Your Best-Selling SKU Might Be Losing Money: SKU-Level Profit for Malaysian Sellers
Short answer: Your top seller by units can lose money on every order once you subtract its real category commission, heavy-item shipping, bundle-corrupted COGS, ads and affiliate payouts. An aggregate P&L nets your winners against your losers, so the bleeding SKU stays invisible until you calculate net profit per SKU and rank by profit contribution, not by units.
SKU net profit = Selling price − Platform fees − COGS − Allocated ad spend − Affiliate commission − Seller-borne shipping
Why does aggregate profit hide a losing SKU?
A single monthly P&L is one big subtraction: total revenue minus total cost. If ten SKUs make RM 12,000 and one SKU quietly loses RM 1,000, the report still shows RM 11,000 and you feel fine. The loss is real, it is just averaged away.
On Shopee and TikTok Shop the danger is worse, because the SKUs that lose money are often the ones you push hardest: the discounted hero product in your live, the heavy item you run ads on, the bundle you built for 11.11. High visibility, high volume, and — sometimes — negative margin per order.
What quietly turns a bestseller into a loss
- Category-specific commission. Commission is category-based (roughly 10.26% all-in on the Feb 2026 rate card for many categories, but higher for some — confirm your own on the official Seller Centre rate card). A category two or three points higher, multiplied across thousands of units, is a silent margin killer.
- Bundle mispricing corrupting COGS. When you sell "buy 2 free 1" or a mixed bundle under one price, the platform fee and the true cost of goods must be split across every component. Split it wrong and each SKU inside the bundle reports a margin that never existed.
- Heavy items and shipping. A 2 kg product you subsidise shipping on carries a real seller-borne cost per order that light items do not. Free-shipping programme fees plus the weight make heavy bestsellers structurally thinner.
- Discount-funded velocity. A SKU only sells fast because it is 30% off, and the discount comes straight out of your margin — not the platform's. Volume looks like success; the per-unit economics say otherwise.
- Affiliate and ad load. The SKUs creators push hardest carry the highest affiliate commission and the most ad spend. That cost belongs to those specific SKUs, not spread evenly across the catalogue.
Worked example: two SKUs, opposite truths
Here are two SKUs from the same store for one month. SKU A is the "bestseller" everyone celebrates. SKU B is a quiet performer nobody talks about. All figures illustrative — confirm your own category rates.
| Per unit (RM) | SKU A "Bestseller" | SKU B "Quiet earner" |
|---|---|---|
| Selling price | 59.00 | 45.00 |
| Platform fees (all-in + RM 0.54) | 11.69 | 6.86 |
| COGS (bundle-adjusted) | 30.00 | 15.00 |
| Seller-borne shipping | 6.00 | 1.00 |
| Allocated ad spend | 8.00 | 2.00 |
| Affiliate commission | 5.90 | 0.00 |
| Net profit per unit | −2.59 | 20.14 |
| Units sold | 400 | 120 |
| GMV | 23,600 | 5,400 |
| Net profit for the month | −1,036 | +2,417 |
SKU A tops the GMV chart at RM 23,600 and loses RM 1,036. SKU B does a fifth of the revenue and earns more than twice as much in real money. If you ranked by units, you would double down on the exact SKU draining your bank account. See how the full fee stack builds up in real profit on TikTok Shop and Shopee.
How to rank SKUs the right way
- Compute net profit per SKU in RM, then sort by that column. Not by units, not by GMV. The RM contribution is the only number that pays rent.
- Flag anything with negative or near-zero net margin even if it sells well — especially heavy items, deep-discount heroes, and bundle components.
- Fix, do not just cut. A losing bestseller often becomes a winner with a small price move, a lighter shipping option, a trimmed affiliate rate, or a rebuilt bundle. See how to price working backward from margin.
- Re-check after returns. A SKU with a high return rate loses its refunded fees too — the true cost of returns can flip a marginal SKU negative.
You can build this in a spreadsheet if you allocate ads and shipping honestly and split bundle costs by hand. Model your own numbers with the profit margin calculator.
The Inseller angle
This is exactly the blind spot Inseller was built to close. It connects Shopee and TikTok Shop and shows real net profit per order and per SKU using actual reconciled fees — not rate-card estimates — so the RM 1,036 your bestseller quietly loses each month stops being invisible. It was built by a seller who got tired of celebrating GMV while the margin leaked out of the products they pushed hardest.