Printing postage can help to reduce the overall costs of reselling goods, however, depending on your volume this cost could actually dip into your hard-earned profits. And unless your home or business is next door to a mail facility, you’re wasting time and money driving to drop off packages, which no one wants that to happen.
As with everything nowadays, there are positive and negative aspects to everything, and we wouldn’t be doing our job as a liquidation partner if we didn’t lay everything out on the table.
BRANDING: By printing your own postage, you are given a creative edge to incorporate your own logo and branding elements for the entire package. This eliminates your time in handwriting each mailing address, and if your handwriting isn’t the best this can help reduce any errors or mishaps in the shipment process (win-win). Additionally, printing all your postage gives your business a professional look to your customer, which will be trust and loyalty – and hopefully their repeat business.
POSTAGE VALUE: Depending on your business practice, shipping costs are either absorbed into the price of the item in order to state ‘Free Shipping’ or the expenses are passed onto the customer in addition to the price of the item. These shipping costs may include more than just the postage when you factor in the box, packing materials, tape, etc.
Provided your business factors in these additional materials for shipping costs while passing the expense along to the customer, you will want to lean towards printing your own postage as the costs to avoid showing how much it actual cost to ship on the postage vs what they paid. This could destroy any trust between you and the customer.
ADDITIONAL EXPENSES: Starting the venture into printing postage will have some upfront expenses that may seem as though this method is most expensive, however, when you look at your business figures you’ll be able to determine the time until you’ve broken even.
What are those additional expenses? They may include a scale to properly weigh packages to the nearest ounce, labels of all sizes, thermal printers, and any membership fees associated with the postage company – or companies.
DELIVERY PRECISION: An added bonus with printing postage is having the ability to correct any error prior to shipping. This is a major advantage in case the incorrect format was used, or the zip code doesn’t match the city name – saving you money and customer satisfaction issues in the long run.
Furthermore, delivery confirmation is usually an add-on at the mail facility for an additional fee. While a small price to pay to provide extra assurance to the customer, it can add up over time. When printing posting online, this confirmation feature is free for priority mail and under 20 cents for first class. These may vary by service, so be sure to look into this before committing.
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Disclaimer: Guides are submitted by readers and the views expressed belong solely to the author.
