Postage? What to Charge?

[littlemissd]

Hiya, bit of a small dilemma on my hands and hoping one of you clever mums might have a bit of advice for me - postage - argh! what a pain!

I offer my own stock AND also dropship too.
One of my dropshippers charges a fixed rate of £4.50 per order and my other dropshipper's postage varies depending on weight etc.

I thought it would be best for myself if i just charge a fixed rate of 4.50. But as my ever helpful OH pointed out yesterday :cheesy:....

What if someone buys a lipgloss for for £1.99? They won't want to pay £4.50 p&p for it will they??

Also, I run my store through store2go.net and their shipping options are as so:

A Base charge + (optional) A surcharge per 50g+/or (optional)a % of total. Hope that makes sense??

Very unsure on how to go about it..........
HELP!

[Chell]

I wouldn't want to buy a lip gloss and pay that postage but do you want to just sell a lipgloss? Perhaps the postage is a good way of putting people off. You'd make so little from selling a product at £1.99, minus Paypal fees, petrol etc that it just wouldn't be worth it.

If you do a search for 'postage' you'll find loads of old posts. I only charge £1.95 but that is my choice to swallow the cost of postage on larger orders to remain competitive with other sites.

[friendlybaby]

What works for one site won't work for another. I charge £2.95 for orders under £50, but free over £50. My average postage cost is actually about £7, so it is a random figure that seemed to fit with what my competition were charging a year ago. I do find a get quite a number of orders of just over £50, so I think it definitely encourages people to add a few more small bits to their orders to get the free postage.

Sorry for the random waffle, rather than actually being of help!

[littlesheep]

I agree with friendlybaby - postage is an individual nightmare! I charge £1.95 for orders up to £5 so that people can place small orders for a couple of pencil grips / handwriting books without having to pay a fortune in postage and then I charge £3.95 for everything else - most orders cover themselves within these two postage rates and those that don't are generally the bigger orders which are making more profit anyway so I can afford to subsidise it.

[Mary Poppins]

On Perfect Presents I used to have some items had free postage, some items I charged 1.95 postage and now that I do silver products too, I didn't know what to charge. So I changed it so that everything has a delivery cost of £1.95 (might change in April depending on what postal prices go up to). Some items I make more on postage than I actually pay out and some items I loose out, so it is swings and roundabouts. A further option I have just added is Special Delivery and EU postage and have been surprised at how many people opt for Special Delivery.

On Babies Boutique, I have got one low price for under £5.00 and then £2.95 for everything else. For Babies Boutique I am putting a sale to start 1 March for the whole of March, so I am going to make it just one postage cost of £2.95.

What would you feel comfortable paying if you were the person buying from you (IFKWIM)?

[Chell]

I forgot to say, I have some with free postage too.

[Pogglers]

I am in Switzerland so it is a bit different, but I decided to go with a realistic price ie what most of my orders will cost. If someone just buys a bandana from me I will make money on the postage as it is so light and flat, but just about everything else will cost £3.45 to the UK (I think that is what it is, within Switzerland is cheaper). I have also decided not to charge more for large orders although it would probably cost me more.

HTH
Mairi

[Tanya]

after nearly 4 years of offering all sorts of different postage, I settled on one that worked for me.

I charge £1.95 for orders under £15 and £2.95 for orders £15-£25 and then free postage above that. It works quite well for my site but that doesn't mean that it will work for yours too. Most of the time the postage costs are covered and sometimes they are not but I don't lose too much money but I suppose that's something you have to take on the chin in business

One of my dropshippers charges £4.50 but most of their products came in my £2.95 postage bracket so with the profit on the item it wasn't too bad.

HTH

[knotjustjigs]

I have only just changed mine after having 2.50 for orders under 10.00 and 3.95 for all orders over 3.95 (free over 70.00)
I changed it to 2.95 for all orders under 15.00 and 3.95 upto 70.00
I have done this for a couple of reasons, i want to increase my average sales price and i think people were keeping under 10.00 to keep postage cost down, RM are going to be increasing the prices yet again and also my products are normally quite weighty!

I have to say on the first day i changed it i had 3 orders for 1.99 football rattles (+2.95 postage) so it obviously doesnt put some people off buying something small....

HTH

Ketty x

[blush]

I charge £3.95 flat rate, as I have to cover packaging costs too.All my fancy costumes that could easily damaged are sent in a box wrapped in tissue, regardless of the value of the item.
I used to charge £2.95 flat rate but when I increased it to cover cost of the boxes my individual sales values increased!
I guess it all depends on what you are selling at the end of the day.
I f I was buying and I had found something I really wanted I would still buy but perhaps addmore to the order to make it worth my while.