A five euro digital download is a common starting price on a marketplace. It is low enough to be an easy decision for a buyer and high enough to be worth listing. What is less obvious is how much of that five euro reaches the seller.
Fees change, so treat the structure below as the method and check the current published rates before relying on any figure.
The listing fee
Etsy charges a small fixed listing fee per item, currently in the region of 0.20 US dollars, and charges it again each time a listing renews after a sale or after four months.
For a digital file that sells regularly this is minor but not zero. Ten sales in four months means the listing fee is paid roughly eleven times across that period.
The transaction fee
A percentage of the total order, including any delivery charge, is taken as a transaction fee. At a rate around six and a half per cent, a five euro sale gives up roughly 0.33 euro.
Payment processing
Payment processing is charged separately and varies by country. A typical structure is a percentage of the sale plus a small fixed amount, for example four per cent plus 0.30 euro. On five euro that is about 0.50 euro.
The fixed component is what makes low prices inefficient. It costs the same on a five euro sale as on a fifty euro one.
Optional advertising
Offsite advertising fees apply when a sale comes from an advertisement Etsy placed. The rate is meaningful, commonly twelve or fifteen per cent, and for smaller shops participation can be mandatory once a sale arrives through that route.
If it applies, another 0.60 to 0.75 euro leaves a five euro order.
What is left
Without advertising: roughly 5.00 minus 0.33 transaction, 0.50 processing and about 0.18 listing gives close to 4.00 euro.
With offsite advertising applied: closer to 3.30 euro.
Then value added tax may apply to the sale depending on the buyer's location and your registration status, and income tax applies to the profit. The four euro figure is gross, not take home.
The practical conclusion
At five euro, marketplace mechanics take roughly twenty per cent, and more when advertising applies. The number of sales required to reach a useful monthly figure is therefore high. Two hundred euro a month of retained income means roughly fifty to sixty sales.
Reasonable responses
Raise the price. Moving from five to twelve euro barely changes the fee percentage but more than doubles the retained amount per sale, because the fixed components stop dominating.
Bundle. Three related files at twelve euro face the same fixed costs once instead of three times.
Use the marketplace for discovery and your own list for the second sale, where you keep more of the price and control the relationship.
What this does not tell you
It does not tell you whether your product will sell, how many competing listings exist, or whether the current fee schedule will hold. Platform fees and policies change, sometimes with short notice, and any plan that only works at today's exact rates is fragile.