Dropshipping & Print-on-Demand Margins: Variant Costs, Shipping Zones, Ad Cost per Order, Refunds & Break-Even ROAS

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Look up the print partner's base cost for every listing in a product × size grid, add the print-area surcharges, work out the gross margin % per listing and find the listing that keeps the least.
• Price the partner's shipping for every order from a zone rate card with first-item and additional-item rates, compare it with the flat fee the shop charges, total the gap per zone and colour the orders that lose money on shipping.
• Spread the shop's monthly tool subscriptions over the orders, charge the payment fee on what the customer really pays and work out the contribution and contribution % per order – the money left before any advertising.
• Turn each ad set's CPM, click-through rate and conversion rate into a cost per purchase, set the break-even ROAS from the contribution per order, compare it with the actual ROAS and name the ad set that loses money.
• Count Q3's problem orders by cause, turn the counts into rates per order, total what each cause cost the shop and subtract the expected problem cost from the contribution per order.
• Turn production and transit days into a promised delivery date with WORKDAY and the partner's holidays, measure how many days each order arrived late and the share of late orders, and colour the late ones.
• Turn four partners' cost, speed, defect rate and rating into 0–10 scores, combine them with weights in SUMPRODUCT, rank the partners and compare the winner with the cheapest partner that meets Mira's quality limits.
• Total November's orders, revenue and contribution per product with SUMIFS, compare the average order value of single items and bundles, work out how many orders the month needs to cover its fixed costs and chart the contribution by product.