ETC eBay Tips
As you prepare to start selling on eBay, one of the things that you are going to want to explore is how you are going to ship the products that you sell. Exponent Trading Company (ETC) has given us the capability, through the software we will use, to ship with your choice or either UPS or the US Postal Service. There are four things we'll discuss: packaging, packing materials, tape, and a scale.
The great thing about being able to use UPS or USPS is that both offer free shipping boxes to their customers. I've had limited experience with UPS, so I'm going to focus on USPS. If you ship your items by Priority Mail, you can get free envelopes and boxes from the Postal Service. You can pick these up at your local post office or you can order them online at http://www.usps.com. When you go to the website, on the left side of the page you'll see a column titled "Shipping Tools". The last link in that column is "Supplies" - click on the arrow. On the next page, in the first column on the left, third down you'll see "Priority Mail". Click on that to see the Priority Mail supplies available to you for free. Oh, did I mention that these items are free?
So, whatever you are more comfortable with, going to your local PO for just the items you need, or ordering all of the supplies you could possibly want online, either way, the shipping materials are there for you. If you require different size packaging than what's available from USPS or UPS, then there are plenty of packing materials suppliers available to you either locally or online. I personally prefer buying my materials on eBay. :-)
You can check out my personal favorite at http://stores.ebay.com/BrassPack-Packing-Supply
Packing materials are what you use to insulate the item you are shipping to protect it from damage. The type of item you ship will dictate the packing materials that you will need to use. You can buy, if needed, items like packing peanuts or bubble wrap or padded envelopes but most of the time yesterday's newspaper will be sufficient.
One thing that is a must have is packing tape. This can be picked up at just about any store like a Wal Mart or KMart, but even a lot of supermarkets carry it.
Making sure your box is securely sealed for shipment is important! While you are at Wal Mart you can pick up a digital scale for $15-20, or, once more like me you can buy one off of eBay http://stores.ebay.com/digitalsnail. A digital scale is important so you can charge the correct amount of postage to your eBay customer.
When you are selling an item on eBay, you'll package it, I wouldn't completely seal it at this point, and then you weigh the package. You'll enter that weight into the auction software we'll be using with ETC and your customer will automatically get the correct postage for their location when they view your auction on eBay. That takes a lot of the hassle out of the whole selling process for you. The walls of my office have weights and rates charts taped to them so I can keep up with current shipping rates. You won't have to do that - you'll just need to be able to get an accurate weight and the software takes care of the rest!
Check back next week for more of Todd's eBay Tips!
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