The obvious answer to "how do I make more money?" is "charge more." And yes — if you're underpricing, raising your prices is often the right call. But sometimes raising prices isn't the right move right now, whether because of your market, your customer base, or your own confidence level. Here's the good news: you can improve your margin without touching your prices at all.
These three strategies focus on the other side of the equation — reducing costs and increasing the value you get from every sale.
Your cost of goods is the single biggest lever for improving margin — and most sellers never revisit it after their first purchase.
If your supplies are 30% of your selling price today, cutting them to 22% (through bulk buying or a better supplier) would increase your margin by 8 percentage points — without changing your prices at all.
Here are the most actionable ways to reduce your supply costs:
- Buy in bulk when cash flow allows — most wholesale suppliers offer significant discounts at higher quantities.
- Compare suppliers regularly — prices change, and loyalty to a supplier shouldn't cost you money.
- Join a buying cooperative or seller group where members pool orders to hit minimum quantities.
- Ask your current supplier directly for a volume discount — you may be surprised how often this works.
- Look for alternative materials that perform identically at a lower cost.
Every scrap of material you throw away, every mistake you redo, every failed batch — these are all hidden costs eating into your margin. Getting more deliberate about how you make things can quietly add significant points to your bottom line.
- Track your waste: how much material do you discard per 10 units made? Even a 5% reduction matters.
- Batch your production — making 20 items at once is almost always more efficient than making 4, four times.
- Standardize your process: write down your steps, nail your quantities, and reduce the experimentation phase.
- Reuse or repurpose off-cuts and scraps where possible.
- Time yourself honestly — then look for one or two places where a small process change saves 10–15 minutes per batch.
Even shaving 10% off your material waste and 15 minutes off your production time per batch can meaningfully shift your effective margin — especially if you're selling in volume.
This is the most overlooked strategy for margin improvement. Bundles and multi-item offers can increase your average order value without requiring you to make more products or cut costs.
Why it works: your fixed costs per order (listing fee, packaging, shipping time, customer service) stay roughly the same whether someone buys one item or three. When they buy three, you spread those fixed costs across a larger revenue base — and your effective margin goes up.
- Create product bundles at a slight discount (e.g., 3 for $28 instead of $10 each) — the buyer feels like they're winning, and you earn more per packaging and shipping interaction.
- Offer free shipping on orders over a threshold — this encourages larger carts and offsets your per-order costs.
- Cross-list complementary products together and write listing descriptions that naturally reference each other.
- Create gift sets from existing inventory — the same products at a higher combined price point, justified by the packaging and curation value.
The Compound Effect
The real power of these strategies is that they stack. Cut supply costs by 8%, reduce waste by 5%, and increase average order value by 20% — and suddenly your business looks completely different without a single price increase.
Start with whichever one feels most manageable today. Even one small improvement, consistently applied, adds up to real money over the course of a year.