Too many ecommerce sellers chase revenue while ignoring the one number that determines whether a business actually makes money.

I’ll admit it. If I logged into my dashboard and saw £100,000 in sales, I’d probably smile for a minute.

Maybe two.

It sounds impressive, doesn’t it? You almost want to tell somebody. “I’ve built a six figure business.” Those words carry weight, even if nobody asks what happened after the money came in.

That’s where things get interesting.

Or uncomfortable.

A recent warning from UK accountant Harvey Dhillon caught my attention because it highlights something I see people overlook again and again. Plenty of ecommerce sellers are watching revenue climb while barely paying attention to profit. Those aren’t the same thing. They never were.

I think social media has made this worse. Revenue screenshots travel fast. Profit screenshots… not so much.

Sales Can Hide a Lot

Revenue is easy to celebrate.

Profit is harder because it forces you to look at the bits you’d rather ignore.

• Marketplace fees.
• Advertising.
• Shipping.
• Returns.
• Payment processing.
• Inventory.
• Tax.

Then something else pops up that you forgot about. It always seems to.

Before long, that impressive £100,000 starts shrinking. Sometimes surprisingly quickly.

I’ve spoken with people who were convinced they had cracked online business. They were busy every day. Orders kept arriving. Notifications never seemed to stop. It felt exciting, although exhausting at the same time.

Then they added everything up.

The excitement faded rather quickly.

Being Busy Isn’t the Same as Being Profitable

This is the part many beginners miss.

More orders often create more work.

More emails.

More customer questions.

More refunds.

More packaging.

More late evenings.

Sometimes I think running an online business can feel like trying to fill a bucket that has a tiny hole in the bottom. Water keeps going in, but you’re never quite sure where it disappears to. It’s an odd comparison, I know, but that’s exactly how low profit margins behave.

And yes, there are businesses where volume works brilliantly. This just isn’t true for every seller.

Look at Products, Not Just Sales

Experienced business owners tend to ask different questions.

Which products actually make money?

Which ones quietly eat into profits?

Which products would you genuinely miss if you stopped selling them tomorrow?

Those questions can change everything.

I’ve seen people remove products that generated lots of sales because they barely produced any profit. It feels backwards at first. Almost wrong. Then a few months later they’re earning more while doing less work.

Funny how that happens.

The Number Worth Tracking

If you only monitor revenue, you’re seeing part of the picture.

The rest lives inside your margins.

Take a closer look at every product.

What does it really cost?

How much time disappears into selling it?

After every fee has been deducted, what actually remains?

Sometimes the answer is encouraging.

Sometimes it’s… well, not.

Either way, at least you’re making decisions based on facts instead of excitement.

As more people continue starting online businesses in 2026, competition isn’t getting any smaller. Advertising costs have remained a challenge across many platforms, and sellers who understand their numbers usually have a much better chance of staying profitable over the long term.

Revenue makes for a nice headline.

Profit keeps the lights on.

That’s the figure I’d rather improve.

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