THE CURRICULUM / Conclusion

6.2Product Cheat Sheet

Scorecard, red flags, landed cost, gate.

5 min read

Three in the morning, seventeen tabs deep, and the product in front of you looks perfect. It always does at this hour. The four tables below exist because at three in the morning you are not a person who says no.

Two paths to a sale, each answered against the same four questions. Selling into demand that already exists: the buyer arrives already wanting something like it, you are paying to be found and to be picked, the buyer only has to choose because they are already looking, and you are up against everyone selling the same thing. Trying to invent demand: the buyer is not looking for it or for you, you are paying for the explaining because every view has to teach, the buyer must first agree the problem is theirs, and you are up against everything else on the screen. One path asks the buyer to choose, the other asks them to change. Neither path is costed here.
One path asks the buyer to choose. The other asks them to change.

Product scorecard

CriterionStrongWeakEvidence
Existing demandAlready existsMust be invented—
DemonstrabilityVisible on cameraNothing to see—
Margin headroom (gate)Survives landed costNeeds an unproven price—
Shipping profileLight, compact, robustHeavy, fragile, battery—
DifferentiationA reason to buy yoursIdentical listing—
SaturationAngles still narrowHeld by bigger operators—
Return riskFit easy to setCommonly sent back—
Supply reliability (gate)Backup testedOne source—
Compliance riskNo restricted claimClaim or category restricted—
Repeat potentialAn obvious second purchaseOne purchase only—

Not an average. Weak on a gate ends it. Evidence, never verdicts.

A nine-point tick list a product must clear before you spend anything on it, drawn as a form with a hairline box beside every line. Demand, competition and margin each take a line; then demand evidence from outside your own feed spread across months, every guessed figure marked on the sheet as a guess, delivery inside the patience of the person buying, a buyer described as more than anyone, one thing you will change that is not being cheaper, and a test budget you can lose with the judging date set now. The verdict rule at the foot is absolute: if any box is unticked it is not a candidate. Acceptable on all three gates beats spectacular on one. No scores, thresholds or targets appear anywhere.
The same ten rows as a pass or fail card. Two of them are gates, and a gate does not average.
Contribution per order plotted against cost per order. The line falls in a straight diagonal because every extra unit of cost comes straight out of contribution, and it crosses zero at one point: above that point every sale pays you, below it every sale costs you. The axes carry no magnitudes.
Margin is a gate, not a score.

RED FLAGS

The chain from an order placed with a supplier to a parcel delivered, with the break points marked between the links. After the order is placed it can turn out the item was never actually in stock, which leaves you having promised a date nobody else agreed to. After it is picked and packed the wrong variant can be in the box, which costs a return you pay for and a review you cannot edit. In transit the tracking can stop updating, so the customer asks you and you know nothing either. At the border it can be held, taxed or turned back, so the customer is asked for money nobody mentioned. The parcel is then delivered, or marked delivered and never received. Every link is somebody else's job and every break is still yours. No failure rate or transit time is shown.
Every link belongs to somebody else. Every break is still yours.

Signals that stop a product dead

SignalWhy
Trademarks, patents, counterfeitsTakedowns, not a lost test
Certification you cannot meetThe obligation follows the seller
Delivery time you would not printIt comes back as a refund
Category owned by a trusted brandThe ad overcomes that alone
A buyer describable only as everyoneCreative for everyone lands nowhere
The only evidence is an ad you sawSpending is not earning
You cannot film or photograph itSupplier images, like everyone

The ones the scorecard misses.

ONE FLAG ENDS IT.

creative does not repair a takedown

A worked example taking one selling price apart. An insulated stainless steel drink bottle is listed at seventy nine dollars ninety five in Australian dollars. Seven lines are removed in order: unit cost ex works eleven forty, freight and import duty three sixty, GST remitted seven twenty seven which is the price divided by eleven, payment processing one seventy at one point seven five per cent plus thirty cents, pack and deliver in Australia twelve ninety nine, returns and replacements one twelve, and apps and platform one eighty seven. Those seven come to thirty nine ninety five, leaving forty dollars of contribution before advertising. Advertising then takes twenty eight dollars per order, leaving twelve dollars, which is fifteen per cent of the price. It is a worked example, not a quote and not a result.
WORKED EXAMPLE. One product in AUD, line by line, down to what is left. Your numbers go in the table below.

