Before every big sale, Seller Centre starts asking for your nominations. The process usually goes like this: Drop your price for your nominated products, add a shop voucher, and Shopee will feature your products during 11.11 and 12.12.
It’s tempting to join in these mega sales because the ads are everywhere. But after joining the last sale, you might have felt that it made you busier but not richer.
So, is nominating for 11.11 and 12.12 on Shopee worth it for your shop?
The only way to answer this is to use some math. How many extra units does the campaign have to sell before you earn the same profit as a normal day? Let’s work it out below with Shopee’s current fees.
What Shopee Asks For When You Nominate
Shopee publishes a campaign checklist before each Double-Digit sale in its Campaign To Do guide. Based on the 9.9 checklist from 7 September 2026, this is what you need:
Your price has to beat last month. Products nominated for a Price Teaser campaign must be priced at least 4% below last month’s lowest price. That lowest price doesn’t count earlier spike-day prices (the 15th, the 25th and Double-Digit days), Flash Deal prices, Super Brand Days or category campaigns.
So a discount you ran on an ordinary Tuesday does count. If you cut your price on a quiet day last month, then your 11.11 price has to go 4% below that.
Shop vouchers have set formats. To get the campaign label on your products, a nominated shop voucher has to use one of three mechanics:
| Voucher type | Minimum spend (no higher than) | Discount cap (no lower than) |
|---|---|---|
| 12% off | $50 | $6 |
| 10% off | $100 | $10 |
| 15% off, co-funded | $40 | $6 |
Shopee’s checklist doesn’t say how the cost of the 15% co-funded voucher is split, so check the terms in Seller Centre before you choose it.
A few smaller rules from the same checklist:
- Penalty points: shops with 3 or more penalty points may lose access to campaign nominations.
- Early access: nominated deep-discount prices go live from 12am the day before for ShopeeVIP subscribers, so your sale price runs longer than the sale day itself.
- Approval timing: nomination status is posted by 7pm the day before the campaign. You won’t know for sure whether you’re in until the night before.
- Stock: you can nominate with promo stock set to “0” (no limit), and opt out before the deadline if you can’t get the stock in.
- Ads: Shopee advises sellers to set up or increase their ads 2 weeks before spike days.
For 9.9, the checklist listed two nomination rounds, closing at 5pm on 31 August and 8 September. Shopee also says early nominations have a better chance of extra features, so if you’re going to join, don’t leave it to the last day.
You Still Pay Extra on 11.11 Even If You Don’t Join
This part catches sellers out. If you’re on Promo Xtra, Shopee charges an extra 1.09% spike service fee on orders placed during Double-Digit campaigns, the 15th and the 25th. It applies to every order in that window, whether or not you nominated a single product.
The spike window is longer than the day itself. It runs from 8pm the day before to 11:59pm two days after, so 11.11 fees apply from 8pm on 10 November to the end of 13 November.
Btw, Promo Xtra is the new name for Coins Cashback. We covered what it costs on a normal day in our Shopee vs Lazada vs own website comparison.
One Order on a Normal Day and on 11.11
Here’s an illustrative example. A non-Mall seller on Promo Xtra sells a general-category product (fashion, skincare, home goods) for $50, and hasn’t discounted it in the last month.
For 11.11, they nominate it at $48, exactly 4% lower. They also nominate the 12% shop voucher with a $40 minimum spend and a $6 cap, which takes another $5.76 off.
All rates are GST-inclusive and use Shopee’s 28 August 2026 fees. Each fee is worked out separately and rounded to the cent, the same way our Shopee fees calculator does it.
| Normal day | 11.11, nominated | 11.11, not nominated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listing price | $50.00 | $48.00 | $50.00 |
| 12% shop voucher | n/a | -$5.76 | n/a |
| Buyer pays | $50.00 | $42.24 | $50.00 |
| Commission (10.90%) | $5.45 | $4.60 | $5.45 |
| Promo Xtra service fee | $2.73 (5.45%) | $2.76 (6.54%) | $3.27 (6.54%) |
| Transaction fee (3.27%) | $1.64 | $1.38 | $1.64 |
| Total fees | $9.82 | $8.74 | $10.36 |
| You receive | $40.18 | $33.50 | $39.64 |
The nominated order pays you $6.68 less than a normal day. You gave away $7.76 in discount and voucher, and Shopee’s fees only fell by $1.08, because the commission and transaction fee shrink with the price but the service fee rate goes up.
The seller who sat out still loses $0.54 per order during the spike window. That’s the cost of being on Promo Xtra during a campaign, whatever you decide.
One thing works in your favour. Shopee calculates its fees on gross settlement, which adds Shopee-funded vouchers back in. So when a buyer uses a Shopee voucher on your product, your payout stays the same. It’s your own discounts and shop vouchers that come out of your pocket.
How Many Extra Sales Does 11.11 Need?
Fees alone don’t tell you whether a campaign works. What matters is profit, so you need your cost of goods: what you paid for the product, plus packaging.
