I've got nearly everything worked out, to start this adventure of mine. The new fascination has been really good so far, and I've enjoyed nearly every aspect of it, except the postage and shipping part.
Everything is sorted -
- Got a bunch of stuff to sell - Check
- Set up an eBay shop - Check
- Bought envelopes for sending items - Check
- Described and Photographed items well - Check
- Bought a printer for shipping details/ labels - Check
- Learned about postage and shipping in general - ...
Shipping From Ireland
An Post, Ireland's main postal service has a calculated shipping feature on their website, and I was going through it to get a rough idea of what shipping will cost anyone who wants to buy from me.
I see crazy pricing on some listening, and fairly decent prices on the exact same kinds of items, so that confused me a bit, and I soon discovered that people can set their own postage cost.
It also kind of depends on where the item is coming from, and going to, however, even listings from the same country can be a bit wild and varied, so I guess it mostly comes down to people charging what they want, perhaps to earn a few extra bucks.
There are a few options, "Free Shipping", well I'm not doing that.
Calculated Shipping which was the option I was most interested in, even though there are cons.
I put the weight and dimensions into the listing, and from there eBay will inform each potential buyer how much the shipping will cost, based on where they are. Now this can have cons, but a few Euros lost isn't that big a deal to me, especially if the item already has a good markup.
For some reason though, I put in the information, chose a few different options available to me for the listing, put it up, and... zip. No shipping price on the listing.
I tried to change it, and was told to put in a price for shipping...??? Why? I thought they were going to calculate this.
It's around 3 Euros to ship around Ireland, 9 Euros to America, and 11.50 to Australia. What number will I put into the box?
Flat Rate
The final option is a flat rate, and it seems to be similar to what I got with the calculated option.
I could put 9.99 shipping as a flat rate, price my items a bit higher than others, and potentially lose out on profits for sales to far-off lands, or make some money on sales closer to home. I don't want to rip people off though, and I don't particularly want to lose out on sales either.
If I could choose a price per country, that would be great, but I can't seem to find that option.
Maybe I'm just tired and need to hit this with fresh eyes. It has been hours, and I'm no closer to knowing what the hell I should do, and the entire thing has drained me.
I searched for Irish eBay sellers who were talking about this and didn't get what I was looking for. I went to YouTube, to see if someone had a video up, but it was mainly people in America, or the UK, who have different layouts for the eBay site, and also different rates when exporting.