5 Tips When You are Wrapping For eBay
You've got a sale! Hurray! It's always good to see those 'notification of instant payment' emails popping into your inbox. Goodbye annoying junk lying around the house, hello money in your PayPal account. God bless eBay, Etsy.com and all the rest too.
However not all parts of the procedure are quite so enjoyable, it has to be admitted. For some of us, the wrapping and posting steps in the procedure are an ordeal to be got through with gritted teeth, in terms of money, time and annoyance. (And sometimes the listing part too, but there's not much I can do about that. Suck it up!)
Here are five tips to improve the wrapping experience for you. Let's try to make it bearable!
WATCH THAT RECYCLING HABIT!
Recycling is great and I'm all in favour of it. But watch when and how you do it. Some sites, such as Amazon, don't care for it and may have specific rules barring recycled materials. Check out the terms and conditions when you break out the sellotape!
Being careful about the quality of recycled materials goes without saying - we've all read horror stories about receiving eBay items wrapped in fish finger packets etc.
But also you need to continually bear in mind the opportunity cost of using recycled materials. It's considerably more time-consuming to transform salvaged card, bubble-wrap and paper into a presentable parcel rather than simply popping a book or DVD into a jiffy bag. If you could be devoting your time to a more income-producing activity, then you'd be better off adding thirty pence to your postage and packing fee and using new materials. All that freed up time could prove very profitable!
ORGANISE ITEMS TO BE WRAPPED
If you have a bunch of items to be wrapped, it could save time in the long run to go through them and group together any very similar items. You can then systematize your wrapping procedures and make productivity and speed gains by e.g. cutting out eight similar sized pieces of paper and bubble wrap at once. This cuts out a lot of extra handling and searching for bits of wrapping and generally speeds up the process.
HAUNT THE POUND SHOPS/DOLLAR STORES
If you're flexible about the kind of wrapping or wrapping implements you buy, an open mind can save you a lot of money. Take a look around your local pound shop - if you don't sell enough to justify bulk purchases from an online supplier, they can be an excellent source of wrapping materials.
I don't mean just jiffy bags and bubble wrap either. If you think a little outside the box, you can wind up buying e.g. a thin foam camping 'mattress' for a quid - which can substitute very nicely for bubble wrap - and you get three times the amount for your money.
(This kind of flexibility can save you money in other areas too. For example, pound shops and DIY stores often sell nails and screws in small hard clear plastic compartmentalized boxes. Very similar boxes are ridiculously expensive - if you buy them from a craft store to put your bead collection in. So buy the DIY store's box, empty out the contents and use the box!)
CAN YOU GET YOUR WRAPPING FREE?
Why pay for it if you can score it for free? Freecycle.org is the obvious first stop, but if you're not immediately in luck there are lots of other free listing sites that have freebie sections: try Gumtree and Craigslist for starters. Put the word out elsewhere too: maybe a family member works at a place where they have lots of deliveries with annoying reams of packaging that's expensive for them to dispose of? Or you're pally with the staff at a local shop: who knows what cardboard box/foam peanuts goodness they throw away on a daily basis?
WRAP, WRAP SOME MORE... THEN RELAX
It can be nerve-wracking when you're about to wrap a very delicate item and then entrust it into the loving hands of your national mail service or a courier. Will it arrive at its destination in a recognisable state... or in several barely recognisable pieces?
A lot of people tend to take quite excessive precautions when wrapping something breakable, boxing, double boxing, padding, double-padding... And I'm all in favour of that. Do what you need to do to put your mind at rest, not necessarily just the bare minimum to ensure your precious bone china ornament is adequately protected.
And then when you're done, and you really believe it's secure and well-protected... send it off. Put it out of your mind and relax! There's no 100% guarantee when you do this. It's amazing just what most countries' mail services can screw up. But the odds are it'll be fine. I said relax!
WRAPPING IT UP
There you go, five tips to make your online sales wrapping experience a little speedier, more professional, more economical and more fun. Hopefully! Enjoy your on-line selling and I wish you many sales indeed. Our service can help you to achieve your targets by printing postage online from home and offices. That can help you to save hundreds of dollars monthly.
Posted on October 2, 2018
