Selling on Ebay - Shipping help!

Hello,
I am new to Salehoo and I am trying dropshipping. I was wondering about what happens when the costomer pays for the product... how does he pay for the shipping after? Sense after the costomer pays for the product i have to go and buy the product from the dropshipper and pay for the shipping at the same time. Do I have to bill them twice? Thanks for any information you can give me.

Regards,
Stephen

I you are selling through ebay, or other sites with the same structure, the shipping is paid for by the customer at the time of purchase, you just have to ensure to include the correct shipping fee in your listing.

Stephen I only ship within the United States and I ship UPS Ground. My products usually weigh a couple of pounds and shipping is on average around $8.99. What I do is list my auctions as Buy it Now auctions with free shipping and add on about $10 for the shipping cost. It seems that I am offering free shipping but I am actually not. Just makes it seem more of a bargain that way. If your using a dropshipper I would suggest doing Buy it Now auctions. If you go with the standard auction style listings your going to get those buyers that take 7 days to pay you. By then the item could be out of stock!

Ok so basically I just have to find the highest possable shipping cost and add that to the price? (or as you said the average)

Stephen I only ship within the United States and I ship UPS Ground. My products usually weigh a couple of pounds and shipping is on average around $8.99. What I do is list my auctions as Buy it Now auctions with free shipping and add on about $10 for the shipping cost. It seems that I am offering free shipping but I am actually not. Just makes it seem more of a bargain that way. If your using a dropshipper I would suggest doing Buy it Now auctions. If you go with the standard auction style listings your going to get those buyers that take 7 days to pay you. By then the item could be out of stock!

I'm still a little confused at the minute... so basically all I do is find the most expensive shipping cost for America and then add two dollars to the price?

I will suggest you to find out in Google, yahoo etc... the weight and how much does other people charge for shipping for that item you want to sell, always try to put a fare shipping cost, you can also add it to the item price and put free shipping , don’t go high in the shipping price, people don’t like high shipping cost, you could add couples of dollars for handling.

Good luck !

Ivan R.

When your drop shipping you want to give in your listing a very accurate shipping time to you buyers. Then add 2 days to give yourself a cushion.

If your drop shipping from abroad make sure you post your listings as shipping from that country. State this clearly in your listing as well so there is no mistaking where it's coming from.

You want to cut down on buyer upset at all costs. And you want to tie all the loose ends.

For example, I drop ship from overseas. I state from where in my listings item location and in my description page. I then let my customers know the delivery time in the listings domestics handling time and in the description. And I make it well known. I don't hide it in the listing somewhere. I put it in bold print. I use 20 days in the domestic handling tab and 14 to 21 business days in the description.

I also state that if a customer is unhappy with the above then please do not bid.

Personally, I charge high shipping in my auctions and low starting bid of .99.
So I have to really make sure I do it right.
So I have to dot all my Is and cross all my Ts because buyers think they own the world on eBay and if you don't you will get killed.lol

So I give worst case scenarios and then add more worse case. That way if its better than you state they will be happy.

About shipping. Yes most are going with low shipping and really its probably the better way to go. But I list close to 200 auctions a day as 1 day auctions.
This way I get the exposure by sheer blunt force.

I save 45$ per day doing it this way.

I nearly killed and probably did kill one of my accounts by incorrect shipping times and not correctly stating my item location. I sold 250 items last month but it seems only the 5 people that got it late wanted to post a feedback.

So I have 5 negs amongst 20 pos. and I'm pretty sure it s a ruined account. I'm just happy I started this venture in one of my starter accounts.

Just wanted to update my last listing.

It was probably a little irresponsible for me to suggest dropshipping and high shipping as this could very well hurt your DSRs.

If you are going to dropship its probably a good idea to go with free shipping.

If you have the item in hand you could probably have high shipping.

Using the two together COULD get you into trouble.

But, if you are testing product and want to see if there is a market for it you
could do the .99 listing with high ship just to check the product.

Product testing should be done on another eBay account than the one you are mainly using.