Some products can have attractive gross margins, but no category guarantees a profit—and “up to 100%” is not a typical outcome established by the available evidence. These 33 ideas are candidates to research, not a ranked list of proven best sellers. To choose among them, compare what customers will pay with product, fulfillment, platform, marketing, and other costs, then distinguish gross margin from the money your business actually keeps.
What “high profit margin” means for a product
Gross margin measures the share of net sales remaining after product cost. Shopify Help Center’s formula is (net sales − cost) ÷ net sales × 100. Net sales can fall when discounts or refunds are applied, and the report’s result depends on the costs entered for the product and its variants. See Shopify’s profit-report documentation.
Gross margin is not net operating profit. Advertising, labor, software, samples, packaging, payment and platform charges, shipping subsidies, returns, taxes, and other operating expenses can reduce what remains. A markup percentage also is not a margin percentage: selling an item for twice its cost is a 100% markup, but a 50% gross margin before other costs.
Shopify’s 2026 guide puts the principle plainly: “The products with the highest profit margins are those in which the cost to make something is significantly less than the price customers are willing to pay for it.” That is a relationship to test for a specific offer, not a promise attached to a product category. Shopify cites a 33.18% average gross profit margin across retail from NYU Stern School of Business as context; it should not be treated as an ecommerce target or an expected margin for any individual seller.
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33 product ideas to investigate
The examples below are product categories, not an independently verified ranking of 33 best sellers. The Shopify 2026 guide identifies these as possible areas to explore; it does not establish that every example sells well now or will be profitable for a new seller.
Digital products and services
- Ebooks
- Online courses
- Photography presets
- Design templates
- Music and audio downloads
- Software
A digital copy can have low incremental reproduction, inventory, packaging, and shipping costs after the work is created. But development time, customer support, promotion, platform and payment charges, and refunds still belong in the economics.
Specialty physical goods
- Phone cases
- Tote bags
- Kitchen gadgets
- Watches
- Pet products
- Trading-card collectibles
Shopify’s guide gives phone-case wholesale and retail figures attributed to Podbase’s 2025 market data. Those figures are an attributed illustration—not a current supplier quote, universal price, or evidence of present demand. A consumer retail purchase price may leave little or no room for resale profit.
Beauty and personal care
- Serums
- Moisturizers
- Cleansers
- Hair treatments
- Lip products
- Body care
These examples come from Shopify’s 2026 guide. It also relays a beauty-and-skin-care average gross-margin figure sourced to BusinessQuant and a price example sourced to Dewsy; the scope of those secondary claims is not independently established here. They should not be read as typical results for every product or brand.
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- Private-label skin care
- Custom clothing
- Private-label jewelry
- Fashion accessories
- Private-label health and wellness products
Private label means a manufacturer makes goods to a retailer’s specifications for sale under the retailer’s brand. Shopify reports U.S. private-label sales of $282.8 billion, citing PLMA’s 2025 figure. That is an all-retail-channel figure, not ecommerce-only sales, and category scale says nothing by itself about an individual seller’s profitability.
Health and wellness
- Resistance bands
- Yoga mats
- Protein powders
- Vitamins and supplements
- Weighted blankets
- Recovery tools
Shopify’s guide cites a Polaris Market Research forecast of 7.9% compound annual growth through 2034 for the U.S. dietary-supplement market. A growing market does not establish that a particular product can win customers profitably; consider competition, product claims and compliance, quality, fulfillment, and repeat-purchase economics.
Made-to-order and third-party-fulfilled products
- Print-on-demand apparel
- Print-on-demand wall art
- Print-on-demand mugs
- Dropshipped specialty products
Dropshipping generally means a third party manufactures, stores, or ships products; print-on-demand is a made-to-order subset. These models can reduce the need to hold inventory, but do not remove per-order production, shipping, platform, payment, returns, or marketing costs. Shopify reports large market estimates and growth forecasts for dropshipping and print-on-demand, but those estimates are not evidence of product-level profitability and should not be combined into a single market figure.
How to test whether a product can make money
Use the same assumptions, geography, sales channel, and time period when comparing candidates. A category with a theoretically cheap unit cost can still be a poor business if customers are hard to reach, prices are heavily competed down, or returns and fulfillment costs are high.
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| Check | Questions to answer |
|---|---|
| Demand and competition | What evidence shows customers want this offer? Is demand seasonal? How saturated is the market, how strong are incumbents, and how much price competition is there? |
| Unit economics | What is the expected net selling price after discounts and refunds? Subtract unit cost and relevant labor, materials, printing, platform and payment charges, and shipping. Track both gross-margin percentage and dollars retained. |
| Fulfillment | What are the product’s size, weight, fragility, packaging needs, delivery time, supplier reliability, and return-handling requirements? |
| Price tolerance and differentiation | Why would customers choose this offer, and what are they willing to pay for its design, quality, niche relevance, personalization, or brand? A premium price can reduce sales if it exceeds what the market accepts. |
| Cash and operating risk | Include inventory commitments, samples, defects, refunds, ad spend, subscriptions, currency effects, and working capital. Made-to-order fulfillment may reduce inventory exposure but still has costs on every order. |
Shopify’s 2025 survey of 500 established merchants—each with at least two years on Shopify and based in Australia, Canada, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, or the US—found that 79% said they used profits to self-fund business growth, while 20% regretted scaling based on customer demand alone. Shopify cautions that this sample may not represent all merchants. The practical implication is to test unit economics and cash needs before treating demand as a reason to scale.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Example: a print-on-demand order is not a 100% margin
Shopify’s 2026 print-on-demand guide illustrates a $35 sale with $13 for production and printing, $0.70 in platform fees, $1.32 in payment processing, and $5 of shipping absorbed by the seller. Under those assumptions, $14.98 remains, or about 43% of the sale. It is an illustrative calculation, not an average seller result.
That remaining amount is not necessarily operating profit. Shopify notes that sample orders, returns, design tools, advertising, and currency conversion are additional costs to model. A seller should use their own provider’s base cost, shipping by destination, fees, and return policy rather than carry the example’s assumptions into a forecast.
Why “up to 100% margin” needs a reality check
The available category and calculation evidence does not establish that sellers commonly achieve 100% margins. If a product has any cost, its gross margin is below 100% when measured against sales; operating expenses reduce net profit further. The phrase “up to” can only describe an exceptional ceiling under particular pricing and cost assumptions, not a typical result or guarantee.
For positioning, Shopify’s guide quotes Underlining founder Razvan Romanescu describing an “accessible luxury” approach: “We’re not trying to sell at the highest price points. But we’re trying to give people the product quality, the product packaging, the same experience as if you were to go spend a ridiculous amount on some of the luxury brands, but at a price point that’s slightly higher than just a mass price point.” A compelling customer proposition can support willingness to pay, but the actual margin still depends on costs, volume, and the seller’s ability to reach those customers.
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