Free Delivery vs delivery costs on low value items

[rcscrapyard]

This question is aimed at UK seller, who use Royal Mail

I have about 2000 items listed on ebay, with a price range between £4.99 and £300. Approx 20% of my items are priced between £4.99 and £6.99 and these provide approx 40% of all sales. ( I ship about 8000 small packets a year) I currently offer free shipping on all items. My dilema is that postage for most of these items, is £2.74 via royal mail tracked. When coupled with ebay fees, VAT and the costs of initial purchase, there is very little profit. 

So, I am considering adding a delvery charge to all items under £6.99 to cover costs.  I would like to do this in a way that if the buyer buys more that one item, which totals over £6.99, postge is then free.

Firstly, I would appreciate any thoughts on this from the community please? Has anybody done this? How does it afect ebay rankings etc.

secondly, I have no idea how to initiate that on ebay listings, and assistance (If I proceed) would be appreciated?

I am a top rated seller, but the 10% selling fee discount is negligable for these sales. Would it make a difference iif I dropped a ranking to save postage costs?

Sorry for rambling, and thank you in advance

Simon

[ile136yz]

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@rcscrapyard wrote:

This question is aimed at UK seller, who use Royal Mail

I have about 2000 items listed on ebay, with a price range between £4.99 and £300. Approx 20% of my items are priced between £4.99 and £6.99 and these provide approx 40% of all sales. ( I ship about 8000 small packets a year) I currently offer free shipping on all items. My dilema is that postage for most of these items, is £2.74 via royal mail tracked. When coupled with ebay fees, VAT and the costs of initial purchase, there is very little profit. 

So, I am considering adding a delvery charge to all items under £6.99 to cover costs.  I would like to do this in a way that if the buyer buys more that one item, which totals over £6.99, postge is then free.

Firstly, I would appreciate any thoughts on this from the community please? Has anybody done this? How does it afect ebay rankings etc.

secondly, I have no idea how to initiate that on ebay listings, and assistance (If I proceed) would be appreciated?

I am a top rated seller, but the 10% selling fee discount is negligable for these sales. Would it make a difference iif I dropped a ranking to save postage costs?

Sorry for rambling, and thank you in advance

Simon

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Re. for adding a delivery charge/postage you could set a 'Promotional Rate Rule' found on Postage Preference - where you enter a postage cost that you do not go over e.g. £2.74 - then choose the adverts you want to apply it to.

Depending how you have your postage set-up you will have to have another Postage Policy set up for only your low cost items as you may send the higher cost items with the same type of postage - this keeps it clear if you need to change costs in the future.

Re. the 10% selling fee discount -  you will still get this on the items/adverts that are listed FOC (as you did before). 

You mentioned that it is 20%/40% of your items that you would be adding a delivery charge to, check your rankings before the postage change, & after the  change to keep an eye on the ranking to see if it makes any difference.