Etsy shipping for beginners and how to set up your shipping templates effortlessly

I love selling on Etsy. You can make a lot of sales and the platform is easy to use. Etsy offers a lot of ways to make the process of listing, selling, and editing items run as efficiently as possible. And this includes setting shipping prices.

With the Low Hanging System, you don’t have to worry about shipping anything yourself. But you do need to set your prices or offer free shipping. And Etsy helps you make that process super easy by creating shipping profiles.

Below, you’ll learn everything you need to know about Etsy shipping for beginners using Etsy’s shipping profiles. You’ll learn how to set the profiles up. You’ll learn the difference between calculated and fixed pricing. And you’ll learn several pricing strategies that can help you earn more sales.

Let’s get started…

What you need to know about creating Etsy shipping profiles

Etsy Shipping Profiles are pre-determined shipping options that you can assign to your listings. Etsy shipping profiles make it so you don’t have to input the same information over and over again. They make the process of listing your items quicker and easier.

Also, if you need to bulk-edit your listings’ shipping information, you can do that much more efficiently if you have shipping profiles set up.

How to set up shipping profiles on Etsy

Here is the step-by-step process:

And here’s a screenshot of the some of the details you fill in:

Here’s how I filled in the details for my coffee mugs’ shipping profile…

Shipping prices: “I’ll enter fixed prices manually”

Country of origin: United States

Origin zip code: The warehouse’s zip code – 19007 (this applies to both GearBubble and CustomHappy too)

Processing time: Custom range – 1-7 business days

Fixed shipping prices (United States):

Shipping carrier – USPS
Mail class – USPS First-class mail (2-6 business days)
What you’ll charge – Fixed price
One item – $4.95
Additional item – $2.00

Fixed shipping prices (Canada):

Shipping carrier – USPS
Mail class – USPS Priority mail international (6-10 business days)
What you’ll charge – Fixed price
One item – $5.95
Additional item – $5.95

Fixed shipping prices (everywhere else): 

Shipping carrier – USPS
Mail class – USPS Priority mail international (6-10 business days)
What you’ll charge – Fixed price
One item – $14.95
Additional item – $14.95

Profile name: Mug Shipping

After creating and saving a shipping profile, you can then apply that profile to any listing you add to your shop in the future.

How to link your shipping profiles to your previously listed items

Here’s how this process works:

What’s the difference between calculated and fixed shipping? 

As a member of LHS, you’ll need to choose the fixed pricing option with your Etsy shipping profiles. But it’s still good to know what each option means and how they’re different.

Calculated shipping

With calculated shipping, Etsy factors in your location, the customer’s location, and your product’s size and weight to come up with each order’s shipping cost.

With any of your listings that have calculated shipping profiles, customers can input their zip/postal code or country to preview what the shipping costs would be. Etsy says it defaults “to the least expensive shipping method that is eligible for the total weight and dimensions of the item.”

Calculated shipping isn’t available as an option for everyone, however. One of the following criteria must be met:

• You must be based in the United States and ship via USPS and Global Postal Shipping
• You must be based in Canada and ship via Canada Post.

Sellers who sell larger items, like furniture, often prefer calculated shipping because they can be sure each customer is going to be charged the correct amount for shipping based on where they live and how far the item needs to be shipped. For larger items, this can be a big deal. For smaller items, it matters less.

Another advantage is that when postage rates change, Etsy automatically factors in these adjustments to your new calculated shipping costs.

Calculated shipping is mainly beneficial for sellers who want to purchase discounted postage directly from Etsy and then print out the shipping labels themselves.

Fixed shipping

But for LHS members, you don’t physically ship any of your products yourself and you have flat-rate shipping charges, so the fixed shipping option is the one you’d select.

And all that fixed shipping means is that you, as the seller, opposed to Etsy, set the price that customers pay for all of your standard and international shipping options.

The benefits of free shipping for first-time Etsy shop owners 

Etsy really encourages sellers to offer free shipping. And especially if you’re a new seller who’s looking to drum up sales and reviews, it can be a smart idea.

According to Etsy, shoppers often say what prevents them from shopping more frequently on Etsy is having to pay for shipping. Especially if shoppers are used to shopping on Amazon with Prime, they are accustomed to free shipping and have come to expect it.

Offering free shipping removes the barrier from browsing to purchasing. Customers know what they have to pay upfront and they aren’t surprised by any additional expenses at checkout.

As a new seller, you want to make saying ‘yes’ to doing business with you as easy as possible. But you obviously don’t want to lose money or not make a profit by offering free shipping. So what you need to do is build your shipping costs into your listings’ prices.

For example, if you have a mug that costs $10.95 plus $4.95 to ship, instead of having a separate shipping charge, you can adjust the mug’s list price to $14.95. (If you need help figuring out how to price your products, check out my easy Etsy Profit Calculator – it’s free).

To set up free shipping with your Etsy shipping profiles…

Follow the same steps outlined above, but when you get to the part that says “What you’ll charge,” choose Free shipping from the drop-down.

If you want, you can offer free shipping within the United States but charge a fixed price for international orders. Or, you can offer free shipping everywhere.

Additional pricing strategies to help make your first sale 

Free shipping guarantee

If you don’t want to offer free shipping for all of your orders, you have the option to offer free shipping on only those orders totaling $35 or more (not including taxes or the shipping price the customer would otherwise pay).

To set up a free shipping guarantee…

Shipping upgrade

Adding a shipping upgrade to your store is another option you have with Etsy. A shipping upgrade gives shoppers the option to pay for expedited shipping if they need their order to arrive sooner. This is an especially nice feature to have in your shop around major holidays when you’re likely to encounter last-minute shoppers.

Here’s how you can enable a shipping upgrade with your Etsy shop:

I really hope you find this information useful! If there’s anything I missed or anything you’d like to add about Etsy shipping for beginners, please leave a comment below. Also, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends and followers.