Being an eBay Consultant for me is one of the best jobs in the world, here am doing something that I love doing and being paid for it at the same time, but at times you have to deal with subjects that there does not always seem a clear and cut answer and today we will look at one of those areas when we talk about postage costs.
I guess we could call it something else “Free Or Not Free”. When I first started selling on eBay in around 1998, I always charged postage and no one seemed to mind that they were buying a 99p CD and paying £2.99 postage, but over the years mind sets changed, and for a lot of the items I started to sell I did with free shipping or the UK Market Place and just added the cost price of shipping when I sent items abroad.
Very soon I was hooked on the concept of free shipping and leant to add the price into my sales price, customers loved it, and so did my sales. But at times I still added shipping and postage costs even for the UK Market when the item was bulky and heavy…….again as long as my buyers knew what to expect they were happy.
Roll on the years to 2011………….eBay and people liked the free shipping method and by now 99.9% of my items were done free shipping. That was until I took on some new Trading Assistant Clients, they all said they wanted the postage costs to be kept separate I explained how eBay worked but to no avail. I then went away to do some research to show them in black and white that buyers wanted free shipping and my findings really shocked me……….buyers wanted postage as an extra and were willing and also expected it. But this is eBay and over the years nothing shocks or surprises me really now.
So the motto of this post is to do your research and if the market place want free shipping give them free shipping, but if they want to pay for postage and shipping as a separate item put it as an extra. To find out what your customers want, just go and take a look at the category you want to sell in and see what the Top Rated Sellers are doing and follow suit.
But if they do want to pay for postage and shipping please do not be greedy, cover the postage costs and cost of a box etc, but do not go mad….buyers will not come back and buy again from you. Also I have started to put on all my listings a small sentence “ If when we post your item we have over charged you on the postage costs we will give you a refund of the difference, otherwise we will make up the difference”
Hope this article has helped you with the postage and shipping part of your listings. If you need any help with your eBay business we can offer our eBay consultancy to you for as short as an hour through to a monthly on going job. The choice is yours.