Landed cost per order

LineIncludesFigureMeasured or assumed
Product costSupplier price paid——
Inbound freight and dutyPlus customs——
Outbound shippingPlus surcharges——
Packaging, pick and packBox, labels, handling——
Payment feesPercentage, fixed, cross-border——
Platform and app feesPer order——
Discount leakageRedeemed, not intended——
Returns, refunds, breakageValue, shipping, dead stock——
ChargebacksValue plus fee——
Support costMessages per order——
Contribution before adsPrice minus everything above——
Ad cost per orderAccount spend over orders——
Contribution after adsWhat covers fixed costs——
One refund traced through every line it lands on. The product is not back on the shelf: it is with the buyer, in the post back, or not coming back at all. The shipping out is already spent, because the carrier moved it once and that work is done and paid for. The shipping back is paid by someone, and if you take the order back the return leg is a second freight cost on one order. The ad spend is already spent: it bought this order, the order went away, and the spend did not go with it. The processor fee depends on your own agreement, which sets what comes back and what is kept. Your time is the line nobody bills you for: the message, the decision, the paperwork, and the next one arriving behind it. The sale reverses; the costs it already made do not. No amounts, fee percentages or refund rates are shown.
The sale reverses. The costs it already made do not.

THE GATE

The store's pre-launch gate as a seven-box tick list, drawn as a form with a hairline box beside every line. Place a real order with a real card on a phone, arriving the way an ad sends people. Check the descriptor on the statement, refund it, confirm the refund lands and read the email. Open every footer link on a phone with no template wording left in a policy. Load the store on mobile data with the cache cleared, then a variant product, then one that is out of stock. Compare shipping zones against ad targeting country by country. Confirm the page price is the checkout price and tax matches registration and destination. Hand it to a stranger, have them buy it while narrating, and do not help. The verdict rule at the foot is absolute: if any box is unticked, do not buy traffic yet. Below it are the conditions that stop a launch outright, whatever else is ticked.
Nine lines, all of them free. Every one of them costs money to discover after the first click.

Before you pay for a click

GatePasses whenStatus
Landed cost completeA figure or assumption per line—
Checkout testedReal order placed and refunded—
Tracking verifiedTest purchase appears once, correctly—
Reads to a strangerWhat, how much, when—
Delivery time statedReal window, page and checkout—
Policies publishedReturns, refunds, shipping, privacy, contact—
Structure written downWhat each campaign tests—
Budget and stop ruleWritten before the first click—
Refund planWhat a broken order costs—

A gate with an exception is not a gate.

A decision tree for what to do with a running ad, ending in kill, hold or scale. The first question is whether it has run the window you agreed to; if it has not, hold, because the window was the decision you already made. If it has, the second question is whether any part of it is still improving; if it is, hold, because changing it now teaches you nothing. If it is not, the third question is whether it pays for itself on your own numbers; if it does not, kill it, because waiting longer will not make it pay. If it does, scale it, one step at a time, on the part that is already paying. Every branch here is a question rather than a number, because the threshold is the reader's own and is written down before the window starts.
Every branch is a question, not a number. The threshold is yours, written down first.

TAKEAWAYS

  • Margin headroom and supply reliability are gates. A weak gate ends the evaluation.
  • Red flags predict failures better creative, a better page and more budget cannot repair.
  • Landed cost is every deduction between a customer paying and money staying with you.
  • Mark every figure measured or assumed, so a guess is never mistaken for fact.

CHECK YOURSELF

Which landed-cost lines are most often omitted, and why does the omission matter?

What is the purpose of the pre-launch gate?

DO THIS BEFORE THE NEXT MODULE

  1. 01Run your current candidate through the full scorecard, filling the evidence column with facts rather than adjectives.
  2. 02Complete the landed-cost table end to end, marking each figure measured or assumed.
  3. 03Write one sentence per red flag confirming it is absent, with the reason.
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