Some of your listings lose money every time you promote them.
You just can't see which ones. Between Etsy's fee stack, VAT on fees, your materials and your postage, two listings at the same price can be a 45% earner and a break-even trap — and they look identical in your shop.
The Profit Coach reads the real margin behind every listing and hands you the plan: which one deserves this week's ad money, which needs a £3.50 price rise first, and which should never see a paid click at its current price.
See which listings can fund their own adsThe margin dashboard is free on every plan — the coach is the paid layer on top.
Promoting without margins is spending with your eyes shut
Here's the trap: promotion decisions get made on gut feel — the listing you like most, the one that got a favourite yesterday — while the only number that decides whether promotion pays is the one nobody has in front of them. Take a £24 listing: after the transaction fee, payment processing, the regulatory fee and VAT on all of it, then your £9 of materials and £3.50 postage, the margin isn't “roughly 50%”. It can be under 20%. Put £3 of ad spend behind each sale of that listing and you are quietly paying customers to take it.
And the damage compounds in the one way you won't notice: the more successfully you promote an underwater listing, the more money it loses. More clicks, more sales, more fees, deeper hole. Meanwhile your genuinely profitable listing — the one that could fund real ad spend from its own margin — sits unpromoted, because nothing ever told you it was the strong one.
A wrong promotion pick doesn't fail loudly. The ad dashboard shows clicks, the orders come in, the shop looks busy — and the payout at the end of the month is somehow smaller than the effort says it should be. That gap has a name: it's margin, spent invisibly, one promoted sale at a time.
One coach, six honest calls
Enter each listing's price and costs once, and the coach reads the whole portfolio together — not listing by listing in isolation. Every listing gets exactly one move, with the number that makes it actionable:
“Scale the ads”
Margin clears the 40% bar, so paid promotion is funded by the listing itself. You get a hard per-sale ad ceiling — spend under it and every sale stays profitable.
“Promote — but never pay”
Healthy enough to push on free channels, too thin to buy clicks for. The coach says it plainly: “this item cannot support paid promotion” — before the ad bill proves it.
“Raise the price first”
“Raise the price by £3.50, or cap ad spend at £2.10.” The target isn't a vibe — it's the exact price at which this listing reaches a 40% margin under the full UK fee stack.
“Trim the costs”
When the market won't wear a higher price, the coach names the cost line doing the damage — materials or postage — so you fix the leak instead of the label.
“Bundle it”
Thin-margin items can still earn their keep next to a strong one. The coach suggests pairings from your own catalogue that lift order value and blended margin.
“Stop promoting it”
Negative margin means every promoted sale is a small donation to the buyer. The coach says stop — and what has to change before promotion makes sense again.
And one call above the rest: the coach names the single listing this week's promotion effort should concentrate on — “promote this one, not that one” — so your limited hours and budget go where each sale earns the most.
The maths is deterministic. The coaching is AI. In that order.
First, Postivia computes every listing's true margin the boring, checkable way: the same itemised UK fee stack as our free Etsy fee calculator — listing fee, 6.5% transaction fee, payment processing, the regulatory operating fee, VAT on fees — against the costs you entered. From that it derives hard numbers: a safe ad ceiling (capped at 30% of net profit), a safe discount floor, and the exact price at which a thin listing would reach a promotable 40% margin.
Only then does the AI coach come in — to do what a spreadsheet can't: weigh the portfolio as a whole, pick the one listing worth concentrating on, spot bundle pairings in your own catalogue, and put each verdict in plain English you can act on in five minutes.
Guardrails, because it's your money
The AI drafts the strategy; deterministic rules check every number before you see it. An ad cap can never exceed what the fee maths supports. A price target is always the computed 40%-margin price, never an invented one. A “scale ads” call on a listing whose numbers can't carry ads is rejected outright.
Built from data you control — and only that
The coach works from your own cost entries and Etsy's published UK fee rates. It does not pretend to know your sales figures, traffic, conversion rates or what's “trending” — Etsy doesn't provide that data, and we won't invent it. Where advice would depend on demand, the coach phrases it conditionally instead of dressing a guess up as a statistic.
We hold the keyword tool and the Listing Doctor to the same standard: fewer invented decimal places, more truth.
The margins are free. The plan is the upgrade.
The fee calculator, the per-listing margin breakdown and the promote/fix/skip verdicts cost nothing, on every plan, forever. The Profit Coach — price targets, ad ceilings, bundle pairings and the weekly “promote this one” call — is included on the Grow and Scale plans.
Do the arithmetic on the trade: one mispriced listing promoted for one season can quietly cost more than a year of the subscription. Knowing which listing that is — before the ad spend, not after — is the whole point.
Enter costs for a few listings, and the coach is one click away when you upgrade.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I spend on Etsy ads per listing?
There's no universal number — it depends entirely on that listing's margin. A listing clearing 40%+ can fund real ad spend from its own profit; one at 15% is paying for clicks out of your pocket. The Profit Coach computes a per-sale ad ceiling for every listing from your own costs and Etsy's UK fees, capped at 30% of net profit so a campaign can never spend a listing underwater.
Why are my Etsy ads losing money?
Usually because the margin was too thin before the first click. Etsy's fees stack up — transaction fee, payment processing, the regulatory fee, VAT on fees — and if what's left after your materials and postage is a couple of pounds, almost any cost per click eats it. The coach flags exactly which of your listings cannot support paid promotion, and what price would change that.
How does the AI decide which listing I should promote?
From your margins. You enter each listing's sale price, product cost and postage cost once; Postivia applies the full UK Etsy fee stack to get a real margin per listing. The coach then picks the listing whose numbers can actually fund promotion — and tells you plainly which ones to stop pushing, because effort and ad spend there earn less per sale.
Does it use my real sales data?
It uses your real cost data and Etsy's published UK fee rates — that's what profit maths needs, and it's data you control. It does not claim to know your sales, traffic or conversion rates; where a recommendation would depend on demand, the coach says so conditionally instead of inventing numbers. Deterministic guardrails also clamp every figure: an ad cap can never exceed what the fee maths supports.
Is the profit dashboard free?
Yes. The fee calculator, the per-listing margin breakdown and the promote/fix/skip verdicts are free on every plan, forever. The Profit Coach — the layer that turns those numbers into a week-by-week plan with price targets, ad ceilings and bundle ideas — is included on the Grow and Scale plans.
Every week you promote blind, the strong listing waits
Your prices, your costs and Etsy's fee table already contain the answer — which listing funds its own growth, and which one bills you for the privilege. Five minutes of cost entry is all it takes to make that visible.
Find my most profitable listingNot sure a listing is even being seen? Start with the Listing Doctor.