How to Price Products for Selling Online in Pakistan

Work out your real cost per delivered order, set a margin that survives returns, and decide what to charge for delivery — pricing for sellers in Pakistan.

Plenty of sellers in Pakistan set their price by opening a competitor's page, seeing Rs 1,890, and putting theirs at Rs 1,850. That is not pricing. That is copying a number from someone whose costs you cannot see, who may not be making money either.

A price that works has to cover four things: what the item cost you, what it costs to get it to the buyer's door, what the refused parcels cost you, and the amount you actually want to keep. Usually only the first of those is written down anywhere.

Here is how to work it out, including the bits that are specific to selling here — cash on delivery, courier charges, and buyers who will happily wait for your next sale.

Start with your landed cost, not the competitor's price

Landed cost is everything you spend to have one unit sitting in your room, packed and ready to send.

Say a kurta costs Rs 1,200 from the wholesaler. Add Rs 40 for its share of the market trip and Rs 70 for packaging. Landed cost is Rs 1,310. That is a floor, not a price. If you are still deciding what to stock at all, starting an online shop on a small budget covers that side of it.

Add what it costs to reach the buyer

Courier charges vary a lot — weight slab, in-city versus out-of-city, COD handling fee, and how much volume you do. TCS, Leopards, M&P, PostEx and Trax will each quote you differently, and the rate you get in your first month is rarely the rate you get at 200 parcels a month. Ask for a rate card and use your own number, not one you read online.

Most COD services also deduct a fee on the amount collected and pay you out on a cycle. Terms differ by contract, so ask what the fee is and when the money actually lands before you plan around it.

For our kurta, suppose your all-in courier cost is around Rs 250 a parcel. Cost to deliver one unit: Rs 1,560.

What refused parcels really cost you

When a COD parcel is refused at the door, you lose more than the sale. You have paid the outbound charge, often a return charge on top, and the item comes back needing repacking — sometimes unsellable.

That cost has to be carried by the orders that do get delivered. The maths is easy. If one parcel in ten comes back, and each failed one costs you roughly Rs 500 in charges, you are absorbing about Rs 55 per delivered order. Our kurta now truly costs Rs 1,615.

Count your own refusal rate for one month — refused parcels divided by parcels sent — and build that number in. If it is high, the fix is confirmation and screening, not a lower price; there is more on that in the cash on delivery guide.

What margin should you aim for?

There is no universal percentage, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. A few rules that hold up:

Think in rupees kept, not percent. A 30% margin on a Rs 900 item is Rs 270. One refused parcel wipes out two sales.

Small-ticket items are brutal. Courier is a fixed cost whether the item is Rs 600 or Rs 6,000. Under about Rs 1,000 the delivery eats most of what you make. Either bundle those items, set a minimum order, or stop selling them alone.

Leave room for advertising and for discounts. Boost money comes out of this same margin, not from somewhere else. And if there is no room left, every sale you run is a loss dressed up as marketing.

A useful sanity check: if you sold 50 of these this month at this price, is what is left worth the month you spent? If not, the price is wrong, or the product is.

Delivery included or charged separately?

Both work. Choose on purpose.

Charged separately keeps your margin clean and is what buyers here expect. The downside is that it adds a number at the exact moment someone is deciding, and it pushes the total up.

Included converts better, especially in DMs, because there is nothing left to think about. Just remember you are the one paying it. Free delivery on a Rs 700 item means you are really selling it for 700 minus whatever your courier charges — work out what that actually leaves you before you offer it.

The middle option is usually best: free delivery above a threshold, charged below it. Set the threshold slightly above your average order — if most orders are Rs 1,800, put it at Rs 2,500. It lifts order value and gives you a natural reason to say "add one more piece and delivery is free".

Whatever you pick, state it on the product page and in your first DM reply, before anyone asks. A surprise delivery charge is one of the most common ways an order dies halfway through a conversation, and "DM for price" costs you the buyers who never bother asking at all — the same principle behind selling on Instagram without a website. When costs rise, put the new price on new arrivals and new colours rather than announcing an increase on things people have already seen.

Psychological pricing that actually works in rupees

Make the cash total easy. This is the one most people miss. If the buyer pays Rs 1,950 at the door, the rider needs Rs 50 change from a 2,000 note, and that small friction happens at the worst possible moment. Set the item price so the total payable lands clean — Rs 1,500, Rs 2,000, Rs 3,000. On COD, the number that matters is the total, not the item price.

Price bands matter more than endings. People shop and search in bands: under Rs 1,000, under Rs 2,000, under Rs 5,000. An item at Rs 2,050 falls outside a band that Rs 1,999 sits inside. Those 51 rupees cost you more than they earn.

990 and 1,490 still read cheaper. Use them where you are charging delivery separately or where the buyer pays in advance, and use clean totals where it is cash at the door.

Competing with sellers who are cheaper than you

Sometimes the cheaper seller simply buys better than you — bigger volume, direct from the factory, or importing by the container. Sometimes the cheaper seller is not making money and will be gone by next season. From the outside you cannot tell which one you are looking at, and either way matching is the wrong move: cutting to their number moves your business to a place where one bad month of returns ends it.

What competes instead: real photos of the actual item rather than the supplier's catalogue, replies in minutes, an exchange policy you write down and honour, delivery on the day you promised, and packaging that arrives intact. People pay more to buy from a seller who feels safe. That is what the extra rupees are for.

One honest caveat. If you are consistently dearer than others selling the identical item from the identical market, price is not your problem — your buying is. Change supplier, buy deeper on fewer lines, or move to something a buyer cannot price-check in three seconds.

When to discount, and when not to

Discount when stock is dead, when the size run has broken, when the season has ended, when someone buys multiples, or when a past customer comes back. Multi-buy offers are the best of these because they spread one courier charge across more items.

Do not discount on a new launch. You have just told everyone what it is worth; undercutting that in week one is expensive. Do not discount because the week is slow — slow weeks are almost always a reach or trust problem, and a lower price on a page nobody is seeing is just a smaller number nobody is seeing. And do not discount for one person who haggles in DMs unless you are willing to give the same to everyone, because word travels.

If you need frequent promotions, change their shape — free delivery week, a bundle, a gift with purchase — rather than cutting the number again. A sale every other week teaches customers to wait, and then the discount price quietly becomes the price.

Frequently asked questions

How do I price when I do not know my courier charges yet?

Ask two or three couriers for a rate card before you list anything. If you cannot get one in time, price off the highest number you have heard for your weight and city and correct it once you have real invoices — pricing low and correcting upward is much harder than the reverse.

Should I show delivery separately or roll it into the price?

Roll it in on items over roughly Rs 2,000, where the delivery charge is a small share of the total and "delivery free" converts well. Charge separately on cheaper items, where absorbing it destroys the margin. A free-delivery threshold gives you both.

Is it worth selling items under Rs 1,000 online?

Only as part of a larger order. On its own, courier plus packaging plus a share of returns can take most of what you make. Sell those items as add-ons, in packs, or set a minimum order value.

A buyer says another page sells it cheaper. What should I say?

Say what they get from you — the exchange policy, the delivery timeline, the fact that the photos are of the actual item — and leave the price where it is. If you drop it, you have confirmed that your first price was made up.

Lonecto is a free link in bio with a shop attached, so your prices and delivery terms sit on one page instead of in a hundred DM replies. Orders reach your WhatsApp or Instagram DM with the item, size, quantity, name, address and phone already filled in. It does not handle payment — that stays between you and your buyer. Set one up free.