What shipping costs and what is left of your margin

Nearly everybody prices the part, adds their margin, and leaves shipping for the end, like paperwork the customer pays for.

Do that and you are selling at a loss. With the numbers from this calculator, the reference part leaves $2.55 of margin, and any shipping above $2.55 eats the whole thing.

And there is barely any tracked shipping below that. That is the entire story, and the rest of this guide is what to do about it.

What a part actually leaves you

Before talking about shipping you need the starting point clear, because hardly anyone does. The reference part on this site is 60 grams in 5 h 30, with a $400 printer, $50 of maintenance and 15 minutes of work.

That $2.55 is the number that matters in this whole guide. It is not the price and it is not the cost: it is the only thing that lands in your pocket for selling that part. You can open the whole calculation and see it broken down.

And $2.55 is less than any tracked shipping label costs.

Shipping against the margin

Put your own rate in the left column and look at what is left. I do not need to tell you what your carrier charges: you know it better than I do, and it changes every January.

There is not one good row. Not even the $3 one, which is cheaper than almost any tracked label you can actually buy.

And look at what the $6 row means: for every part you sell you are putting $3.45 of your own money in. The more you sell, the more you lose. It is the worst place a business can be, because from the outside it looks like it is working: there are orders, there is movement, there is work. There just is no money at the end of the month.

“Free shipping” does not exist

The most common trap is putting free shipping on the listing. It sounds like a competitive edge and it does lift conversion on marketplaces, so the advice is everywhere.

But free shipping is not free for anyone: it is exactly the table above. The carrier charges the same. The only thing that changes is who pays, and with free shipping you pay, out of that $2.55 margin.

There is a sensible version of the idea, and it is a different thing: building shipping into the price. It is not free, it is included. If shipping costs you $6 and you want to keep earning $2.55 a part, the price is not $7.66, it is $13.66.

That is the real question: does it sell at $13.66? Maybe it does and maybe it does not, but at least it is the right question. Putting $7.66 with free shipping is not a pricing strategy, it is not having done the sums.

Three parts: the number that changes everything

Here is the strongest way out, and hardly anyone uses it: shipping is paid once per parcel, not once per part.

A parcel with four parts in it costs essentially the same to send as one with a single part, as long as it does not push you into the next weight band. And the margins do add up.

The business does not start existing until the third part. Below that, every order that comes in costs you money.

That changes completely what you should be doing. Everything that pushes the order size up — bundles of several models, a minimum order, a discount for taking three, the second one half price — is not marketing: it is what turns a loss-making sale into a real one.

And look at the detail in the last column: between three parts and six, what you earn on each one nearly triples, from $0.55 to $1.55. Without dropping the price a cent or touching the part.

The other way out: charging what it is worth

If you sell single parts and there is no way to group orders, only the other lever is left: the price. And it has to go up further than instinct says.

You have to reach a 150% margin before a single part with shipping paid leaves anything. Neither 50% nor 100% gets there: at a 100% margin, which sounds outrageous, you still lose 89 cents a part.

You can see the part at 150% and check that the price goes to $12.77. If that looks expensive, look at the right-hand column on the first row: that is the price of looking cheap.

And this is before the marketplace takes its cut. If you sell somewhere that charges fees, those come off too: they are in Etsy fees on 3D printing.

Big parts take it far better

There is a pattern worth seeing before you decide what to sell: shipping punishes small parts and barely bothers large ones.

The reason is that shipping goes up in weight bands while margin goes up with the size of the part. A 250 gram part in 22 h 56 costs $11.79 to make and sells for $17.69, so it leaves $5.90 of margin. You can open that one too.

With $5.90 of margin, a $5 label still leaves 90 cents. The small part, with the same $5 of shipping, loses $2.45.

It does not mean you should stop making small parts. It means small parts do not sell one at a time: they sell in bundles, as an add-on to something bigger, or in person, where there is no shipping to pay. And that if your catalogue is all keyrings, shipping is your number one problem, not the price of filament.

