A bundle's floor is not a discount off the sum of its parts — it is the full-price sales each bundle replaces, and here is how I measure that number before the fees, refunds and lifetime promises get near it.
A bundle looks like free money — same files, one bigger order. But it can cost you three ways at once: it replaces sales you were already making, it changes how fees land, and it widens the surface refunds come from. Here is the arithmetic I run before I pick a number.
The floor is set by what the bundle destroys
The first number is not a price. It is how many full-price sales each bundle replaces. Call it c.
An example. Four products, $24 each. In the 60 days before launch I sold 40 singles. I launch a bundle at $59, run it 60 days, and end with 22 bundles sold and singles down to 12 — so c = 28 ÷ 22 = 1.27. Ignoring fees, a bundle only pays for itself when its price beats what it replaced:
Minimum bundle price = c × single price → 1.27 × $24 = $30.55
At $59 that clears comfortably. Flipped, it is more useful: with $24 singles, a $59 bundle stays worth running until c hits 2.46 — the alarm number.
A bundle does not have to sell well. It has to out-earn the sales it replaces.
You cannot know c in advance — only measure it, and only against a baseline written down before launch.
The fees move slightly in your favour — until an ad clicks
Bundling helps a little on a marketplace, because some fees are fixed per order rather than per dollar. On Etsy the transaction fee runs 6.5%, US payment processing is 3% + $0.25 charged on the item total including shipping and any sales tax, and listing costs $0.20.
| Line | Single, $24 | Bundle, $59 | Bundle, Offsite-attributed |
|---|
| Transaction 6.5% | $1.56 | $3.84 | $3.84 |
| Processing 3% + $0.25 | $0.97 | $2.02 | $2.02 |
| Listing fee | $0.20 | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Offsite Ads 15% of order | — | — | $8.85 |
| Total fees | $2.73 | $6.06 | $14.91 |
| Net | $21.27 | $52.94 | $44.09 |
| Fees as % of price | 11.4% | 10.3% | 25.3% |
The fixed charges are 1.9% of a $24 order and 0.8% of a $59 one — real, but small. The third column is the one that matters. Etsy's Offsite Ads fee is charged on the whole order total, not the listing that was clicked, with a 30-day attribution window, at 15% under $10,000 trailing-twelve-month revenue and 12% at or above it, mandatory from then on for the life of the shop. A bundle is the most expensive thing an offsite click can land on. Share & Save's 4% credit does not apply to Offsite Ads orders either, so you lose $2.36 of credit in the same moment you pay $8.85.
Feed that back into c. Break-even cannibalisation is bundle net ÷ single net: $52.94 ÷ $21.27 = 2.49 normally, $44.09 ÷ $21.27 = 2.07 on an offsite-attributed order. Offsite Ads does not only cost 15% — it lowers the cannibalisation your bundle can survive.
The discount you publish becomes the price
Read the whole-shop bundles on Etsy's print-on-demand mockup market page: $96 from $300, $36 from $120, $34.50 from $115, $1.12 from $2.79. Every one discounted, clustering at 60–70% off.
That is not a sale. That is the real price with an anchor
…
Mockwren