Postage price hikes? How do you update shipping rates on listings

Jay and Ryanne have mentioned in the past that they have calculated shipping just for this reason. In the beginning, I started with free shipping on some items going first class. I’ve moved most items to calculated shipping this year. The only items I do free shipping on is some newer books. The reason is because of the competition. I will be getting rid of most of those books in the first quarter next year.

If you are selling unique items that don’t have much competition, then free vs. calculated shipping doesn’t make much of a different in getting the sale. If you have a commodity item, and the customer might be searching using the free shipping filter, then there is a reason to include shipping in your price. Most of us here don’t deal with commodity items, so calculated shipping makes sense.

BTW, I took a look at the shipping increases, and they are very small. Most are a $0.05 increase. So, if you want to change over to calculated, you can do that little by little. Your flat rate prices should be close enough.

Yes, its small increase this time. As Sharyn says, just 5-cents on all package methods.

But we do calculated shipping so we dont have to worry about anything. eBay just adjusts shipping as things change. No idea how sellers manually deal with changing prices every time USPS ups their rates.

Agree with Sahryn and Jay. We do the same. Have only done “calculated” shipping for years just because of this. Using calculated shipping makes it automatic and no adjusting is ever needed.

Also using former business models from the larger company’s I have ran, I have always considered our shipping dept. as a “profit center”. No dept. in my companies were profit losers or sucked up profits from other depts. If we got FedEx, UP, USPS discounts we never passed those along. Everything we bought, used and or furnished was marked up according to our standard company policies. I still do that to this day in our small online e-commerce sites.

Every single thing you us, buy, supply that goes into your cost of providing your service, your product or getting that product or service to your customer should have an original ocst associated with it and a sufficient mark-up to offset internal costs and make a profit to boot. At least in our – my opinion.

Statement like, it is a wash, it all comes out in the end, I make it on some, just cover on others and loose on some gives me the shivers. No such thing in American Capitalism. Buy for a dollar and sell for 3 or 4 or what the market will bare. Within reason of course, especially in the shipping area, but what my customers may pay $8.95 to ship I pay around $6 give or take.

We always put in the approx. box size we are going to use, but if under 1,728 cubic inches over all size doesn’t have to be that accurate as long as you stay under. It’s more the wieght. We have a chart we go by and depending on the overall boz size we enter [always is about 2″ bigger all around than the bare object itself], we enter our estimated shipping weight. Most of the time [90% +/-] we make a dollar to $3 off of our calculated shipping process.

Again all of this is just our opinion .. but the MBA School of thought is more of what we try to go by.

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta

Most of my store is calculated shipping, but a fair number of my first class items are flat rate, in 3 classes: small, medium, and large. I find it easier to list First Class postage items this way, it keeps the shipping rate low in the buyer’s eyes and I still make a tiny profit (Mike! LOL) I also have some items that are variables, and so charge a flat rate so that I can add the additional postage cost on if folks buy more than one item.

The saving grace for me in times of rate hikes is that I use the Policies option. For me to adjust any item, I just go to the relevant Shipping Policy, change the price, and it updates every listing with that policy. So, instead of updating hundreds of items, I change about 4 policies.

Almost all of my items are calculated shipping for the reasons already mentioned.

When I am listing an item I weigh it and add 1 pound for the box and packing materials. If the item is extra large then I add 2 pounds. Then I add an additional $2.00 shipping and handling charge!

Regarding the handling charge, I started it way back when eBay started charging fees on shipping as a way to lessen the impact of that change. I have had very few complaints over the years and I don’t think it decreases sales on one of a kind items.

For those of you who sell hundreds of items a month adding a handling charge could provide a nice income boost. Why not give it a try? If you find it decreases sales you could always remove it.