Newbie seller with daughter

[noferg7140]

Hi, I am just getting started smelling on eBay Canada. I think it would be fun, educational, useful, and profitable, to sell some things around the house that we don't use, and to do this experiment with my 12 year old daughter.
As I read, I am seeing that shipping costs in Canada are very high.
So, how do we deal with shipping costs and selling?
If the shipping is too high, then we don't earn much, or we end up having our items no t sell because the shipping costs too much to the buyer.
Thought, ideas, suggestions for my daughter and me?

[snoopwiz]

Hi there.  Great idea coming to the board before jumping into selling. Can you please begin by saying where in Canada you are and what kind/size/weight/value of items would you mostly be selling?

[ericsells75]

You have a couple options for shipping. Either increase your asking price to cover shipping and offer free shipping, or charge actual shipping costs to your buyer. 

It depends on what you plan to sell, if your selling knick knacks and 'junk' you aren't going to have much success but if you are selling items with value (perceived or real) buyers will pay the shipping cost. 

I started out doing the same thing, listing my stuff and my daughters and it has worked out well. Shipping has always been the most confusing thing to sort out but based on your initial question I would say directly that your buyers pay for shipping, either directly or indirectly in the cost of your items.

[reallynicestamps]

First go here:

https://www.canadapost.ca/information/app/far/business/findARate?execution=e2s1

and bookmark it.

This gives you to shipping rates your customer will see, less the fuel surcharge and sales taxes. when you use Calculated Shipping.

You will be using that on dotCA (here) whenever your shipment will be over 2cm thick and 500gr.

Those are parcel rates, and they vary not only with dimensions and weight but also with destination.

Don't use Free Shipping/Flat Rate Shipping with those until you have a firm idea of how much shipping will be.

A couple of other useful postal codes. 90210 and  32830 for USA and K1A 0A6 / V8W 1P6/A1C 2B5 for Canada.

Below 500gr/2cm you can use Letter Mail for most shipping. Those rates are set, and don't vary with distance.

So with some forethought you can include them in your asking price and call it Free Shipping.

Which is cheapest?

A $10 item with $5 shipping?

A $5 item with $10 shipping?

A $15 item with Free Shipping?

While it is a good idea to ship to the USA, your American competitors do have lower shipping costs and faster delivery. On the other hand a lot of them will not sell to Canada. Heck, they won't even ship to AK or HI, never mind their own troops with APO addresses.

But you can for much the same cost as someone in NY or WA.

So there's that.

[reallynicestamps]

Second, go here:

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/business/small-business.page?

And get your Solutions for Small Business number.

You can use this to print shipping labels at home through Paypal, Shippo, or SnapShip(Canada Post again) and get some tiny discounts on the costs.

You can't print LetterMail labels.

You can buy mint postage stamps on eBay at a discount.  The Dominion of Canada has never demonetized any stamps.

You need a tape measure and a digital scale. I recommend the Starfrit kitchen scale that Canadian Tire sells for under $20 which weighs up to five kilos.

Oh. Only use metric when researching Canada Post costs. They went metric in 1974 and everything else is inaccurate.

The price you pay for shipping will vary depending on how you are buying your postage or shipping labels,  but the amount your buyer sees is not your cost.
Use any small savings to cover packaging and Cookie Jar Insurance- self insurance against failed transactions.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I think you can get some value out of having your daughter sell things, even if you guys don't make any money. There is a lot that your daughter could learn by selling online. Both from an economic perspective (the value of her time, margins) and from an accounting perspective (working out the eBay fees, cost of shipping, etc). There is also a lot of marketing and other skills involved, from making a product write up that tries to get a customer excited about a collectible, and to figuring out how to photograph an item with whatever DIY solutions you might have available. Not to mention the customer interaction.

With that said, if the intention is purely to turn a profit after shipping+eBay fees are considered (we're assuming the items are 'free'), that might be difficult with basic household goods. This is where local classified sites tend to be better. I'm obviously assuming you'd be handling the adult side of the transactions, I'm not suggesting a child should be handling Kijiji meetups. Only pointing out that local classified sites eliminate the shipping cost, which ultimately comes out of the final value you receive for the item regardless of whether you charge a customer for the shipping, or charge them a higher buy it now price and pay the shipping out of that.

There are two ways to try and work around high shipping costs to create value for your customers. One is to bundle like items in lots, so that the average shipping price per item ends up being much lower because you might be paying 20 dollars to ship a lot of 10 items instead of 13 to ship each of those 10. The downside to lots is that they take much longer to sell than individual items.

The other thing you can do, is sell using lettermail rates. Your items need to be below 500g and 2CM in thickness. Although, thickness seems to at least be somewhat flexible, meaning Canada Post is probably still going to deliver a bubble mailer that puffs out to 2.5CM. But you should try to stay as close to the restricted thickness as possible. Obviously, the kind of things you can sell this way are fairly limited. Mostly media, maybe some clothing, and possibly some smaller toys if they aren't too fragile to be shipped in a bubble mailer.

[reallynicestamps]

That reminds me.

Do NOT in any way indicate that you are a mother/daughter team, or that either of you are female, or that one of you is a child.

This is not some paranoid fantasy of kidnapping and human trafficking, it's just not "professional". The customer does not care about your circumstances.  And some scammers think they can take advantage of us girls.

I have noticed that using this avatar gets me more respectful attention to my posts, particularly on dotCOM*, than when I use an ID with my more feminine avatars.

Which can be a bitter lesson for many young women.

* The boys here are pretty good. I guess their mothers raised them well.