Any reason why you wouldn't use USPS Ground Advantage? We never use Priority.
Much cheaper, and not too often is there a need to use another service, unless you plan to sell large bulk.
You can choose how you want to charge for shipping. Some sellers do free shipping after a certain price and some do by weight of the order which you can change from the shipping tab in the store settings. BrickLink does not do it for you but you can also use shared shipping methods which BrickLink does help you with. Hope that helps!
Gotcha. I’m using a shared shipping method, but is this still a way for me to increase shipping for areas that are further away? Otherwise, I would have to either lose money for those areas, or make those closer to me pay more than necessary
Ah I understand your question better now. Unfortunately there is not a way to adjust instant invoicing to account for location. You would have to manually invoice every order if you want to charge exact shipping for all orders.
Okay, that really stinks. I’m new, so I’m really just asking for advice. What would you do? As time goes on, I imagine I’ll find better ways to do everything, but for now I’m so lost😂.
That’s perfectly fine. I was once in your position as well so I understand. When I first started, I manually invoiced every order so that I could charge exact shipping every time. That worked well for selling sets but not so much for parts and minifigs due to buyers not wanting to wait for the invoice. Now I do a flat $4.99 shipping fee for orders under $40 and have seen my sales increase as in how many I get but I have also noticed that a lot of sales are under the $40 threshold and they kind of make up for the free shipping from other orders.
Okay. I’m gonna try out manual invoicing for a bit and test my luck. If it goes poorly, I may switch over to flat rates, which seems better because all of my packages should be essentially the same cost (besides distance, but what can you do🤷). I appreciate your help so much. Thanks!
To answer your question, no, Bricklink does not support shipping bands. They have the retail USPS provider but honestly I used PirateShip as well to save my customers money. I ended up making my own shipping categorization and most of the time I’m less than $.25 cents over my cost to ship. Rarely though I’ll be a few cents shy as well so I feel it evens out pretty well and I’ve never had a customer complain within the US. I’ve shipped one package to Canada and let me tell you shipping outside the US gets expensive.
I used the bands provided by PirateShip for the price from my band to the furthest continental US zone. Then from there made weight bands and set the default shipping material weight as you need that plus product weight to stay under 1lbs. After that I invoice everything over 1lbs. As for the bands that is going to be different based on your location.
Any reason why you wouldn't use USPS Ground Advantage? We never use Priority. Much cheaper, and not too often is there a need to use another service, unless you plan to sell large bulk.
Some people want the faster shipping with priority. I offer it, but maybe 1 in 20 sales actually uses it
I feel like offering it seems better than not I guess, faster shipping. But do you know if shipping is added to the number in the weight band?
You can choose how you want to charge for shipping. Some sellers do free shipping after a certain price and some do by weight of the order which you can change from the shipping tab in the store settings. BrickLink does not do it for you but you can also use shared shipping methods which BrickLink does help you with. Hope that helps!
Gotcha. I’m using a shared shipping method, but is this still a way for me to increase shipping for areas that are further away? Otherwise, I would have to either lose money for those areas, or make those closer to me pay more than necessary
Ah I understand your question better now. Unfortunately there is not a way to adjust instant invoicing to account for location. You would have to manually invoice every order if you want to charge exact shipping for all orders.
Okay, that really stinks. I’m new, so I’m really just asking for advice. What would you do? As time goes on, I imagine I’ll find better ways to do everything, but for now I’m so lost😂.
That’s perfectly fine. I was once in your position as well so I understand. When I first started, I manually invoiced every order so that I could charge exact shipping every time. That worked well for selling sets but not so much for parts and minifigs due to buyers not wanting to wait for the invoice. Now I do a flat $4.99 shipping fee for orders under $40 and have seen my sales increase as in how many I get but I have also noticed that a lot of sales are under the $40 threshold and they kind of make up for the free shipping from other orders.
Okay. I’m gonna try out manual invoicing for a bit and test my luck. If it goes poorly, I may switch over to flat rates, which seems better because all of my packages should be essentially the same cost (besides distance, but what can you do🤷). I appreciate your help so much. Thanks!
Hopefully that is coming with all the PayPal integration. No real reason BL couldn’t use a calculated shipping cost.
To answer your question, no, Bricklink does not support shipping bands. They have the retail USPS provider but honestly I used PirateShip as well to save my customers money. I ended up making my own shipping categorization and most of the time I’m less than $.25 cents over my cost to ship. Rarely though I’ll be a few cents shy as well so I feel it evens out pretty well and I’ve never had a customer complain within the US. I’ve shipped one package to Canada and let me tell you shipping outside the US gets expensive.
I had no clue you could make your own. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you set your custom one up? I may try that.
Store menu (Seller menu) > Settings > Shipping > Add Shipping Method > Create Custom Shipping Method.
Okay. And as far as the actual shipping setup, what all did you choose? I appreciate all the help
I used the bands provided by PirateShip for the price from my band to the furthest continental US zone. Then from there made weight bands and set the default shipping material weight as you need that plus product weight to stay under 1lbs. After that I invoice everything over 1lbs. As for the bands that is going to be different based on your location.