In the old days, all you really needed to know when posting anything, was how much it weighed, if it was to go 1st or 2nd class, and if you needed to send it special delivery, or similar.
As technology has advanced, more options have become available and you also need to factor in the size, as well as the weight, of your package. Plus you’re not just limited to using the Royal Mail here in the UK, to get your item from A to B, as numerous delivery companies have popped up over the years; though I generally stick with Royal Mail, as their prices are the most economical for my needs, though this may change when I start to sell larger items.
We are spoilt with companies like Amazon and their Prime service, where you can even have some items delivered the same day you ordered. But you do pay a yearly subscription fee and it is also often added to the price of an item. You can see this if an item on your wishlist has lowered in price by X amount.
Sometimes this can be because it’s no longer available for Prime Delivery, and so you also have P&P to pay, as it’s being sent directly from the seller, rather than coming via Amazon. But the percentage it shows an item has been reduced by doesn’t factor in the P&P. So it’s not really lowered in price.
Currently, my sticker store has free P&P, but to be honest, I didn’t really take that into account when I priced some of my items, so need to review this if I’m ever going to make any profit there.
Being the geek that I am, I’ve created an Etsy spreadsheet to calculate my listing fees for each item.
Against each item I’m also including its measurements and how much it weighs; so I know what size packaging it needs and which Royal Mail size/weight category it fits into.
I’ve also added all the different Royal Mail options and their costs and weighed all the different packaging I have.
Many of my items are lightweight, and the cost of postage is the same whether a customer buys 1 or 4; I just may need to use a slightly larger padded envelope.
I obviously want to give my customers the best value that I can and have decided, with my new store, rather than add an amount to each item to cover postage, and packaging (many forget that packaging costs money too) I’ve decided to go down the route of combined postage if items fall into the same category.
So if someone buys a couple of zipper pouches along with a scrunchie, they will pay a single postage cost as that will all fit into a large letter, padded envelope, and shouldn’t go over the maximum weight limit.
But a Resin trinket dish or a Mug, because of their size/weight, fall into a different postage category. Plus are going to need additional packaging material to protect them in transit. So the cost of posting these will obviously be more.
Hopefully, I’ve done all my calculations correctly, but if for any reason I do find someone has paid more than they should, then I can look at doing a partial refund and tweak things.
I can see why some do a flat rate shipping, regardless of what’s being ordered, which is fine if you are ordering a lot of large/heavy items, but for smaller purchases, sometimes they cost less than the amount of P&P being charged.
Oh, if only I could do craft shows, would make life so much easier 😊
Penguin and the Bee 