So basically the problem stems from my shipper closing their branches near my house and work, so that I might have to switch back to mailing in Canada with Canada Post. (I'm doing cost analysis on this to figure out what I need to do with my listings to make that happen).
I'm using a software called SixBit and didn't use any shipping presets. I learnt about those earlier in the week and am applying that to all listings. I'm also recategorizing my items, not that anything really wrong with the current categories, however if I'm shipping with Canada Post, prices will change, and promos will have to be rewritten on things like combined shipping. So organizing a new category structure will make it easier. I also organized my listings in SixBit in a way that I could manage them better. (For instance subcategorizing types of items to make it easy to make mass changes to a specific product).
So reorganizing the database and the eBay store are the two main tasks, and I've been at it for a week. While the system takes time to sync changes I can ship orders in the background, so it's not like I'm out of service, I just can't make new listings right now.
My very last steps in this change is to update my shipping location back to Canada (if I'm shipping everything from Canada, without my shipper I'll not be using USPS anymore). And putting together new combined shipping promos so shipping can be cheap on single coins, but not cheap on coin sets (which wasn't a huge problem with USPS shipping, but there's a steep rate increase going over a pound with Canada Post, or should I say, going over 500 grams).
As part of my cost analysis, I went on eBay.ca and pretended I was going to purchase labels for all of April's listings to see how much more it costs to ship from Canada. I learnt that single coins and small things it makes almost no difference in price. But with postcards, it's way more expensive to ship those to the US from Canada. For first day covers, it's even steeper the increase in postage for up to 3oz from Canada to US. For international mail, there's very little change needed.
I also learnt where I'm going to spend significantly more on postage is the big parcels that go out a couple times a month (currently in a flat rate medium priority box, one guy won almost all my auctions last Sunday and got a big priority box of items, another token buyer purchases almost all my tokens every week plus extra stuff I have that I'm not listing, and it's super steep to mail his packages from Canada). So these are things to consider.
However at the same time, the drive to use USPS still is 3 hours per trip (two trips per week, and $25 in fuel per trip), and that's two nights a week I'm not able to do listings and work on my store. That misery of driving to mail packages starts on Thursday next week.
If you've gotten some experience with serious revamping of your store, please share what you did and what you learnt. I figured while I'm at it, I'll do everything that needs to be done. I've put it off long enough, so now it's time to spend the time in fixing things. It will make it better for me in the future.
C.