How heavy a part has to be to survive shipping

We have seen that the 60 gram part survives no postage at all and that the 250 gram one holds up much better. It is worth seeing the whole scale, because the result is surprising.

This is harsher than it looked at the start. Not even a 250 gram part and nearly a full day of printer time covers $6 of shipping: it falls ten cents short. You have to go to 400 grams, and more than thirty-six hours of machine time, before a single part leaves anything after postage.

Which means the problem was never small parts. It is single parts, at almost any size. Selling one at a time by post, with shipping paid and a 50% margin, does not work for nearly anything that comes off a desktop printer.

Look at that table before you set up a shop. If your work is parts under 250 grams — which is most of what sells 3D printed — the model has to be the multi-part order, the higher price, or selling in person. All three work. Selling a single part with free shipping does not.

If the customer pays the shipping

So far we have assumed you absorb the postage. Let us look at the other half, which is what a lot of people do: charge it separately.

Your margin survives, and that is already a lot. But another problem appears, and it is the number the customer sees before hitting buy.

On the small part, nearly half of what the customer pays is transport. And it shows: that is the figure that gets a basket abandoned, because the buyer feels they are paying more for the shipping than for the thing. They are almost right.

On the big part it drops to 25%, which is a share people accept without thinking about it.

So both options have the same underlying problem, just in different places: absorb the shipping and it eats your margin, charge it separately and it eats your conversion. The only way out that costs neither is the grouped order.

Packaging and the minutes it takes

There is one line left that hardly anyone counts and that travels with the shipping: getting the parcel ready.

The materials — box or padded envelope, paper or bubble wrap, tape, label — cost an amount that depends so much on where you buy and in what quantity that I am not going to invent a number. What I will give you is how to measure it: take what the last pack of boxes cost you and divide by how many boxes it had. That is your cost per shipment, and it adds to the postage.

The time we can put in money, because this calculator already works at $12 an hour. At that rate, five minutes packing a part is $1.00.

Add it to the $6 shipping row and the hole on a single part is not $3.45, it is more than $4.45 counting only the time, before the cardboard.

And here the grouped order wins again: packing three parts in one box does not take three times as long. It takes barely longer than packing one.

Your own numbers, in five minutes

Three steps and you have your number, which will always beat mine.

One. Open the calculator with your best-selling part and write down the margin: the price minus the cost. That is your $2.55.

Two. Look at the last parcel you sent and add the postage to the packaging. If you run free shipping, that whole number comes out of your margin.

Three. Subtract. If it comes out negative you have three ways out and no others: more parts per parcel, a higher price, or stop shipping that part on its own.

What is not a way out is carrying on and trusting volume. When every order loses money, selling twice as much loses twice as much.

If you are putting together a large order or a custom job, the full calculation with labour and lead times is in how to quote a 3D printing job.

More tools and guides

• What you actually keep when you sell 3D prints on EtsyWhat Etsy really takes from each sale in the eurozone: 12.5% normally, 27.5% with Offsite Ads. With the table of what is left at every price.
• VAT on selling 3D printed parts: what you actually take homeOf 20 € listed you keep 8.95 €. How VAT works on printed parts, the 10,000 € threshold and the One Stop Shop if you sell to other EU countries.
• How to charge for design time in 3D printingDesign is not charged per part: it is spread. Three hours are 36.00 € that come to 1.80 € each across 20 units, and to 36.00 € on a single one.
• 3D printing cost calculatorWork out the real cost and selling price of a 3D printed part: material, power, machine wear, failures and markup. Free, no sign-up, nothing uploaded.
• How much to charge for a 3D printed partPrice your prints properly: real cost, your labour and your markup. Generates a quote you can copy and send straight to the customer.
• How much electricity does a 3D printer useWork out your 3D printer's power use and what it costs per month on your own tariff. With the average wattage of the most common models.

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