Increase eBay Sales: Offer International Shipping
If you’re on eBay but haven’t offered international shipping to foreign buyers, you’re missing out on an enormous market. Easysale, the largest eBay store in Dallas, ships to buyers worldwide on most of our listed items, offering our customers a larger pool of potential buyers. Many eBay sellers are intimidated by international shipping and shun the global market entirely, but the truth is that international shipping on eBay is relatively easy and requires just a few steps more than domestic shipping.
Offering international shipping increases the number of potential buyers attracted to your listing, which can fuel a bidding war and increase the final bidding price. To ensure success as you open up your listing to foreign buyers, keep in mind these easy tips:
- As you would do with domestic shipments, get the specific dimensions of your listed item, including all the packaging. This will allow you to give buyers a better shipping estimate.
- Use eBay’s Shipping Calculator and add it to your item description. This is where the work you put into capturing your package’s exact dimensions pay off, as the Shipping Calculator will give buyers in just about any country in the world a good estimate on their shipping costs. Make sure you remind your buyers that the Shipping Calculator only offers an estimate of shipping costs, that the final cost may vary and that customs fees and import duties, if any, are not
included. - Many international carriers automatically provide insurance to all packages up to a certain limit. If it doesn’t, or if the coverage is less than the value of the item, make sure that you purchase adequate insurance. You can offer it as an option to your buyers — international or domestic — require it, or include the cost in your handling fees.
- If an international buyer opts out of purchasing insurance, inform them — either in your listing or in a separate email to the winning bidder — that you are not responsible for loss or damage to the package once it enters the shipping network. Packages shipped overseas pass through a lot of hands and transportation services, so you’ll need to make sure that you protect yourself should something happen to the item while in transit.
- Inform the winning international buyer that they will be responsible for any customs duties and taxes once the item enters their country’s borders. Each country has its own customs policies regarding the import of used items. Many foreign buyers will already be aware of these, as they’ve probably had to deal with them before in previous eBay transactions, but others aren’t so savvy and will need to be told upfront so that there aren’t any unpleasant surprises.
- Some international buyers may ask you to mark the item as a “Gift” on customs forms in order to avoid customs duties, but this is illegal and may result in penalties to you, the shipper. Customs officials are entitled to open any imported package for inspection and can flag your item if it looks suspicious — that eBay manifest/invoice is a dead giveaway! — so stick to the rules and mark the nature of the shipment accordingly on the forms.
- Insured or not, make sure that the item is packed carefully and securely to minimize damage.
- Fill out all customs forms completely and accurately. It only looks intimidating but is actually quite simple. Ask the associate at the shipping counter for assistance if you have any questions. In the future you’ll be a pro at filling them out, so take lots of extra blank forms with you so that you can easily offer international shipping on future eBay listings.
If you’d rather not deal with the hassle of selling on eBay, give us a call at Easysale to find out how you can make money with your unwanted or unused items with little effort on your part. We sell to buyers worldwide and take care of all the work of preparing your item for listing and even shipping it to the winning bidder, wherever they are on the globe.Call us at (469) 759-6266 to find out more.
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