Free Shipping Thoughts/Advice

[anniethrifts]

Has anyone been hearing sellers that are encouraging free shipping now and that Ebay is headed that direction?

Any thoughts on it? Experiences?

I added some free shipping on clothing items and did notice my sales went up, but wow guys, if I have to go to totally free shipping I’ll have to close my store! With all the fees there’s no way Ebay would be profitable enough for me to stay in it.

And…now to stay Top Rated I’ll have to change to free returns.

Would love anyone’s thoughts on free shipping, if you’re moving towards it, etc.

[sonia]

No plans to do it anytime soon or ever. If I did, I would just raise my prices to cover the cost of shipping. I don’t think the push for Free Shipping is anything super new – I think Ebay has been pushing it for several years now.

You don’t have to have free returns to stay Top Rated. You only need free returns to stay Top Rated Plus.

I’m not Top Rated Plus and don’t spend any time worrying about it. So far it doesn’t seem to have impacted my sales. I guess I’ll see if lack of free returns hurts me or not.

[anniethrifts]

Thank you Sonia! I didn’t realize that was just for Top Rated Plus and thank you for your thoughts on free shipping. I feel the same way, it’s just not financially working for me. Even when I raise my prices I still get the same offers so in the end it just doesn’t work for me.

[ChristineR]

For a long time I resisted free shipping on principle, but about 9 months ago I started adding free shipping to certain items that are under a pound and can go first class or media mail. I also have it on some very high end new items to better compete and presumably show in search. It’s difficult to tell for sure, but I think it helped a bit. One caution is that sometimes the free shipping box seems to get “sticky”, or if I create a brand new listing I need to be careful that the box is checked by default. I’ve been stung a couple of times with $10-15 free shipping surprises on purchased items.

I don’t get many returns so I will be trying out free returns on some items under a pound, maybe more. With all of this, you owe it to yourself to watch your own bottom line when listing and sourcing and anticipate future cost and fee increases. Ebay has steadily increased fees, given us a puny shipping discount, shipping keeps getting pricier, and more online buyers may be getting will comfortable with shipping back returns.

I used to be very list it and forget it, but my current philosophy is that I will try to keep my store more active and go with what Ebay is prioritizing (what they think buyers want) presuming that their search algorithm and filter placement will reward it.

[Anonymous]

Suppose we offer free shipping for a book and someone in Spain buys it and suddenly shipping costs us $25 ?

Anyway to have free shipping in the USA only on a listing?

I do use GSP but suppose the buyer is in a country that the GSP does not service?

[Jay]

Yep, in the new Free Returns program you can exclude international buyers.

[Sigilini]

Being on the extreme left coast, we don’t do “free” shipping on anything over first class and even then I only do free shipping on first class for higher priced items.

We have found that we are much more competitive WITHOUT free shipping by using calculated shipping for items that are collectible but not unique.

Example:

I sold a an empty wine box, which another seller is selling for 78.00 free shipping. He has a lot of these boxes and I have one.

I am on the West Coast, to do “free” shipping, I have to consider that a buyer might be on the extreme East Coast and factor that in to the price. That raises my price for ALL buyers regardless of location and I cannot easily compete with that other seller.

I priced my box at 46.00 plus shipping and figured that a lucky buyer on the West Coast will get a better deal or an East Coast buyer will get about the same deal as buying from the other seller.

The box sold within a few hours of listing to a buyer about 20 miles from me. He got a great deal and I got the price I wanted.

Bonus: I got the box for free at a yard sale.

[Jay]

Excellent point. People who offer “free shipping” (aka “shipping included”) add the most expensive shipping to the cost. So as Sigilini says, their items are actually more expensive to buyers close to them than if the seller just added Calculated Shipping.

This is why I think it’d be great if eBay showed “total cost” on the item page. Cost of item + shipping. Buyers then would get what they want: show me one price when I hit “buy”.

[Author]

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