Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Etsy: Channel Economics and Control

The short version. A sale on your own store, on Amazon, on TikTok Shop and on Etsy are four different businesses selling the same product. Compare them on contribution margin per order and on control: who owns the customer, who ships and how much of the brand you keep. Then give each channel one job.

Four channels, one P&L

I built a consumer brand to $3 million in revenue across the major online marketplaces, with full accountability for profit and loss (P&L). Running one P&L across several channels makes one thing obvious: revenue by channel is the wrong league table.

Each channel answers four questions differently:

1. What does an order cost me, all in?
2. Who owns the customer afterwards?
3. Who controls fulfilment?
4. How much of the brand do I keep?

The fee structures, as published

Fee schedules change. Everything below is as each platform publishes it at the time of writing. Check the platform’s own fee page before you set a price.

Shopify. You pay a monthly plan fee and card processing on each order. If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a transaction fee: 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus [1]. Traffic is your job. You pay for every visitor through ads, content or email.

Amazon. In the US, sellers choose an Individual plan at $0.99 per item sold or a Professional plan at $39.99 a month. On every sale, Amazon charges a referral fee that varies by category: a percentage of the total price or a minimum amount, whichever is greater [2]. 15% is the most common rate in Amazon’s published table. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which outsources shipping, returns and customer service, is optional and priced separately [2].

Etsy. A listing costs $0.20 USD. When an item sells, Etsy charges a 6.5% transaction fee on the total order amount, including any shipping and gift wrap you charge for, plus a payment processing fee that varies by country [3]. Offsite Ads cost 15% of each order Etsy attributes to its off-site advertising for shops under $10,000 USD in sales over the prior 365 days. Above that threshold, participation is mandatory and the rate is 12% [4].

TikTok Shop. Launched in the US in September 2023, it puts shoppable videos and livestreams in the feed, adds a Shop Tab marketplace, runs a commission-based affiliate program that connects sellers with creators, and offers its own logistics service, Fulfilled by TikTok [5]. Take the current platform fee from your Seller Center, not from a blog post, and model it as a variable. Then add the creator commission you set. On this channel, creators are a large part of your acquisition cost.

One product, four channels: the first order

Here is one illustrative product: a $40 price, shipping built in, and $10 cost of goods. Where a platform publishes a rate, I use it. Everything else is a round assumption for the example, not a published figure.

The assumptions behind each row:

• Own store: about 3% card processing ($1.20), $7.00 to pick, pack and ship, and a $14 paid customer acquisition cost (CAC) for a first order.
• Amazon: a 15% referral fee ($6.00), an assumed $6.50 FBA fee, and $5.00 of sponsored ads per order.
• TikTok Shop: an assumed 8% platform fee ($3.20) and $7.00 shipping, plus a 15% creator commission ($6.00) and $2.00 of free samples per order as acquisition.
• Etsy: $0.20 listing, 6.5% transaction fee ($2.60), an assumed $1.45 processing fee and $7.00 shipping, plus 15% Offsite Ads on an assumed 30% of orders ($1.80) and $3.00 of on-site Etsy Ads.

Read the table the way most founders do and the own store comes last. That is the first-order view. It is incomplete.

Who owns the customer decides the second order

The own-store customer is yours. Where they have agreed to hear from you, you can bring them back without a platform fee or an ad auction. In this example a repeat order on the own store keeps $21.80: the $40 price minus goods, processing and shipping, with no acquisition cost.

Marketplaces work differently. Under Amazon’s Business Solutions Agreement, information identifying specific customers is Amazon’s confidential information, remains Amazon’s exclusive property, and may be used only as reasonably necessary to take part in its services [6]. Amazon buyers do reorder, but each reorder pays the referral fee again, and their details are not yours to market to. Other marketplaces set their own rules on what buyer data you receive and how you may use it. Read them before you plan any remarketing.

The own store trails Amazon by $4.70 on the first order. Two crossovers matter:

• If marketplace buyers never come back to you specifically, the own store catches up once the average customer places about 0.22 extra orders a year ($4.70 divided by $21.80).
• If Amazon buyers reorder as often as your own customers, and those reorders need no ads ($17.50 each), the own store needs about 1.1 extra orders per customer a year ($4.70 divided by the $4.30 gap per repeat).

The truth sits between the two. Only your own cohort data can place it.

Fulfilment and brand: the control you trade for reach

A third-party logistics provider (3PL) can run fulfilment for any channel you ship yourself.

Fulfilment is also a cash decision. Stock sitting in a marketplace’s warehouse is cash you cannot use on another channel. Splitting inventory across locations also raises the total stock you need to avoid running out. Because I carried forecasting, cash flow and the financing of growth along with the P&L, I look at inventory as weeks of cover per location, not as total units.

Brand control is the quieter trade. Marketplace listings follow the marketplace’s templates and rules. On TikTok Shop, creators tell your story in their own voice. That is reach you could not buy elsewhere, and control you give up to get it.

Give each channel one job

• Own store: profit on repeat orders, the customer list, and the place you run experiments.
• Amazon: capturing demand from shoppers who already search there.
• TikTok Shop: discovery, creator reach and fast feedback on new products.
• Etsy: reaching buyers looking for handmade, personalized or gift items, if your product fits.

A channel that does its job at a positive contribution margin stays. A channel with no job, or one that does its job at a loss with no repeat business behind it, gets cut, whatever its revenue.

Mistakes I see most often

• Ranking channels by revenue or return on ad spend instead of contribution margin per order.
• Leaving creator commissions and free samples out of acquisition cost.
• Planning email campaigns to marketplace buyers before reading the platform’s data rules.
• Pricing on last year’s fee schedule.
• Splitting inventory across four locations without the cash to fund it.

What I would do this week

1. Rebuild the contribution table for your top product with real fees from each platform’s fee page or settlement report.
2. Write down each channel’s one job and the contribution margin it must hold to keep it.
3. Measure your own-store 12-month repeat rate and place it against the two crossovers above.
4. Check weeks of inventory cover in every location and the cash tied up in each.
5. Put a quarterly reminder in the calendar to re-verify every fee.

References

1. Shopify, “Shopify pricing: Find the right plan for your business,” Shopify, 2026.
2. Amazon, “How much does it cost to sell on Amazon?,” Sell on Amazon, 2026.
3. Etsy, “What are the fees and taxes for selling on Etsy?,” Etsy Help Center, 2026.
4. Etsy, “Fees & Payments Policy,” Etsy, 2026.
5. TikTok, “Introducing TikTok Shop,” TikTok Newsroom, Sept. 12, 2023.
6. Amazon, “Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement,” Amazon Seller Central, 2023.