Free Shipping is an advertising gimmick, like BOGO (buy one get one free) or "we pay the sales tax".
All it means is that the shipping price is included in the asking price.
Which is cheaper:
$10 item with $5 shipping?
$5 item with $10 shipping?
$15 item with Free Shipping?
Most buyers are smart enough to know what is going on, but love it anyway.
So take your purchase price, add on the cost of your time to write and upload your description and photos, some markup (about 100% is reasonable) , the fees to eBay and Paypal (approximately 20% of your selling price) and you have your preliminary asking price.
Then add to that the cost of domestic shipping.
Now you have the price you will ask for your item. This could be either auction starting price or your Fixed Price.
For US and overseas shipping, use Flat Rate costs and adjust them to remove that domestic shipping cost you have already included in your preliminary asking price.
Say you paid $1 for your item. It takes 15 minutes to scan and describe (at 17 cents a minute, ON minimum wage) so $2.55. The item should sell for $7.10 minimum. Shipping within Canada will cost $10. (see canadapost.ca - use X0A 0H0 the city hall of Iqaluit NU) So your asking price should be around $17.10. But you could consider making it $19.99 or $16.99 - usually it will not make much difference to the number of sales you make.
Now if it will cost $10 to send it to the USA, you can enter a shipping cost of $0.00 when you set up the shipping cost. But if it will cost $15 to send it south, then you can make the US shipping cost $5 (because you already have $10 in the price for shipping.)
Next week, we're doing calculus.
