Business Startup. Trying to Find Cheapest Domestic Shipping Options for Small Items

open4highway on 19/06/2021 - 21:13
Last edited 20/06/2021 - 13:53 by 1 other user

Hi Guys

I'm currently working as an Engineer, but want to set up a small business with my partner for additional income.
We have started to sell items off Facebook Marketplace, it's not going bad.. Generating $50- $100 of sales every week or so.

However, the most difficult part of this business is probably the method of shipping. Currently, we are trying to use Australia Post for shipping our items from NSW but it's crazy expensive ($9- $12). I've looked into Sendle but it's $5-$10/ per parcel. Our items priced around $12-$20 with 15-20% profit margin and it's getting very hard to make a profit when the shipping cost is so high.

I'd appreciate any suggestion from e-commerce owners from this site on how they manage the shipping part of the business. I'm constantly seeing very low prices on eBay listings for iPhone/ Samsung phone cases or screen protectors.. There are heaps of other items as well, which provide free delivery on a $5-$10 product, sometimes even at lower prices.

Any suggestion will be immensely helpful. Thanks everyone.

Cheers.

TLDR: Starting a business (small Jewellery products), looking for suggestions regarding cheaper shipping options/ providers

• 

  jjjaar on 19/06/2021 - 21:17

  +6

  Items that can be sent in envelopes can be charged the letter price. Anything thicker than that is a parcel and gets slugged heaps more.

  Auspost business accounts give you discounts. The more you send the bigger the discount.

• 

  plmko on 19/06/2021 - 21:28

  +1

  Promote customers to buy multiple items for free shipping rather than a single $5 item.

• 

  albyone on 19/06/2021 - 21:37

  +6

  Need to look at higher margins. 15 to 20% doesn't cover lost postage items or broken in transit.

  And charge for postage, then over a higher amount free postage to get the upsell factor.

• 

  Slinky0111 on 19/06/2021 - 23:05

  +1

  As someone above said, post it in a envelope. You can buy small padded envelopes in store and as long as they don't exceed 20mm you should be sweet.

  However if it is noticeably not a letter they can charge the sender or receiver the difference between the cost of postage for a letter vs a small packet.

• 

  Ocker on 20/06/2021 - 08:51

  +1

  There is no simple solution to reduce your shipping costs.

  As and when you increase your volumes you can get a discount with a MyPost Business account.

  Be wary of using Sendle as they are simply a shipping consolidator who will use the cheapest courier service - typically Aramex, who are terrible. In fact out of respect to our customers we will not use Sendle, nor will we buy inputs from any company that does use Aramex to send us the goods.

  You may be able to reduce your packing costs. Check out EB Pack on eBay as they have boxes and packing supplies for every occasion at very attractive pricing.

• 

  open4highway on 20/06/2021 - 11:48

  Thanks everyone. Consolidating multiple items to make one shipping product seems like a very reasonable way to make money and save costs on shipping.. Thank you so much for your input guys…