Opportunities on eBay

How To Ship Your eBay Products With Class

Hopefully, this will be a brief post.

A response to a reader’s email asking about how to ship items she sold on eBay.

Remember the saying, that “what you see is what you get”? Well, one of the key points in making your business successful is to look professional in the eyes of your customers.   Top marketers, have all used this art of soft selling to make lots of money.

It’s very easy.

How do you personally feel receiving in the mail a well packaged product you ordered? I underlined the word ‘feel’.

It’s all about feeling, folks!

How do you want your customers, to feel when they receive your products in the mail? You want them to feel good and wanting to buy more from you in the future. If you can unlock the power that makes people want to buy more from you over the competition, you’ve secured for yourself the greatest magic of all salesmanship.

Legendary marketer and greatest salesman of all times, Zig Ziglar once said that “people buy what they want not what they need, because if we all, buy only what we need and not we want, the whole economy would collapse.”

Why is it necessary to package your products well?  It adds to your business mystic and makes you look superior and not one of the knuckle heads who are still doing it the old way, driving to the post office, waiting in line just to buy packaging and postage for your products.

Like so many newbies on eBay, I was so exited when I made my first sale online. I wasted gas by driving to the post office, armed with the book I sold and money for postage.

What happened next, was horrible and painful.

At the Post Office, I spent about $2.00 on a padded large envelop, wrote by hand the mailing address, paid about $4.95 for postage. All these efforts for a book sale of only $3.00 and some change.

In summary, I lost money with my first sale. Did not get a feedback from my customer. She told in an email that she was new on eBay and did not know how to leave a feedback.  I was demoralized and almost quit this online making money thing. Talk of wasting gas or petrol as Europeans will call it, and my business time driving to the Post Office to mail just one book?  It wasn’t inspiring at all, to do things the old hard way!

With time, I learned better ways to mail my products with a marketing punch and edge.  This is very important if your inventory is directly under your care and you are primarily responsible for mailing them.  But if you are using drop shippers like DOBA, as the primary source and fulfillment center for your products,  it’s a different ball game. In that case, make individual arrangement with those companies and extract from them a genuine commitment to mail your stuff in good packaging.

Depending on the products you sell, you may need different shippers. For liquid items like lotion and cosmetics, you should use FEDEX or UPS. They are also good with perishable items like food.

For other non-liquid or non-perishable items especially books, CD, and DVD I find it very good to use the USPS, the local postal service in the United States. They offer book rate for all printed materials. They are very good and efficient with flat rate postage as well. Of course, individual countries vary in their services so compare the local postal service in your country with private carriers like UPS and FEDEX to make good use of your options.

Shipping supplies are free with USPS. They have a good number of different box sizes for your shipping needs. You can pick them up yourself or visit this site here to request for eBay co-branded boxes. It will be delivered to you for F.R.E.E.

Personally, I prefer USPS for all my shipping because they work well with Stamps.com , a postage company here in the United States. So, if you do business in the United States or Canada, you should consider Stamps.com among other choices.

Integrating USPS with Stamps.com provides you with a very powerful combination of practicality, common sense and gives you immense business prestige.

These are just a few samples of what you get with Stamps.com:

1. Easy to use software that allows you to print your own shipping labels from your computer.
2. You can upload your company logo with URL, website address onto your postage stamps. This is a viral marketing bonanza.
3. With one click, you can keep accurate record of all your shipping data. Customer address, tracking and delivery confirmation.
4. You can also arrange for your items to be picked up from your home office or warehouse, helping to avoid long lines at the post office.

Hope this brief post helps you in your business.

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