Black Friday discounts for makers: how deep can you go?
2026-11-01 · Frontubo
Black Friday is November 27 this year and Cyber Monday is November 30. If you make candles or soap and sell them yourself, the question is usually not whether to run a sale but how deep it can go. Here is the arithmetic for one example, with every fee shown.
The example: a candle that sells for $28 and costs $9 to make (wax, wick, jar, label, fragrance). Your own numbers will differ. The method will not.
Fees stay the same when the price drops, mostly
Etsy’s fees are a percentage of the price plus two flat amounts per order: the $0.25 processing fee and the $0.20 listing renewal. A discount lowers the percentage part, but the flat parts stay, so they take a bigger bite out of a cheaper order. These rates are the ones we use in the fee calculator, and we last read them on 2026-10-31. Offsite Ads (12% or 15% of the order) are left out here, because they only apply to sales that came through those ads.
| Discount | Sale price | Etsy fees | Left after Etsy fees | Left after $9 cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| none | $28.00 | $3.11 | $24.89 | $15.89 |
| 10% | $25.20 | $2.84 | $22.36 | $13.36 |
| 20% | $22.40 | $2.58 | $19.82 | $10.82 |
| 30% | $19.60 | $2.31 | $17.29 | $8.29 |
A 30% discount takes $8.40 off the price but only $0.80 off the fees, so you give up about $7.60 of the $15.89 you would normally keep. That is nearly half your profit on the order. At 20% you give up $5.07, about a third.
If the order came through Offsite Ads, take 15% of the sale price off as well (12% if the shop made more than $10,000 in the last year). At the normal $28 price that is $4.20, so you keep $11.69 after your $9 cost. At 20% off it is $3.36, and you keep $7.46. Check your own share of ad orders in your Etsy dashboard before you decide.
The same candle in a store of your own
On Shopify with Shopify Payments, the card fee is 2.9% plus $0.30 per order (the rate on the Basic plan in the US, from Shopify’s pricing page on 2026-10-31). The monthly plan is a fixed cost, so it does not change with one sale.
| Discount | Sale price | Card fee | Left after card fee | Left after $9 cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| none | $28.00 | $1.11 | $26.89 | $17.89 |
| 20% | $22.40 | $0.95 | $21.45 | $12.45 |
| 30% | $19.60 | $0.87 | $18.73 | $9.73 |
On the 20% sale a store keeps about $1.63 more per candle than Etsy without ads. That is a real difference, but it only exists if people find your store. On Etsy, shoppers arrive on their own. In a store you have to bring them, and that is why we never tell makers to leave Etsy for Black Friday. If you have an email list or customers who already know you, a store sale can beat Etsy. If you do not, the sale mostly happens where the shoppers are.
How we would choose a number
- Start from the least you will accept per candle, not from a percentage. If you refuse to make less than $10 on a $9-cost candle, then on Etsy without ads the lowest price is about $21.50, which is roughly 23% off $28. Work out the same figure for each product.
- Check the products one at a time. A big candle with a high wax cost may only allow 10%. A bar of soap with a low cost may allow more.
- Consider a gift set or a free small item instead of a percentage. A free travel tin costs you a few dollars. A 20% cut on a $28 candle costs you $5.60 and a lower price on every order.
- Shipping: if you offer free shipping, add the real postage to the cost before you work out the discount. People forget this one.
- Stock: soap cured for six weeks cannot be remade for the weekend. Decide how many you are willing to sell at the sale price and stop there.
What we did not check
The fees above come from Etsy’s and Shopify’s own pages, read by hand on 2026-10-31, and they change. The cost of $9 is an example, not a typical figure. We have not run this sale ourselves. If your costs include your own time, the result is worse than the table shows.
Next year, start thinking about November in the summer. The maker’s selling calendar works back from each holiday to the day you need to pour.