@bpl521_sell wrote:
Fairly new to selling on EBay. Right now I am limiting my sales to Canada and the US. Wanted to expand to International but looking for some advice when it comes to shipping. As I understand it without a tracking mechanism I am open to dishonest buyers and a host of other problems, but the tracking shipping options at least from Canada Post are very costly for any International buyer. The difference between Small Packet International Air and Tracked Packet International is almost 5X expensive. Seems a bit ridiculous as to the price difference
Here is my opinion, for what it's worth: You can work around losses (cookie jar or other insurance, or low procurement cost), you can deal with INRs (through using tracking strategically, i.e. for possible problem destinations), you can restrict where you actually ship to, and you can probably still deal with Canada Post international shipping prices by using Light/Small Packet if your items are the appropriate size and weight.
But what you will have difficulty managing are eBay's delivery expectations for international destinations. Even long-experienced sellers are having problems with this. And if your monthly sales volume is fairly low, the defects for late delivery will be more critical.
Here is frankly what I'd do. Given that you're selling excess personal items, stick with Canada and the U.S. for another few months. Keep a chart recording the destination of each sale. If you find that the large majority of your sales (say, over 75%) are to the U.S. at the end of that period (which I'd be willing to bet will be the case), chances are that will remain the pattern for you.
In that case, international sales will be unlikely to greatly increase your income, at least not without a lot more time, expense, and trouble on your part. The way I regard it is that the result must justify the input. The higher your percentage of U.S. sales, the less attractive selling internationally is likely to be, at least not until eBay changes some of its policies and procedures and shipping costs decrease, neither of which is probable.
So instead of looking beyond North America, try doing whatever you can to appeal to your primary target customers -- free or subsidized shipping, regular discounts/sales, special promos for U.S. buyers (or Canadian, as the case may be), etc. etc. There are a number of ways you can get creative with marketing to your main customer base, and in my opinion, given eBay's unjustifiable international delivery estimates and related defect policy, you'll have a lot fewer headaches. I find that Small and Light Packet are very reliable to the U.S., and have always arrived within eBay's delivery time frame, so it's far easier to use non-tracked shipping to the U.S. than overseas and still avoid defects.
The alternative might be to pick a handful of specific, less problematic overseas countries to ship to (those with reliable postal systems), and exclude all other destinations for a few months until you see whether shipping outside Canada and the U.S. is really worth it. Check these boards for sellers' opinions on what the reliable and "easier" countries are to ship to. Personally I ship only to Europe, Japan, Australia, NZ, and a few other select places internationally, although Australia has apparently become an issue recently with respect to delivery times.
I think if you were intending to launch a business with expansion plans, it might be a different story, but not to simply sell off personal items for extra cash.
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