Maybe an Easier Way to Convert to Shipping Policies

[So Cal Joe]

I was brainstorming today and got this idea. One of the biggest obstacles to converting to shipping polices, is that once it’s turned on, it’s just a nightmare of way too many policies to deal with and consolidate.

This works if you have set up store categories and only have one store category for each listing.

BEFORE YOU TURN ON BUSINESS POLICIES.

Go to your store and create new Store categories. You’ll need to create between 5 and 10 depending on how many shipping policies you intend on using. For example, you may name the 5 new Store categories “First Class Mail, Priority Mail, Flat Rate Padded Envelope, Free Shipping and Local Pickup”. At this point the 5 new categories have no listings in them.

Once you created these, go into the bulk editor and edit your listings, store category by category. For example, appliance category, mens jacket category etc. We will be adding a second store category to each listing. A category like neckties should be easy.. The second category will be “First Class Mail” and can probably be edited in bulk. Other categories with different weights may require more work to add the appropriate second category. In the end each item will have two store categories. This is the time consuming part of the process.

The beauty of this method is that a lot of the work can be done in an organized fashion and over time, without the chaos created shortly after business policies are turned on. Remember we have not turned on the business policies yet.

So you’ll go through each store category, listing by listing and assign each listing a second category. The second category will be one of the ones created above, such as First Class Mail or Priority Mail.

After you have done this to all your listings and each has a second category, you should be ready for business policies.

NOW YOU CAN TURN ON YOUR BUSINESS SHIPPING POLICIES.

Blamo.. Chaos… What is Happening..?

Create 5 Business Shipping Policies Similar to the 5 Secondary Store categories above.

Go back into the Bulk Editor and Edit your listings by category again. We will be using the Secondary categories now. For example start with “First Class Mail” category and Bulk edit them all into the First Class Mail shipping policy… Next go to the Priority Mail Store category and Bulk Edit them into the Priority Mail Shipping Policy. Things should go pretty quick now.

Once you’re done, all you listings should be consolidated into 5 Business Shipping Policies. Of course, you can use more, but I’m trying to keep the illustration simple.

I have not tried this, as I have had business/shipping policies turned on for quite a while. If there are any obvious errors, please let me know. If you do it and it works, please comment.

Good Luck

[Amatino]

SoCal, you can bulk edit your listings in the shipping policies editor when you activate the shipping policies. eBay’s bots sort them all in to (admittedly a LOT of) policies, from where you can bulk edit all the listings within each policy. The time that could be spent editing listings into new categories could be spent editing the new shipping policies. Best of all, once you’ve turned on shipping policies, you can edit your policies over a matter of weeks, or even months, until you have them squared away. There’s no requirement to correct your policies immediately.

Even better, you can edit your default policies only, and then put all your new listings into the correct shipping policy, without impacting what’s left. It looks like a daunting task for those with thousands of listings, because I don’t think folks realize that there’s no deadline for completing the task.

[So Cal Joe]

I agree, you can edit the listings within each policy, but the goal is to get each listing into the correct policy as quickly as possible.

Yes, there are no time limits, but until you do all the work, you have a plethora of policies and cannot make quick changes for travel etc. Once shipping policies are turned on, you can only change your handling time through each policy.

When I converted to shipping policies, I did most of my editing from the Business policies page (modifying and combining policies), when in fact I think it would have been easier to create the few appropriate policies and bulk edit (by category to make it manageable) each listing into one of the new shipping policies.

Since Ebay says it’s all in or none, into the Business Shipping Policies, my method reduces the Choas time between enabling shipping polices and it actually being set up the way you want them. By creating the 5 additional store categories, you are actually dividing you store into shipping polices, without actually turning on the shipping policies yet.

Of course once it’s done, you can just delete the five new store categories, as they’ve served their purpose and are no longer needed.

Maybe I’m Complicating the situation, but there’s not a whole lot of guidance in this area and Ebay’s “helper” program isn’t really efficient.

Thanks for the input.

[Author]

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