how to maintain price when using free shipping model?

[lloydsteventaylor]

when you offer free shipping what trick do you use to adjust your prices when  shipping costs keep rising?  again free shipping only, shipping costs are only one factor in setting your item price. how do you know how much to raise your price when shipping costs increase? 

[luckythewinner]

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@lloydsteventaylor wrote:

when you offer free shipping what trick do you use to adjust your prices when  shipping costs keep rising?  again free shipping only, shipping costs are only one factor in setting your item price. how do you know how much to raise your price when shipping costs increase? 

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How did you arrive at your price under the old shipping rates? I would do it the exact same way.

[lloydsteventaylor]

thanks. thats easy if you only have a few items but what do you do i you have a 1000 items with varying prices and weights?

[dbfolks166mt]

     Even though I don't have a huge number of listings I moved away from free shipping for a couple of reasons. First even with the small amount of changes the frequency and amount of the increases was becoming a pain to deal with. I had a bit of margin in the free shipping calculation and could potentially absorb one increase, along with the additional fees and sales tax additions, but the frequency and amounts are exceeding that margin. Second I had to build the worst case scenario into the free shipping. Being on the east coast that meant calculating the cost to a west coast buyer which was always higher and a disadvantage to east coast buyers. Since potential buyers can search by cost plus shipping lowest first the calculated shipping tended to show a price advantage for east coast buyers in the rack and stack of the listings. 

     I have also expanded the shipping options on a lot of my items since the USPS rates are starting to come into parity with UPS rates. In some cases UPS is actually cheaper. However if the buyer selects UPS I never purchase the label through eBay due to potential unilateral charges by UPS. 

[dhbookds]

I don't use free shipping...... but the increases usually are stated in a %......tho it can vary between classes ( first class/priority etc), I would increase by an average....... or use a weighed % if you have more priority than lst class.....etc.

Can't remember if you can have a handling charge with free shipping or not.....  If you can, that's another area to consider to do an  increase. 

[chevymontecarlo88]

What is your average shipping cost for items you sell ? Coins vs Postcards

[dhbookds]

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@dhbookds wrote:

I don't use free shipping...... but the increases usually are stated in a %......tho it can vary between classes ( first class/priority etc), I would increase by an average....... or use a weighed % if you have more priority than lst class.....etc.

Can't remember if you can have a handling charge with free shipping or not.....  If you can, that's another area to consider to do an  increase. 

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To be more clear (need more coffee).......I would raise the prices by whatever % you decide.......I think that could be done with bulk edit. 

[evry1nositswindy]

You have to go about it backwards.  How much do you want to net?  Take that number, add the cost of shipping, add the cost of eBay's fee, add the cost of packing/time, and this is your price.

[m60driver]

I use "free shipping" but I also review my prices often enough to be able to adjust for shipping increases.  I also end older stale listings and review and relist with "sell similar".  Yes, occasionally I get caught with my pants down on my oldest inventory that I failed to adjust for shipping increases, but it just doesn't happen that often.  But more often I unintentionally lower a price too low for the shipping costs as I forget the item is over 1 lb.

[dbfolks166mt]

You have to go about it backwards.  How much do you want to net?  Take that number, add the cost of shipping, add the cost of eBay's fee, add the cost of packing/time, and this is your price.

Correct calculation in determining initial price. The problem with using free shipping is every time the postal rates increase your net decreases unless you adjust your price every time there is a change. 

[luckythewinner]

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@lloydsteventaylor wrote:

thanks. thats easy if you only have a few items but what do you do i you have a 1000 items with varying prices and weights?

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It's also easy if you using shipping policies. When I am given no other context, I generally give answers based on my own experience 🙂

[stainlessenginecovers]

How do you do it if you have 1000's of multi weighted items? 

Use Calculated; then the price changes when the shipping cost changes. (I would add 20% 'handling' to those numbers as well-to cover FVF's)

BUT: I would only use Free Shipping if that's what your competition is doing. 

[shado-x]

thanks. that's easy if you only have a few items but what do you do i you have a 1000 items with varying prices and weights?

Do comps.

[chevymontecarlo88]

when you offer free shipping what trick do you use to adjust your prices when shipping costs keep rising? again free shipping only, shipping costs are only one factor in setting your item price. how do you know how much to raise your price when shipping costs increase?

As most of everyone has stated, you can just bulk edit the percentage (%) of the increase (postage) to your buy it now price. Shipping increases are not surprises and typically announced more than 30 days in most cases. 

It is that easy if you have calculated your original Free Shipping cost within the original price of said item being sold. 

If you want to target certain categories, based on what you are currently listing and have sold, it appears that most of the items are postcards / trading cards and coins. I would assume most of them are being shipped first class as well. You can bulk edit certain categories if you just want to adjust trading cards or just coins. 

Obviously there is a cost to you when offering FREE SHIPPING and you already factored it into your item that you have listed .(hopefully) When the post office announces their increases (months ahead) they will give you the percentage increase as well as the amount. You can bulk edit your items with a percentage increase instead of just adding a dollar amount to each.