More About Shipping

There was a comment on yesterday's post about hoping that Etsy would assist with the shipping issue affecting so many of their sellers.  Unfortunately, there isn't anything Etsy as a whole can do about this.  Each shop owner, while "governed" under Etsy's Terms of Use, maintains their own shop policies and prices.  There is no global way to change everyone's prices, nor would we want this. 

~*~

What Etsy has done is allow sellers to create and save shipping profiles- templates for prices to certain countries based on the size and weight of the item.   And, we can "bulk edit" to apply these templates a page at a time.  If your shop carries the same sort of item, with maybe a couple of different sizes or weights, changing your templates and applying them isn't too labor intensive.  I have already been able to finish changes in sosorosey for this reason. 

~*~

But when you have a vintage shop, with almost 600 items for sale, ranging widely in size and shape and weight, each listing must be carefully considered.   So far in sosovintage I have changed all of the fabric listings, and created about 5 shipping profiles identified by weight.  At this time, I am not including international shipping estimates on items weighing over 4 pounds. 

~*~

 A HUGE lifesaver for me in creating my profiles has been the shipping calculator created by an Etsy seller and shared on her blog.  If you need to do what I am doing this weekend, you'll want to visit and bookmark this page right now: http://brittanysbest.com/2013/01/usps-shipping-calculator-for-2013/

~*~

I am often touched by the kindness and generosity of the Etsy community as a whole.  There are so many talented and kind people, and it's wonderful to be a part of that.  We will get through this "Giant Shipping Price Increase Crisis of 2013" together!!