# free shipping or not?



## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

so you have a product that you want to sell for $16.99 plus $2.00 s&h. you know it's a fair price and reasonable shipping and handling costs. 

from a marketing/advertising standpoint, is that better, the same as, or worse than charging $18.99 and have free shipping?


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## superD70 (Dec 22, 2010)

Consumers love "free" stuff, no matter the value of it the word "free" makes em smile.


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## Cyberdon (Jan 31, 2010)

Free shipping is the way I will be going once I get started.....I think everyone KNOWS that the shipping isn't really free....but they know that at the brick and mortar stores too...

People HATE add-ons......That's why WalMart doesn't advertise a purchase at their stores for 14.00 plus 3.49 shipping cost...it's just 17.49 !!!!


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## beneathrejection (Dec 5, 2011)

In my opinion, free shipping isn't necessary. Your customer is going to decide to buy your product with the expectation of paying a shipping fee. Sure, finding out it's free shipping is going to be an added bonus, but from my experience it's not a deal breaker. I think it's far better to offer reasonable shipping rates. That way you're keeping your customers happy and not having to cover the shipping yourself (which means cutting into your profits). You can also take the money you save by charging shipping to offer great discounts to your customers, or put towards great extras that will make them so pumped when they open their package they'll forget about the shipping costs.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

i don't think it's a deal~breaker, either, though there is a psychology behind this kind of thing that i'm not on sure footing about. i'm thinking that it depends on what you're selling, eh?


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## debbiew (Dec 9, 2011)

I have offered it both ways over the last few years and found that free shipping is the way to go.


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## Decal_Designs (Jul 4, 2005)

It depends on where you are selling it too. If your selling on eBay for instance, free shipping is definitely a plus. People are very used to looking at the shipping on eBay and they see a lot of free shipping promotions. On the other hand, if you are selling on your own site, I think generally people expect to see some kind of shipping fee. This is a good opportunity to offer free shipping when they reach a certain dollar amount in the order.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

that's a good point, bill ~ free shipping with orders exceeding $$ is common and might help sell an add-on purchase, eh? 

for example, and i'm just making stuff up, say you sold a shirt for $16.99 with $3 s&h. your offer is free shipping for purchases over $20. well, it's iffy at best whether or not they'll buy another shirt just to save on shipping, but if you sold, say, keychains or some small accessory for $4, to the customer they're really only paying $1 for that extra little do-dad (which you're making 75% profit on if sold by itself). so, now the customer thinks they've gotten basically free shipping and a neat little trinket for a buck. if you were going to simply sell the shirt for $16.99 and have free shipping anyway i guess it wouldn't matter....


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## Flagrant-T (Nov 11, 2009)

I like that certain dollar amount idea. I know I've added more stuff when purchasing supplies from Ryonet to get over the $100 for free shipping.

I've done eBay sales before at $9.99 buy it now with $5.00 priority mail shipping, and sold the exact same shirts at 14.99 with free priority mail. I often ran the auctions overlapping. Makes no sense to me but the free shipping way out sold the other way.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

you do great work, nick. i wish i could have seen more designs off the website, though.

okay, so what i'm mostly hearing is a thumbs up for free shipping. do you work the shipping price into the cost of the shirt, a percentage of the cost, or just eat the cost altogether?


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## Flagrant-T (Nov 11, 2009)

ryan barker said:


> you do great work, nick. i wish i could have seen more designs off the website, though.


Thanks! I'm about to launch a totally new website in a mater of days (hopefully tomorrow)...huge galleries and a lot more features.


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

very cool. i'll be sure to check back. from what little i've seen, how you accomplish what you do is what i aspire to do.


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## Decal_Designs (Jul 4, 2005)

ryan barker said:


> ...... okay, so what i'm mostly hearing is a thumbs up for free shipping. do you work the shipping price into the cost of the shirt, a percentage of the cost, or just eat the cost altogether?


It kind of depends. If you are just selling one shirt for example, the cost of the shipping has to be figured into the price of the shirt if you are offering "free" shipping.
That's because you only have so much profit on one shirt and that's it. You can't let the shipping take away your profit.
To a customer, they like to see the words Free Shipping and may overlook the price of the shirt.
You may want to keep the cost of the shirt down a bit and offer them the incentive to buy just a couple more to get the free shipping.
When you're using Priority Mail for instance, it costs the same to ship one shirt as it does to ship a few because the total weight is still within the allowed amount for the package.
When you offer free shipping based on a set order amount, you could say that you are eating the cost of shipping, or you could say that you are willing to pay for the shipping to get them to order more shirts.
Set your free shipping dollar amount so that even after shipping, your overall profit is greater on that sale.


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## sadrok (Jan 29, 2012)

I think it depends on the price of the shirt. My son recently wanted to buy an item online and it was $1.00 with free shipping. As great as the product was I was skeptical because I thought "How can it be so inexpensive and have free shipping? Something must be wrong with it."


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## ryan barker (Jul 21, 2011)

sure, you would want to crunch the numbers on that. i don't mind eating a small bite of the cost if it's going to be the difference between a sale and a pass, but we need to keep it in perspective, too.


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## snidersports (Oct 6, 2009)

We just give a price and add the shipping in to it and let them know that it includes S/H then there are no questions


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