Free shipping?

[coastwindchimes]

Hi, do any of you offer free shipping, and if so, how do you find it working? I just started doing this. I list higher, of course, to cover at least most of the postage / insurance. I haven't had any feedback from customers on this~ but have found that it seems to work. In ten days of December, I equaled my total sales for November. But I can't be sure how much of that is just Christmas rush (last year, however, there was no 'Christmas rush'!). So interested to hear from others who do offer free shipping, or who have tried it. Cheers! Tim.

[shoplineca]

Tim
I started offering what I would call ridiculously low shipping for what I ship @ $5.95 USD. I often got people amailing me to confirm the rate. I shipped most items, Expedited.

I just relisted 2 of these items (I sell multiple quantities) and raised the shipping priced from $5.95 USD to $20.00 USD and in bright red, called it my Christmas rate and sold more since raising my shipping rate than subsidizing it.

I think people are prepared to pay extra to get it there in time for Christmas so this isnt the time to short yourself on shipping rates.

I can tell you that last year I had a guy pay me $110 USD to overnight something to him to arrive in time for Christmas morning that normally would have cost him about $20 USD and taken 2 days.

As my listings reach their 10-days and it is time to relist, all my shipping quotes go up so I dont have people think they can pay $5.95 USD and get the item in time for Christmas.

I will probably drop the shipping rates down in February and go back to Expedited service but right now, the last minute shoppers want to know that what they are buying will be delivered by Christmas and they are willing to pay extra for that.

Dont short yourself at this point of time.

Malcolm

[ospreylinks]

In an attempt to get people to use Buy It Now, we use to advertise that if the buyer exercised the Buy It Now feature instead of bidding, shipping was free. (of course it was factored in a general way into our Buy It Now Price).





It seemed to have no impact on our results what-so-ever.

Jeff

[scouttech-outfitters]

I have found that free shipping (offered on smaller items) doesn't make any difference at all. In fact people usually tend to care more about the price then the shipping. Ive noticed there are tons of people that drop the price on computer cases and then charge an extra $10 for shipping. Its silly but I guess all the customers care about is the actual price