@blue.bird-official wrote:
I need an answer for this from experienced sellers?
Free shipping has been a good idea for some sellers, and a terrible idea for others. There are 20 million sellers on eBay and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
IMHO here are a couple scenarios to be aware of.
1) Most buyers know that when you offer free shipping, you are simply adding the cost of shipping into the item price. So if you have buyers who tend to purchase multiple items, the total cost of your items might become uncompetitive as the quantity goes up.
Your $20 with free shipping item might beat a competitor's $15 item with $12 if the buyer only buys one. But if the buyer wants 5, your price will be $20 x 5+ $0 = $100, but a competitor might offer a shipping discount of $15 x 5 + $15 = $90.
2) If the cost of shipping your $20 item across the country varies from $5 to $15, you may decide to add an "average" cost of $10 to your item making it $20 + $10 = $30.
In this case, buyers close to your can get it from a competitor for $20 + $5 = $25, you will lose sales. But buyers far away can get a better price from you ($30 instead of $20 + $15 = $35 from competitors), but you are losing $5 on shipping when you do this.
The result may be that your free shipping drives away the most profitable sales (the buyers close to you), and leaves you with only the most unprofitable sales (the buyers far away) where you lose $5 on each sale.
