterest

Guide to pricing print on demand products on Etsy with profit margin protection formulas and calculator graphics

Looking for more information on print on demand? Check out these articles:

Janeen is a former attorney and Etsy print on demand coach who started her shop at 40, retired early from corporate life at 42, and moved her family to Portugal. She now teaches others the strategic path to building portable income, while exploring and documenting the most beautiful country she gets to call home.