How to list items for international shipping on eBay

[bassileid5]

Hey Sellers, 

I have been working a lot of you to enable your export business and a common theme I have found is that many do not know how to use our platform to list international shipping to specific countries outside of the usual listing flow for example Poland or Malaysia. Below is a step by step guide on how to list your items using rate tables and shipping policies to countries not outlined in the listing flow: 

Note: You need to list your item before adding international shipping with the steps below

1. Go to Sell.
2. Under settings click Business Policies.
• Note: If you do not have a business account, you will not be able to turn on Business Policies.
• To enable a business account, go to Account Settings at the top left hand side where your user ID is listed. Click on Personal Information. Find Account Type and click Edit. Change the account from Personal to Business.
3. Click Create Policy and select Shipping
4. Name Your Policy and describe it to help differentiate and give it context.
5. In the U.S Shipping Section, insert your domestic shipping details not international
6. Under International Shipping, deselect the box “Send it to the US shipping centre, and rest will be taken care of for you”. This will disable eBay’s Global Shipping Program and allow you to list your items for self-shipping.
• Note: If you do have a shipping solutions to all countries, you can keep this box ticked. This will allow you to ship using GSP to all eligible countries for which you have not enabled self-shipping and excluded from your shipping country list.
• I.e if I have a shipping solution to Denmark, Japan, and Australia but not Italy, Mexico and Russia, by keeping this box ticked, I can ship GSP to Italy, Mexico and Russia and ship my own solution to Denmark, Japan and Australia. You also have to be sure to not exclude Italy, Mexico and Russia from your country exclusion list.
7. Under Alternative International Shipping Options, click the drop down and choose Flat: Same cost to all buyers.
8. Under Ship to, click the drop down and choose Custom Location. This will show you the region and countries to ship to.
9. Select the countries/regions you want to ship to.
10. Under Services, click the drop down and choose your shipping service to the countries or region you have selected prior. i.e USPS Priority International Mail or FedEx International Economy.
    • Note: At the moment, DHL is not listed as option therefore please choose a generic option like Standard International Shipping or Expedited International Shipping if DHL is your carrier.
11. If you have different costs for different countries and region, please select the Offer additional service link underneath the countries listed. You will be able to add in a new shipping location and shipping service to different locations.
12. If you want enable shipping to a set of countries or country that is not listed in the shipping policy workflow, please view our “Apply International Shipping Rate Table” below.
13. If you do not want to specify your costs for a specific country but want to advise buyers that you ship there, you can select these countries under the field Additional ship to locations – buyers contact for costs.
14. In that section, select your countries and region you want to ship to but do not want to list a cost. This will notify buyers that they can reach out to you in order to gather shipping costs detail to the countries you have ticked.
15. Scroll down to the section Exclude shipping locations. Click Edit exclusion list and select the countries you want to exclude from your shipping policy. Click Apply once finished.
    • Note: If you still have the GSP box ticked above, countries excluded in this section will not be eligible for GSP either
16. When you have completed all the details in your shipping policy hit Save.
17. Your new policy will now appear in the Business Policy Page. Go find the policy you just created and tick the box on the left. Click the Reassign listings button at the top
    • Note: You will notice that all your listings are already assigned to one or another policy.
18. A drop down will appear asking you to choose the policy for which you want to transfer listings from and into your newly created policy. Choose the policy that you will transfer the listings from click Change. This will transfer all listings in that policy into your newly created policy.
19. Once finished, be sure to check some of the listings attached to your new policy.  You can do this by click the arrow on the right of your newly created policy. This will show you how many listings are attached to that policy. Click on the number of listings in the drop down arrow.
20. Go the listings and choose the various countries you have enabled shipping to confirm that the rates you have inputted are correct on that listing. If this is correct, all other listings under this policy will also be correct.

Apply International Shipping Rate Table

1. In the Shipping Policy flow, scroll down to Shipping rate tables where you will see an option to Apply international shipping rate table.
2.  In order to use this, you will need to create an international shipping rate table. You can do this by clicking the Create rate tables underneath the Apply international shipping rate table
3.  A new window will open, select the + icon on the shipping service you are offering. You can choose between Expedited, Standard or Economy.
4.  Select the Region your shipping service will deliver to. It will drop down and allow you to select the Countries.
5.  It will display the region/countries you have chosen. In the same box under cost, please add the per item cost to ship to the countries/region you have chosen.
   • Note: if you want to list a per pound rate, go back to the top and next to Set shipping rates by select the drop down and choose
   • Go back down and repeat steps 3 & 4 above. When reaching step 5, insert your per pound rate. In the cost box, you also have the option to insert a starting shipping costs for which will be added on top of the per pound rate. i.e. if your per pound rate is 5 USD on a 5 pound shipment and you have inserted a cost of 20 USD in the cost box, your total costs will be 45 USD for that item.
   • If you do not wish to add a starting shipping costs, you can simply input a zero in the cost box. i.e. for the example above your shipping costs would be 25 USD.
6. Once all rates for all countries/regions have been listed, name your table in the field Table Name above and click
7. Back in your shipping policy, under Shipping rate tables, tick the box Apply international rate table. If you only have one international rate table created, it will automatically choose this table. You can view the rate table clicking
   • Note: If you have more than one rate table, when clicking the box for Apply international rate table it will prompt a drop down for which you can select the international rate table of your choice.
8. Once rate table is added, continue the process in step 13 above in “How to list items for international shipping on eBay”

[newview]

Where’s the setting for, “Only offer international shipping to countries with verifiable point-to-point tracking”? Or the setting for, “Only offer international shipping to countries that do not have ridiculous customs delays.”?

[llllady]

Oh, my.  Only 28 steps. 

[bassileid5]

Hi Newview,

Many thanks for your feedback.

