Top-ups: the second eSIM sale

The second sale costs nothing to make

Every reseller’s margin post, including ours, subtracts the same list from the retail price: wholesale cost, gateway fee, the share of the subscription, and the cost of getting the customer there in the first place. That last line is the one that varies most and the one that decides whether a store is profitable. It is also the line that is zero on a top-up.

A top-up is bought by someone who already found you, already paid you, already installed the eSIM and is already connected on it. They are not searching, not comparing, not reading reviews. They are on their own order page, five days into a trip, watching a bar turn amber, and the button that solves it is yours. There is no channel to pay and no partner to share with. The whole retail price, less wholesale and the gateway fee, is margin.

A store’s repeat rate — the share of buyers who bought more than once — is the single number that says whether it is a business or a series of one-off sales. Top-ups are the fastest way to move it, because the second purchase happens inside the same trip.

How a top-up actually works

The mechanics are worth being precise about, because the customer’s mental model is usually wrong and the wrong model produces support tickets.

• A top-up loads more data onto an eSIM the customer already has. It is not a new eSIM: there is no new QR code, nothing to scan and nothing to install.
• It applies to the same profile on the same phone, and it is bought from the same provider the original eSIM came from — a top-up cannot cross providers.
• The expiry date does not move. A top-up adds gigabytes, not days. A customer topping up an eSIM that ends tomorrow is buying data for one day, and the page should say so before they pay.
• It appears in your orders like any other order, and against the same eSIM in your eSIM list, tagged as a top-up rather than a purchase. Your margin on it is reported the same way.

The expiry rule is the one to put in front of the customer, in plain words, at the moment of purchase. It is also the argument for selling slightly longer validities than the trip strictly needs: a fourteen-day eSIM on a ten-day trip can be topped up on day nine; a ten-day one cannot.

The arithmetic of a repeat customer

Take a five-gigabyte package sold for $15 against a $10 wholesale cost, a gateway taking three per cent, and an acquisition cost of $3 per new customer — a modest figure for a partner share or a destination page’s share of your time. Then add a two-gigabyte top-up sold for $7 against a $4.50 cost. Round numbers, chosen to be checked rather than believed.

The top-up added $7 of revenue and $2.29 of profit — a 33 per cent margin on the second order against 10 per cent on the first. It more than doubled what the customer was worth, and it did so with nothing spent to find them.

Why the margin is higher on the second sale

Nothing about the top-up itself is cheaper; the wholesale margin is the same percentage. What changed is that the fixed costs of the relationship — finding the customer, converting them, supporting the install — were paid by the first order. The second one inherits a customer who is already set up. That is why the sensible way to price a first sale is not “what margin does this order carry” but “what does this customer carry, including the top-up they buy on day five”.

Making the second sale happen

Top-ups sell themselves only if the customer can find the button at the moment they need it. Five things put it there.

1. Make the order page permanent and easy to return to. The delivery email should carry a link that never expires and always shows current status and remaining data; tell the customer to keep it.
2. Show remaining data on that page, with a warning colour under a threshold. A customer who can see they have a fifth left buys before they run out; one who finds out by losing service buys from whoever they can reach.
3. List top-ups for every package you sell — at least one size — and check the shelf for gaps. A destination whose eSIM has no top-up in your catalog sends that customer to somebody else on day five.
4. Price top-ups as repeat revenue, not as a hook. The customer is not comparing; a fair markup earns well without the feeling of being cornered, which is what turns a top-up into a one-star review.
5. Sell validity with room in it. A package a few days longer than the trip is the one that can be topped up near the end; one that expires on the last day cannot.

On Esimbit, a delivered order’s page offers “Add more data” with the top-ups your catalog carries for that eSIM, and the customer pays through your gateway exactly as before. You cannot push a top-up from the panel — it is the customer’s purchase — so the shelf and the order page are the whole of your influence over it.

What to watch, and what not to promise

Three numbers tell you whether the second sale is happening, and two promises are the ones that turn it into a refund.

• Top-ups as a share of orders. Healthy stores see a steady fraction; a store with none has a shelf gap or an order page nobody returns to.
• Repeat rate and lifetime value on your customer list. Both should rise as the top-up shelf fills in, and both are what an investor or a buyer of your store will ask for.
• Data-left readings that fail. A customer staring at yesterday’s figure does not buy a top-up today; check the eSIMs whose usage cannot be read and chase your provider about them.

Do not promise that a top-up extends the eSIM’s validity — it does not — and do not sell a top-up onto an eSIM that has expired or was never activated; the provider will not load it and you will be refunding a sale you could have declined. Both rules belong on the page, in the words a traveller reads on a phone.

• eSIM reseller margins, all the way down →
• Which eSIM packages to sell →
• Answering your customers →