How To Ship Products For Your Online Business
By Ricky Weber

There is a simple principle of business and making money
that many marketers seem to forget: If you want one million
dollars, you must move one million dollars worth of
product. Many people who run their own online business
become excited at the prospect of not needing to ship
physical items because they are selling software or any
other type of intangible product with electronic delivery.
While it is possible to earn a living working only with
these types of products, you can also use the internet to
reach new customers to buy your existing physical products,
and shipping these products becomes the central focus of
your business in order to keep costs low and keep customer
satisfaction high.

Of course it is possible to buy shipping materials at your
local office supply store, and if you only have a small
amount of physical products that you need to ship then this
might be a good idea for you. Most online businesses will
anticipate a larger number of sales and a larger number of
products that need to be moved, so it might not be cost
effective to buy your shipping materials from the supply
store. A better solution is to purchase your shipping
materials in bulk from a wholesale supplier, meaning that
you make a large purchase of hundreds of boxes or envelopes
instead of buying them one at a time which would obviously
mean that you pay less for each one individually.

If you are only operating a small business then you might
feel daunted by the idea of buying hundreds or thousands of
boxes for shipping all at once. Where will you put them
all? And what happens if you have too many extras left
over? You do not want to rack up disproportionately high
costs for shipping your products, so if you would pay $1.50
per box at the office supply store or $0.20 per box if you
buy 500 at a time, obviously it makes sense to buy more
even if this is all the shipping material you would need
for the entire year.

It is also important to consider whether you as the seller
should pay for the shipping costs or if the buyer pays for
all shipping costs. If you decide that it is better to pay
for shipping on your end then you will need to reflect this
cost in the price of the product, but also make sure to
display "free shipping" prominently so that the customer
knows that the price they see does not have any other
extraneous additions to it. Many businesses choose to have
the buyer cover the shipping costs since these costs can
vary greatly depending on location. If this is your
situation then you may not need to purchase any shipping
materials at all, because if you allow your customer to
choose which method of delivery they would like then some
shipping companies such as UPS or FedEx will provide you
with free shipping materials once you set up an account
with them and prove that you will invoice the shipping
costs to customers.

If you are shipping your products within the continental
United States then you may also choose to ship with the US
Postal Service. The post office will supply you with
shipping materials for free if you choose Overnight Express
Mail or Priority Mail, and since these two options are more
costly than traditional postal shipping it makes sense for
the post office to provide these materials to you for free.

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Ricky Weber frequently posts new articles about how to make
money online at his personal blog http://RickyWeber.com

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