It is unfortunate we do not have these settings on our platform but I think these would be great topics for additional posts in the community. Perhaps a post about choosing the right tracking services according to country or one about where customs can be an issue and which port of entries to avoid delays.

Will look to put something together for you guys. Many thanks again for this.
Bassil

[bassileid5]

Hi llllady,

Thanks for your feedback. Actually if you count the bullet points it's 39 steps.

I hear you it can be quite a lot but this really is an in-depth guide with a lot of detail. Many sellers may not need to follow all the steps depending on their end goal.

For example, this guide covers how to list your items for GSP to some countries and how to list that same item with direct ship to other countries. Some may not need this but it is there in case there is interest.

Hope this can be of help to some of you guys. Many thanks for your feedback,
Bassil

[lookng2015]

How about heck no, I'll just keep selling domestic only.

[bassileid5]

Hi lookng2015,

Thanks for your feedback.

Completely understand your position. International is a hard cookie to crack but there is great potential.

Two-thirds of the world’s purchasing power is outside the United States. That’s 790 million international customers who are potential new customers for US retailers. Where the US once held ecommerce supremacy, by 2020 its stake is expected to be 16.9% (down from 22.2% in 2015). As a result, the lion’s share of global ecommerce sales in particular (84%) now resides outside of Western continents like North America.

No doubt international ecommerce is not easy but the reward is great for those who are able to crack it.

Thanks again,
Bassil

[llllady]

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@bassileid5 wrote:
Hi llllady,

Thanks for your feedback. Actually if you count the bullet points it's 39 steps.

I hear you it can be quite a lot but this really is an in-depth guide with a lot of detail. Many sellers may not need to follow all the steps depending on their end goal.

For example, this guide covers how to list your items for GSP to some countries and how to list that same item with direct ship to other countries. Some may not need this but it is there in case there is interest.

Hope this can be of help to some of you guys. Many thanks for your feedback,
Bassil

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28 or 39...does it really matter?  Pity the new seller who can't even figure out that they should wait for payment before they ship.  I'm sure they'll grasp this really well. 

FWIW, it is well detailed.  Have to give you credit there. 

[gramophone-georg]

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@bassileid5 wrote:
Hi llllady,

Thanks for your feedback. Actually if you count the bullet points it's 39 steps.

I hear you it can be quite a lot but this really is an in-depth guide with a lot of detail. Many sellers may not need to follow all the steps depending on their end goal.

For example, this guide covers how to list your items for GSP to some countries and how to list that same item with direct ship to other countries. Some may not need this but it is there in case there is interest.

Hope this can be of help to some of you guys. Many thanks for your feedback,
Bassil

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Only 39 steps to listing an item?

The 12 baud modem era called on a rotary dial land line. They want their programming back.

[slippinjimmy]

The 39 steps include every possible permutation....

For me it's just 2 steps, select Worldwide, enter shipping amount.

[a_c_green]

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@bassileid5 wrote:
It is unfortunate we do not have these settings on our platform but I think these would be great topics for additional posts in the community. Perhaps a post about choosing the right tracking services according to country or one about where customs can be an issue and which port of entries to avoid delays.

---

Well, First Class Package International will only give you a Delivered status to certain countries (those listed on the USPS website here). Of those, some are more reliable than others at actually holding up their end of the deal, and if they don't, you're out of luck if the buyer chooses to file an INR. You cannot really choose the right "tracking service" for a given country; the best you can do is to select a Shipping method that will give you the tracking protection you need for that shipment.

As for selecting a port of entry, I have no idea how you would do that. Routing the package is not something we can control. We can only select a carrier and a shipping method, and hope for the best.

[tealt]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

The 39 steps include every possible permutation....

For me it's just 2 steps, select Worldwide, enter shipping amount.

---

Me too.

Being very low volume and selling antique/vintage OOAK, those 39 steps in the OP are beyond intimidating.  [Wasn't there a Hitchcock movie...].

I'm also finding that more and more of my international buyers are using USA forwarding services.  Today I was very surprised to see a nice feedback for an antique cup and saucer from the buyer in Turkey.  I've never shipping anything to Turkey.

[ted_200]

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@tealt wrote:

---

@slippinjimmy wrote:

The 39 steps include every possible permutation....

For me it's just 2 steps, select Worldwide, enter shipping amount.

---

Me too.

Being very low volume and selling antique/vintage OOAK, those 39 steps in the OP are beyond intimidating.  [Wasn't there a Hitchcock movie...].

I'm also finding that more and more of my international buyers are using USA forwarding services.  Today I was very surprised to see a nice feedback for an antique cup and saucer from the buyer in Turkey.  I've never shipping anything to Turkey.

---

If I read all that stuff correctly, it is explaining how to bulk edit listings for calculated internaional shipping (but only after the listing was listed), while still enabling the GSP for countries you wish to exclude for direct shipping.  I do know this is something users have asked for (enabling GSP for certain countries, shipping themsleves for other countries, and still being able to block some countries), so it's useful information, if not extremely complicated looking. 

It made my brain hurt, although it is well-written enough that someone who wanted to pull out information to do something else might actually suceed.  It also involves using eBay "Business Policies" which is something I've religiously avoided.  I think this is intended for sellers more advanced than me.

Since I don't want GSP handling any of my stuff, I can just continue with Canada and Worldwide, with the excluded country list to weed out the problem destinations. 

[southern*sweet*tea]

I think my eyeballs just fell out of my head

That's...a lot of stuff going on for something that should be (and is) relatively simple.

Business policies?? Now I'm afraid to even look at them

[nawlinsron2]

Leave it to ebay to turn "How to Peel a Banana" into a 39 step process.

I've been shipping international for over 15 years with just ONE click.
My shipment count is in the 100's...and ALL got there.