A twenty percent off banner feels harmless. Behind it, you might need to sell fifty percent more units just to end up where you started. Enter three numbers and see the volume that discount actually forces on you.
New margin · profit lost per sale · volume to break even
Break-even volume is the extra units needed for total profit at the discounted price to match total profit at full price. It assumes your cost per unit holds steady. Shipping, fees, and returns can push the real number higher.
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Twenty percent off. It's the easiest lever in the store, so it gets pulled at the first sign of a slow week. Feels like giving up a small slice to move some units.
Here's the part nobody runs. The discount doesn't come out of your cost, it comes out of your profit. On a fifty dollar product that costs you twenty, full profit is thirty dollars. Knock twenty percent off the price and profit drops to twenty. That's a third of your profit gone from a discount that looked like a fifth. Now you need fifty percent more sales just to bank the same money you would have made at full price.
Sometimes that trade is worth it. But you should make it on purpose, with the volume target in front of you, not as a reflex.
Full price, cost per unit, and the discount percent you're thinking about running.
New margin, the profit you give up on each sale, and the extra volume it takes to break even on total profit.
A clear read on whether the discount is safe, costly, or a margin killer for this product.
It depends on how deep the discount cuts your profit per sale. A twenty percent discount on a fifty dollar product with twenty dollar cost drops profit per unit from thirty to twenty dollars, so you need fifty percent more units to match your old total profit. The tool does this for your numbers.
Because the discount comes entirely out of profit, not out of cost. Your cost per unit stays the same, so every dollar off the price is a dollar straight off the bottom line. That's why a discount that looks small on the price tag can gut your margin.
Sometimes. A discount can clear dead stock, win a first order from a customer worth more over time, or move volume you would not have gotten otherwise. The point is to run it as a deliberate trade, so you know the volume you have to hit to come out ahead.
Yes. Run it as many times as you want, no account needed. Drop your email only if you want the breakdown sent to you.
A discount buys you sales by giving up profit. There's a better lever: make each visitor worth more without touching your price. Run your store through the free Revenue Per Visitor Calculator and see the money sitting between what a click earns now and what it could.
Calculate My Revenue Per Visitor → Takes about 30 seconds. Three inputs, and the gap shown in dollars.