Say the seller normally sells 100 units in the same period. This table shows how many units 11.11 has to sell to earn the same total profit, at different product costs. It uses the fees from the table above and leaves out shipping and ads.
| Cost per unit | Profit per unit, normal day | Profit per unit, 11.11 nominated | Units needed to match 100 normal sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $30.18 | $23.50 | 129 |
| $15 | $25.18 | $18.50 | 137 |
| $20 | $20.18 | $13.50 | 150 |
| $25 | $15.18 | $8.50 | 179 |
| $30 | $10.18 | $3.50 | 291 |
| $35 | $5.18 | -$1.50 | Never |
A seller with a $10 product cost needs 29% more sales. That’s very doable if the campaign traffic shows up.
A seller with a $30 product cost needs almost 3 times the sales to stand still. At $35, every campaign order loses money, so more volume only makes it worse.
That’s why sellers can have a record 11.11 and a bad November. The order count goes up, and the profit goes down.
And this table is the best case. It doesn’t include:
- Ads: Shopee’s own checklist tells you to ramp up ads 2 weeks before spike days. That spend comes out of the same shrinking margin.
- Affiliate commission: if creators promote your products through Shopee’s Affiliate Marketing Solution, their commission is charged on top.
- 12.12 straight after: 12.12 is another Double-Digit campaign, with the same 4% rule and the same spike fee, 31 days later. Two back-to-back campaigns means buying stock for both before you’ve been paid for the first.
We looked at how sellers are responding to these costs more broadly in Shopee fees keep going up, including the ones who now sit out mega sales altogether.
So, Should You Nominate for 11.11 and 12.12?
Work out your own version of the table first. Plug your price, voucher and category into the Shopee fees calculator with the campaign day option on, then subtract your product cost.
Nominating makes more sense if:
- Your margin is wide. If your product cost is well under half your selling price, the break-even volume stays reachable.
- You have stock you need to clear. Selling at a thin margin can beat holding stock into the new year, especially seasonal items.
- You’re a new seller still inside the commission waiver. Shopee gives new sellers 120 days with no commission. If that window covers 11.11 or 12.12, the maths looks very different, and the reviews from campaign orders will outlast the waiver.
- You’d use it to win first-time buyers. A campaign order is a chance to get your packaging, a thank-you card and your own contact details into a new customer’s hands.
Sitting it out makes more sense if:
- Your product cost is above 60% of your price. At that point, the table says you need 3 times the sales or more.
- Most of your buyers are already regulars. They would have bought from you anyway, so the discount goes to people you didn’t need to win.
- You can’t fulfil a spike on time. Late shipments can turn into penalty points, and 3 penalty points can shut you out of future campaigns.
There’s a middle option too. Shopee’s own campaign FAQ says sellers who can’t meet the campaign criteria can set up their own discounts on spike day using Seller Centre’s promotion tools. You pick the products and the discount yourself, but you won’t get the campaign features that nominated products get.
Running Your Own 11.11 Sale Instead
Shopee doesn’t own the date. Nothing stops you from running an 11.11 sale on your own store the same week.
Take the same $48 product with the same $5.76 voucher. On a WooCommerce store with our PayNow plugin, the buyer pays $42.24 and you keep $42.24. There’s no commission, no service fee, no spike fee and no transaction fee. That’s $8.74 more per order than the Shopee campaign order, and still $2.06 more than a normal Shopee day at full price.
That changes who the sale is for. On Shopee, a mega sale mainly buys you new customers. On your own store, you can give your regulars a better 11.11 price than your Shopee listing, and still keep more.
Don’t have a store yet? Send your 11.11 price to past customers on WhatsApp and collect payment with a WhatsApp PayNow link or a free PayNow QR code. It costs nothing to set up.
The trade-off: your own store gets no campaign traffic. Nobody browsing the 11.11 homepage will find you. The sale only works on customers you can already reach, through your WhatsApp list, Instagram, email or the card you put in their last parcel. The fixed costs are small, and we broke them down in how much it costs to run a WooCommerce store in Singapore.
So for most small sellers the answer isn’t all or nothing. Use Shopee’s campaign for the products where the margin can take it, and run your own 11.11 for the customers who already know you. If you’re weighing that split more generally, you’re already selling on Shopee, do you still need your own website? walks through it, and our zero-fee selling guide compares the payment options.
Before You Hit Nominate
- Find last month’s lowest price for each product you’re thinking of nominating, leaving out spike days and Flash Deals. Your 11.11 price has to be at least 4% below it.
- Put that price and your voucher into the Shopee fees calculator, with the campaign day option on.
- Subtract your product cost, then divide normal-day profit per unit by campaign profit per unit. That’s how many times your usual sales the campaign has to deliver.
- Nominate only the products where that number looks achievable, and do it early.
- For everything else, message your regulars with your own 11.11 price and a PayNow link.
What’s the most you’ve ever sold on a Shopee mega sale, and did it actually make you more money that month? Tell us, we’d like to hear how the numbers worked out for other sellers.
