When you own your own home business, there’s no doubt that you spend your time figuring out the perfect pricing for your products. But have you also thought about the cost of your delivery? It can be a lot to get your head around at first, but this article will tell you everything you need to know about shipping for a home business.
The Basics
There are a few things to consider before you decide to pick a shipping carrier.
The landscape of retail is changing thanks to the internet. Thousands of people are now able to make a full or part-time income from selling merchandise on auction sites like eBay. One of the most important factors in all of this is delivery.
To create a successful home business, you need to be able to provide delivery that satisfies your customers, maximises the use of your time and minimises your overall costs.
Shipping Volume
Are you just starting out or are you a fully established shop shipping over 100 packages a week? Will you be shipping weekly or will you be shipping only a few packages a month? These are questions you need to ask yourself before committing to a shipping carrier. No matter how frequent you plan to ship, mail carriers offer a variety of business plans.
But how are you planning on handling your shipping? If you are only shipping two or three items a day you can easily handle it manually. Addressing the labels, yourself, taking the items to the post office, etc. However, if you are shipping more than ten items a day it would be beneficial to invest into a label printer and postage scale that will connect to your computers USB or serial port for weighing your items. And once you’ve expanded the business enough and are shipping large volumes, you should also consider hiring a good 3pl company.
Weight
Do you know on average how much your products weigh? Unless you are using a flat-rate box, the weight of your product can affect the price of shipping. A good tip is to invest in a postal scale for small business shipping, so you know the exact weights. If you don’t have a scale and only a few products for your business, you can have the sales assistant in your local post office or delivery centre weigh them for you. You can then record these weights for future uses. You can also go online and then conduct a cost comparison to see who will offer the cheapest for your weight.
Shipping Priority
Will you be shipping priority, first class or another method? Will you other a variety of shipping options?
Shipping Destinations
Are you only shipping domestically, or will you be shipping internationally also?
Packaging
Packaging your products is essential for home businesses. Flat-rate boxes are an ideal choice as regardless of what, weight or where you are sending your package to, you pay the predetermined rate listed.
If you are shipping locally and your products are light, flat-rate shipping can end up costing you more. In this case, it might be cheaper to ship your products using your own packages.
Supplies
If you are looking for supplies simply type "packaging supplies" or "shipping supplies" into a search engine. This will generate results for suppliers offering thousands of shipping material options and give you plenty of choices.
To keep things orderly, it’s a really good idea to set up a specific shipping area in your home. This will be your dedicated area where you can organise your boxes, label maker and other supplies. You can have them all at the read so when an order comes in you can efficiently parcel everything up.
Written by Stuart Cooke, Blog Editor at NI Parcels & Irish Parcels, courier comparison services helping ecommerce businesses.
I hope you enjoyed this article about everything you n eed to know about shipping parcels and packages for a home business.
Interested in reading more articles about packaging and shipping?
Read My Blog Posts:
- How To Drive Down Delivery Costs
- Tips To Succeed In The Courier Business
- The Best Vehicle For Your E-Commerce Business
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