How to price your product when you have no idea where to start

The easy way to price is to look at what other people charge and sit slightly under it. It feels safe. It is also how a seller ends up selling at a loss for months without noticing, because what matters is what you have left after the order is done.

Work it out once and you stop guessing.

Count every cost that happens per order

Write these down for one unit of one product.

What the item costs you. For a reseller that is the purchase price. For something you make, it is materials plus anything you consumed making it. Count the thread, the glue, the labels.

Packaging. The box or mailer, the filler, tape, the thank you card if you use one. It is small, and you pay it on every order.

Any postage you absorb. If you offer free shipping over a certain amount, you are paying that postage. Count it here.

The fees on the sale. Selling online costs a percentage. On Berkedai a new store pays 8% platform fee plus 3% payment processing on the product subtotal, and a shipping handling fee on physical orders. The platform fee goes down once a store's monthly sales pass a set amount, but price against the rate you pay today, not the one you hope for.

Your time. Not everyone wants to put a number on this. Put one anyway, even a rough one. If an order takes twenty minutes to make and pack, and you price as though it takes none, every sale costs you time you are not paid for.

Add them up. The fees are a share of your price, so work them out on the price you plan to charge, not on your cost. That total is your floor. Below it, you lose money on every order.

Then decide the margin, deliberately

The gap between your floor and your price is what pays for everything that is not an order: the stock that did not sell, the parcel that went missing, the samples you gave away, and eventually yourself.

Set that gap as a percentage, not a flat few ringgit. A flat amount is too little on an expensive item. Pick one, apply it, and look at the number.

Then check it once more. Would you pay this, knowing nothing about how it was made? If the answer is no, look at the product page before the price. It may not show what the buyer gets for it.

Three mistakes that make a price wrong

Pricing the first unit by the bulk rate you have not bought yet. Price what you actually paid.

Forgetting that a discount comes out of margin, not revenue. On an RM 100 item with RM 25 of margin, a 10% discount takes RM 10 of that RM 25. Decide what you can discount before you run a promotion, not during one.

Never revisiting it. Your supplier raises prices. Your packaging changes. Your postage changes. Re-check the arithmetic every few months and after any change in what you pay.

Write the number down with its working

Keep the breakdown somewhere you can find it, one line per cost. When you are deciding whether to run a sale, you will know how much you can take off.

And when a customer asks for a discount, you will know whether you can give one.

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