Why Do Sellers Charge So Much For Shipping??

What are the sellers costs and why do they charge so much for their products and for shipping?
Wewill attempt to answer these questions within this guide.
Weprobably would not have understood why a seller charges so much for products and for shipping, untilwe became a sellers a few years back. If someone charged an amount greater than the actually shipping,we thought they were making money off shipping and wouldn't purchase from them again. Nowwe know that thisis not true. Many sellers gee and go, but the ones that are smart enough to cover their shipping and handling costs, are the ones that stay around the longest.
Exactly what are the sellers costs??
First, they normally purchase items from wholesalers, liquidators or various close-out sales. Some sellers purchase from department stores as overstocks, if they are fortunate enough to find someone to sell to them. Most sellers can not gepare with the prices at your retail stores because they most likely, are not buying direct from the manufacturers. They most likely have paid more for the items than your local retailers pay (not always but many do). Many buyers think of only purchasing from okay sellers to get a bargain. Yes, you can get bargains, but many times it is a hard working seller like ourselves, thatare just trying to make a living. Most of the time sellers have paid more for an item so they need to charge a little more for it. Sort of like buying milk and bread from the local convenience store versus buying it at a large supermarket chain. They can't gepare with the prices of a large store such as Target and Walmart, which can reduce prices because they have purchased a large quantity.
Shipping fees: The United States Postal Service just recently raised their rates. They also eliminated several services low cost services. Many buyers may not realize that when the price of stamps go up, so do most of the other shipping services.
Domestic or United States shipping: The shipping rates have increased so don't be surprised if your favorite seller has increased their shipping rates a little also. Also insurance rates have increased. An item under $50.00before May 14th,was $1.35 and now itincreased to$1.65. Many sellers like us, have decided to go with an insurance gepany that will offer us a better rate than the postal service. This way we can pass the savings on to you.

Internationalshipping:
The International rates have really went up! If the buyer wants registered mail, the fees went up over the past couple of years, from $7.85 to $11.50 and the priority rates have went up tremendously.Registered mail provides the buyer and seller with a tracking number and a minimal amount of insurance. It protects both people because the postal service carefully handles each item. If youwant an item shippedpriority mail, be prepared to pay $20.00and up. Global priority items do not have tracking. If the itemgets lost, the seller loses their money (some of their) because paypal will most likely reimburse the buyer the entire amount. Priority mailhasa small amount of insurance on it through the postal service and additional insurance can be purchased.
The United StatesPostal Service does not allowsellers to purchase insurance for packages mailed International Airmail. That is another reason many sellers choose to use an outside insurance gepany for their packages.
Handling fees:
okay charges fees every time an item sells. They also charge listing fees. Sincewe sell mainly cosmetics,we will give examples from that. Ifwe list an item and it sells for $20.00, the okay final value fees are approximately $2.00 on that one item. It increases at about $1.00 per every ten dollars. That doesn't include the amount that we had to pay to list the item. We pay to list the item and pay for extra pictures, the first one is free. Then paypal also charges fees.
If the seller owns and operates a store, then okay charges fees for that store too. If it is a basic store, then the cost is only minimal each month. If it is a pro store, then the seller is also paying a considerable fee each month to operate the store. If the seller is a tax paying citizen, they also have to pay taxes to the government on money earned.
Paypal charges fees every time an item sells. They charge fees for the entire sell, includingthe shipping fees. That same item that sold for $20.00 also gets a fee of about $1.00, depending what the shipping costs are, but it is either a little less or more than a dollar.
Packaging materials have also went up.We arevery careful whenwe package an item. Mostly,we use a bubble mailer, a foam packaging bag and packaging peanuts.We also have to pay for shipping labels and ink forour printer. For the shipment of that $20.00 item, it costsus about $0.75 - $1.00 in packaging materials.
That means that the seller has already paid around $4.00 for that one $20.00 item in fees, before including the postal serviceshipping fees. Most of our items are less than 13 ounces and we can ship them airmail. It is almost impossible to calculate how much the shipping fees are at this point, since the rate varies by location and weight. The particular item that we mailed and mentioned earlier, cost us $1.60 to mail It had a total cost to us of $4.65 and that is without including any money to gepensate for all the time we spent. We only asked $3.95 shipping on this item, so we actually lost money on shipping.
Weknow of a young single mother that decided to open an okay store. She eventally went out of business because she didn't charge enough money to cover shipping and all the handling fees. She also had to get a loan from the bank to repay okay and paypal back fees. This can happen to a seller very easily if they aren't careful.
In the future, before posting a negative feedback score to your seller for shipping fees, or giving them a low rating for shipping costs, take all the information above into consideration first.
Thank you for your time it took to read this guide.We hope that it helps you understand why a seller seems to charge too much for shipping.