Setting Up Your Packing and Shipping Center

Your office is the place where you handle all your eBay-related paperwork and online activities. It is not where you store the items you have for sale or where you pack them up for shipping. You'll need to set up separate areas for inventory storage and for packing.

We'll discuss inventory storage last. Right now, let's focus on setting up an efficient packing and shipping center for your eBay business.

Finding the Space

The first thing to consider is where you'll be doing your packing. The place you choose depends to some degree on what kinds of items you're selling. If you're selling relatively small items, you can get by with less space. If you're selling really large items, you'll need a lot of space. You'll have to do the math.

However much space you need, you'll want this space to be dedicated to the task at hand. If you're shipping out dozens (or hundreds) of items every week, you don't want to have to assemble and disassemble your packing area every time you sell an item. It's best to have everything set up and ready to go, permanently.

What type of space do you need? Well, you'll need a large, flat areasome kind of tabletop or countertop, large enough for you to spread out your boxes or envelopes as you pack. You'll also need space to store your packing supplies, and additional space nearby for your packing boxes and envelopes. Then you'll need some sort of staging area to temporarily store your packed boxes until they're shipped. Again, depending on the size of what you're selling, this could amount to a fair amount of space.

Where should this space be? For most of us, it has to be someplace in the house. Many eBayers carve out a part of their garage for this operation. I use my kitchen. (I'm not much of a cook, so I might as well use my kitchen for something productive!) In any case, the space needs to be large enough but also easily accessible for the task at hand.

Essential Supplies

Your packing center needs to include storage space for the supplies you use for packing your eBay items. You need to keep these basic packing supplies on hand so that you're not constantly running off to the office supply store every time one of your auctions closes. These items should always be available and easily accessed.

What items are we talking about? Consider the following items:

• Packing tape (both clear and brown)

• Bubble wrap

• Styrofoam peanuts or old newspapers

• Scissors

• Box cutter or similar kind of knife

• Postal scale

• Black magic marker

• Shipping labels

• Return address labels

• Other necessary labelsFragile, This End Up, and so on

• Labels or forms provided by your shipping service of choice

• Rate lists from your preferred shipping service(s)

Note

Another itemnot on the listyou may want to keep on hand is a rolling hand cart. This type of small, lightweight cart is particularly useful when transporting multiple items to the post office, or from one end of your house to the other.

Now for some elaboration. I recommend clear tape not just to seal the box but also to tape over the address label and make it somewhat waterproof. Brown tape can be used to tape over labels and logos when you reuse an old box. I prefer Styrofoam peanuts to newspapers because peanuts don't leave ink stains and because of the weight factor; using newspapers as filler can substantially increase your package weight, and thus your shipping costs. (Of course, newspapers are free and peanuts aren'tbut peanuts are cheaper than the added shipping costs you'll incur with newspapers.)

The other materials are somewhat self-explanatoryalthough you might ask why you need a knife when you're packing. I find myself using the knife primarily to slice off old shipping labels from boxes I reuse for my eBay shipping. Although some old labels tear off rather easily, most don't. To remove them, you have to cut (shallowly) around the label and then lift off the outermost layer of the cardboard box.

That's just a start, however. Learn more about packing your items in Chapter 17, "Organizing Your Packing and Shipping."

Boxes and Envelopes

The other items you need to find space for are the boxes and envelopes in which you pack your items. Of course, what types of boxes and envelopes you need depend on what types of items you'll be selling. Chapter 17 will help you determine the kinds of shipping containers to use. Read ahead to learn more.

Once you've determined what sizes and types of shipping containers you'll be using, you're faced with another challenge: Where do you find supplies of these items?

The first thing you need to know is that some boxes are free. That's right, if you're shipping via the U.S. Postal Service, you can get free Priority Mail and Express Mail boxes, envelopes, and tubes. Some post offices carry these free containers, or you can order in bulkbut still freefrom the eBay and the USPS (ebaysupplies.usps.com) and have them delivered directly to your home. (Figure 7.1 shows some of the free co-branded eBay/USPS boxes available for Priority Mail shipping.)

Figure 7.1. Free shipping containers for USPS Priority Mail.

Most post office locations also sell various types of boxes, padded mailers, mailing tubes, and other packing materials, although their prices tend to be a little on the high side. A better choice for high-volume shippers is your local office supply store, such as Office Depot, Office Max, or Staplesor a specialty box/shipping store.

Another good source of shipping supplies is your fellow eBay retailers. Several eBay Store sellers specialize in packing supplies for other eBay sellers. Just go to pages.ebay.com/businessmarketplace/ and click the Shipping & Packing Supplies link.

Note

Other carriers may or may not offer their own free shipping containers. FedEx, for example, offers certain sizes of envelopes and boxes for your (free) use, as does UPS.

Finally, there are lots of online merchants that offer good deals on packing materials. Check out BubbleFAST (www.bubblefast.com), eSupplyStore.com (www.esupplystore.com), ShippingSupply.com (www.shippingsupply.com), and Uline (www.uline.com).

Note

Many eBay sellers recycle old boxes, shipping out their items in boxes that were originally shipped to them. While this works for low-volume sellers, it doesn't look very professionaland it's unlikely that you'll have enough old boxes sitting around to meet your high-volume shipping needs.

You'll definitely want to stock up on those boxes and envelopes. I like to keep at least a one-month supply on handand if you can get a good deal on a larger quantity, go for it! Of course, you have to find a place to store all those boxes. One good approach is to keep a week's supply in your in-house packing center and store your extra boxes someplace less centralin your garage or basement, in a shed, or even in a rented storage bin. You can then transfer supplies of boxes as needed to your packing center.