Platform fees can quietly change your best price point

You sell a £49 course, make a few sales, and then look at the payout. The number is lower than £49. Some of the difference is payment processing. Some may be a discount, a refund or tax collected at checkout. If you set your next price by copying a competitor’s number, you can end up copying a margin that does not fit your business.

Start with the money you need to keep

Work backwards from the amount you want left after the sale. Call that your target net revenue. Then account for the costs that sit between the customer’s payment and your bank account: payment processing, refunds, discounts, affiliate commissions if you use them, and any tax obligations that apply to you.

A simple first model is: displayed price − discount − payment processing − affiliate commission − refund allowance = usable revenue before your own tax and operating costs. Keep tax separate from this calculation until you know whether the price includes tax, whether you need to collect it, and which rules apply to your customers. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances and location, so treat this as a planning model rather than tax advice.

Separate the costs people often combine

1. 1Payment processing is attached to the transaction. Stripe’s own fee still applies when you sell through store.fan, even though store.fan takes 0% of sales.
2. 2A discount reduces the amount on which your margin is based. A 20% code does not reduce only your profit; it reduces the customer’s payment before other costs are considered.
3. 3An affiliate commission is a deliberate acquisition cost. It can be sensible when the sale would not otherwise happen, but it needs to be included in the same product-level calculation.
4. 4A refund reverses revenue while some work may already have happened. If your product includes a call, review or manual onboarding, decide how you will handle that before publishing the offer.
5. 5Your own tax and business costs come after the sale-level calculation. Include software, contractors, support time and fulfilment when deciding whether the product is worth continuing.

Use a price table before you publish

For example, if your list price is £80 and you run a 25% discount, the customer pays £60. You then subtract the actual Stripe processing fee and any affiliate commission from £60, not from £80. That distinction is easy to miss when you plan the campaign from the headline price.

Payment plans change the shape of the sale

A payment plan is not simply a higher price split into neat pieces. It creates more payment events, more opportunities for a failed payment, and a longer period before you have received the full amount. It may also make a higher-priced offer accessible to customers who cannot or do not want to pay all at once.

Model each instalment rather than dividing the final price and assuming the result is identical. Write down the number of payments, the amount of each payment, the processing cost on each payment, what happens when a payment fails, and whether access continues during a missed payment. Your checkout and customer communication should match that policy.

Choose the price point your offer can defend

Price is easier to defend when it matches a clear change for the buyer. A template that saves an hour, a course that provides a complete process, and a coaching package that includes personalised decisions are different products even if they address the same topic. Describe what is included, what the buyer must do, and what is deliberately left out.

Then test three versions in your model: the lowest price that still makes the work worthwhile, the price you would be comfortable selling repeatedly, and a higher price that includes more support or access. Do not compare only the conversion rate. Compare usable revenue, support time, refund patterns and the number of customers needed to reach your target.

Make the storefront support the maths

Your storefront should make the price and its boundaries visible. On store.fan’s digital download tools, you can sell a file without building a separate checkout. For a course, explain the curriculum, access terms and support level before the customer reaches payment. If you sell coaching, state the call length, booking process and rescheduling rules.

store.fan takes 0% of sales, and money goes straight to your own Stripe account. That makes the platform fee straightforward to include in your model, while Stripe’s processing fee remains part of the transaction cost. Paid plans start with a 14-day trial; the free plan is limited to link-in-bio, so check which storefront and selling features you need before relying on the trial.

If you run a discount, record the original price, the code, the final price and the resulting usable revenue. Discount codes and flash campaigns are useful when you have a reason for the lower price, but a permanent discount can quietly turn the reduced price into your real price.