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Zoshi

Cheap way to do international shipping?

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So I've started making little phone charms as a hobby and to (hopefully) make some money on the side, and to reach a wider audience I decided to offer international shipping. Problem is, I've had no experience using it before and ended up paying twice what I posted as the shipping cost. I thought I would be able to ship it as a large envelope, but when I went to the post office the person behind the counter insisted it had to be shipped as a "package" which costs twice as much(which frankly is ridiculous, the things I'm selling are tiny and flat.) So I refused and went home and looked online for a cheaper option, but nothing would allow me to fill out a customs form without having my shipment being classified as a "package" and from there nothing was cheaper than $13.

So the reason I'm posting this on a Lego forum is because I've made several international purchases via Bricklink of things like minifigures that had reasonable international shipping costs (around $5-6) and minifigures are a lot more bulky than what I'm trying to ship so I think I'm missing something here and I'm hoping someone here has some experience with this sort of thing and can help me. Or does the US just... not have a cheap way to ship internationally?

TL;DR I'm trying to find a way to ship small things from the US without spending a fortune.

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The only thing coming to mind is use bubble envelopes. Of course they might charge by weight. I am sure someone else has a better answer. The only other advise I can give you is try to remember how things were sent to you and try to replicate it. 

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Does your country's postal system offer special rates for small businesses based on how much they ship?  Might be something to look into if you ship regularly with them.

Do you pass the shipping costs directly on to your customers?  They pay what you paid or did you quote too low without due diligence and now stuck with eating the cost difference? 

 

 

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21 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

The only thing coming to mind is use bubble envelopes. Of course they might charge by weight. I am sure someone else has a better answer. The only other advise I can give you is try to remember how things were sent to you and try to replicate it. 

I have been using bubble mailers but they still want to charge me for a package :hmpf_bad: The weight isn't an issue, it doesn't affect the cost too much but as soon as they classify it as a package the cost doubles.

11 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Does your country's postal system offer special rates for small businesses based on how much they ship?  Might be something to look into if you ship regularly with them.

Do you pass the shipping costs directly on to your customers?  They pay what you paid or did you quote too low without due diligence and now stuck with eating the cost difference? 

 

I'm not sure I can qualify as a small business, I haven't sold that much yet haha.

I checked online to see how much it would cost to ship it and put that as the shipping cost, but I thought I'd be able to ship it as a large envelope so my estimate was too low. Yeah, I ended up paying the difference, I'd never ask someone to pay more than what they already have because of my miscalculation. I did adjust the shipping cost though because I'd end up losing money if I didn't, but now I'm worried people won't want to buy because the shipping cost is almost double what the actual charms cost.

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