header info

To see what jewelry creations are currently available Click here!

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Preparing Etsy and eBay Listings for the USPS Postage Hike



Don’t forget, USPS rates are going up tomorrow (Sunday, the 27th).  Be prepared.

I spent a good part of today updating my shipping profiles in Etsy and unfortunately removing my free shipping on eBay and my website.

Here’s the chart I used for the new pricing levels. 



To change your Etsy listings, go Shop Settings, then Shipping & Payment



Next, you can either edit a previous shipping profile or create a new one.



Here’s what the editing (or creating) screen looks like for shipping profiles.  I give mine names that indicate the exact shipping weight, but you can give them whatever names work best for you.



If you do plan to offer international shipping, don’t forget to put a “check mark” in the box next to Everywhere Else.  Merely filling in the prices, won’t add that option to your listing unless you mark the box indicating you do ship everywhere else.  It’s my understanding that if you don’t have it marked, your listings don’t show up in the international searches.

After you’ve got all the shipping profiles you need, go back to the shipping page and prepare for semi-awesomeness.



Changing a shipping profile does NOT change it in each listing, but you can bulk update your listings relatively easily.  The only downside is Etsy not showing us what our previous shipping profiles were for each item.



And that’s it for Etsy.

Updating your eBay listings is easy if you previous used “Calculated: Cost varies by buyer’s location”. 



If you used “Flat: same cost to all buyers”, you will need to adjust each listing (I recommend “calculated” based on weight/location).

For package type, I select “Package (or thick envelope)”, but I don’t bother with dimensions.  My items are never close to the dimension limits.



Then there’s a separate section for international shipping options.



So if you’ve always had your eBay shipping costs calculated based on weight and location, you won’t have to do anything regarding the USPS postage hike. 

Unfortunately for me, I will be switching by eBay listings from free shipping, so I have to go into each listing one at a time and revise them all.

At the end of the day, if a customer is over-charged for shipping (which I know once I package their item/s and print the postage), I always refund them the overage if it’s more than $1.

By the way, if you print your postage online, you often get a little discount so the postage will be a little less than what’s shown in my chart above. 

In Etsy, there is a field to indicate how much additional postage a given item will incur if shipped with other items in the same order. 

In eBay, if you use “calculated”, you don’t need to worry about multiple items because eBay just adds up their weights and makes a total based on that.  If you use “flat rate” in eBay, then you do have the option of defining a charge for shipping of multiple items.

I hope some of this info ends up being helpful to someone.

Have fun!

8 comments:

  1. Laura,
    Thank you for taking the time to prepare the postage grid and for sharing it!
    Jackie Brower Bowyer

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laura,
    Hi this is Lori Phillips from Metal Clay Today E-Magazine. I just stopped by to inform you that your blog has been featured in our Best of the Blogs article.It is in our New Winter 2013 edition. Go to our home page and click on "Our Last Free Edition" You will be able to read the article on page 33. I hope you enjoy it! :-)http://metalclaytoday.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for taking the time to share this information for everyone!! It's very much appreciated!!
    It's probably a tad late, but Betsi by Blugrin can significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to edit your shipping changes. It took me all of 10 minutes and I have almost 200 listings. I just went to Etsy - updated each ship profile, and then opened Betsi, clicked shipping profiles, and it automatically pulled all the listings, showing what they were, and what that would change to when I clicked accept.
    I personally like the yearly paid version of Betsi, but there is a free version - Betsi Lite.
    Bobbi

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gosh, a lot of work from you Laura! I sure do appreciate it and the great way it's presented!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Laura,

    This is a very important post. Thank you, thank you so much. I had no idea that the international rates have changed so dramatically. I'll mention this in facebook and in my blog. Will let you know. Dita.

    http://www.alankarshilpa.etsy.com
    http://www.alankarshilpa.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. Laura,

    I add my thanks as well, took only a few minutes to correct all my listings.

    Michael Thornton
    Skezzcrom

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks so much for all the time and effort you spent doing this and sharing! I'd been meaning to figure this out at the USPS website and change my shipping charges accordingly, but you've made a chore I'd been dreading so much easier.

    ReplyDelete
  8. SUPER helpful!!
    Thank you so much, Laura!!
    Just the assistance I needed.

    Susan
    www.stonz.etsy.com

    ReplyDelete