Hi everyone! I notice, as I am doing my research on how to increase traffic to my site , that offering shipping overseas is the most logical answer. I just wanted to get your opinion and some advice from your personal experience when working with an international bidder. If you can tell me the do's and don'ts that will help me out a lot. Also, what countries are the most marketable? I notice on some sites that the seller will only ship to certain countries. Why is that?
I sell vintage costume jewelry and ship internationally all the time. I would say it's about 25% of my business. I think it's worth doing. Look carefully at your shipping costs though. First Class International is relatively cheap, but you can only use it up to 11 oz. Priority international mail runs approx $20 and up. A lot of foreign buyers don't want to pay Priority rates for lower priced items.
I ship to any country and also do first class shipping when the item is light enough. Some countries have many bans and restrictions such as Italy or Nigeria has a lot of fraud and some sellers just don't want to deal with the hassles so they only ship to certain areas. Rather than ban the whole country what I do in those instances where I realize I've sold an item I cannot ship is I just refund and have had no problems. I ship the most to the UK, Australia and Japan with HK pretty close behind :) Good luck!
Aloha, we have been shipping all over the world for years and try to offer the cheapest shipping possible. We can get three shirts tightly in the priority flat rate envelope for 12.95 and thats worked out well for us. We have had just a few non paying bidders from other countries 3 or 4 but that has only been since eBay changed the feedback rules for sellers until then none. We have never been unable to ship anywhere so far. Its worth the extra effort we think. Mahalo, Leroy
I have shipped internationally for a while using first class international. But I decided to switch to express international or first class international with registered mail for tracking purposes. I had one buyer claim item was never received. The buyer repeated this claim to other vintage buyers who didn't have tracking. Nearly all of the buyers are honest but there area few who aren't. If you don't want to risk losing your item and charge back fees, its worth tracking your international sales. Especially if they're valuable or worth more than $20.
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