If shipping your handmade products has you pulling your hair out
or you don't know where to start then stick around
because I'm sharing the three key things you need to have in place to ship like a pro, worry-free.
Hi, I’m Mei Pak and I help makers artists
and designers make a consistent income from selling their handmade products online.
Now, I've shipped thousands of packages in my time as a business owner.
So I have seen just about every situation imaginable and shipping at least for me.
It can make or break how you feel about your business
when you get up in the morning you're a maker
and so you spent all of this time making items and you want to get them out into the world,
but if shipping is a hassle, then you're going to be really frustrated
and tired about this whole process and that is not what we want.
You basically want to snap your fingers
and have those packages out the door and that's how it can be if you get a system in place.
So today I'm going to talk about three key things for how to set that system up first.
I'm going to talk about how to package your products for safe travel.
Then I'm going to talk about software and sites to use for postage and shipping labels.
And then finally I'm going to talk about some tools
and equipment that you might need to get it all going.
The goal is that you're printing your shipping labels at home.
It's super easy to do and it will allow you to dedicate more time to actually making things which is
what you love doing.
Right? So I want to make it clear that you don't need to be selling dozens
and dozens of items a day to make it worth setting up a shipping system.
Like the one I'm going to show you even if you're only shipping a small number of packages.
The prices have really come down a lot on printers and software.
Time Savings that you will gain by getting some of these Services is just so worth it.
Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about is how to package your products
for safe travel because the first step in any shipping operation is putting the products in a box,
right? So when you take your beautifully handmade item and put it in a box,
I want you to pretend that the box is being thrown around in the back of a truck
and then ask yourself whether your customer will be happy with what they get at the end of that now,
Now I know that seems traumatic, but that's actually what happens.
Your item is going to be taken from your house
and put in a truck and then another truck
and it's going to get thrown around the Factory
and then probably put on some more trucks before it ever reaches its final destination.
I even had one time where my package was run over by a truck now,
I'm not saying we need to account for that case since it's pretty rare occurrence,
but you get my drift you want to make sure that your items are packed.
Very very, well not only is your box the first thing a customer receives
but it's the first bit of branding that's in their hands that's telling them about
what they can expect about the product that's inside the box.
So look across your range of products and find the sizes that will work best for you.
Then select the boxes or mailers that are going to protect your
items and if it means paying a little bit more for bubble wrap or especially sides boxes,
it's usually worth it. So you want to consider Sure,
the trade-off between the cost to ship an item
and the extra money you might have to pay is the customer gets damaged product.
For example, if you ship Ceramics and one out of every 20 of your items comes back broken,
you know, it's probably better
for you to just pay an extra 50 cents to get the proper packaging to begin
with right wait will also be a consideration.
I love Bubble Wrap over something like newspaper
because newspaper gets heavy whereas bubble wrap is just Are one thing that's amazing
about the United States Postal Service is they will provide boxes
for you for free for priority
and express mail and you can order those online at USPS.com
and they'll ship it to you for free as well.
Or you can even grab them at your local USPS store.
Now when I was first starting out with usps's free boxes,
I always felt weird just walking in taking their
boxes and walking out the store without paying
for anything but really that is how it works but only for their priority and express mail boxes.
Okay, don't go stealing their other packaging supplies.
So definitely check that out. If you're looking to save on costs personally,
I sell jewelry and I package each item in their own gift box
which provides some of its own protection
and then I use bubble mailers as the shipping packaging.
I rarely use boxes for the outside packaging
because I don't need to with my product
as they tend to cost more to buy and they weigh more as well which makes my shipping.
Is more expensive so I personally avoid boxes.
So there's definitely a lot of room here to strategize how you ship your products,
especially since you have to strike a fine balance between giving your products ample protection
while not paying an arm and a leg each time you ship.
So the next thing I want to talk about is software
and sites that you can use to buy postage at home instead of
having to wait in line at the post office.
So okay here is what should happen right an order comes in
and It either goes directly to some kind of shipping software automatically
or you just input the details by copying and pasting it into some shipping program.
Then you package up your product
and then a label comes out of a printer
and you put it on your shipping box and it's out the door with a workflow like that.
It can take 2 minutes to get something ready to ship.
Now. This workflow isn't going to be
free but it's going to save you a ton of time and that's worth the small cost.
It will take to get this set
up and you're Not need to be shipping a lot of items to make this worthwhile first.
You're going to need some shipping software that integrates with your website
and anywhere else you sell online.
So some popular ones are indicia shipstation stamps.com
and pirate ship which is free just to name a few of software that's available.
Now the software will most likely have some pretty cool features like being able to pay
for postage online from the comfort of your own home
and printing out labels so you can prepare your packages for sure.
Shipping directly from home. What's nice about this is you can then schedule
for a free USPS pick up the next day
and your Postman or post woman will come and grab your packages from your front door.
That means you don't need to haul all your packages into your car drive
to the post office park your car wait in line
and then drive back home another feature you can get from these software's is calculated shipping.
This is a feature that grabs the USPS current shipping rates
and Set the weight you set
for your products and give you the most up-to-date shipping prices
and it does all of this in a matter of seconds.
So you never have to wonder how much a package will cost a shit
and if you sell larger items and you prefer to use DHL or FedEx,
most of these software's also connect with those services.
So you're not just limited to USPS.
These software's will also print a customs form at home,
which is super nice because those forms are tedious and time consuming.
NG to fill in by hand right now,
let's talk about some tools
and equipment you might want there's not a time that you need
to because we've already talked about
boxes and packing material
but there are three additional things that I think you really need to get this off the ground.
The first is a weighing scale. So, you know how much items way second is a printer
and third are some labels.
So all of the features that we just went over only work if you
have an accurate weight on your products
and what your shipping because most shipping Services charge you a different price.
Based on the weight. So you want it to be accurate here.
So you're not underpaying or over pain in addition to a scale.
You will also want a printer. Now you can use your regular inkjet
or laser printer and get label sheets like this one,
but what I really recommend and love are thermal printers,
so thermal printers work like magic heat passes over the labels
and that's what creates the ink on the labels.
This is great because you don't need to purchase separate ink like you would with a regular inkjet
or laser.
Laser printer, it also means that if your package gets wet in the Rain the ink doesn't run
or smear all over the place thermal printers also usually come in
a much smaller size than your typical inkjet
or laser printer as thermal printers were really designed to print normal regular size documents.
These thermal printers will work with thermal shipping labels that come with sticky back.
So it's easy to just print the label
and peel it off the sheet
and apply it to your packaging
so you don't need to use tape which is a a big fuss
when you're printing with your laser or inkjet printer with regular printing paper.
So there are some different popular brands when it comes to Thermal printers.
So check out the Zebra printers. That's what I use.
I have the lp 2844 and I just buy mine refurbished for a really great price for about $100.
There's also dymo printers which tend to be pricier,
but they're trendier and they look a little bit nicer.