Free Shipping vs. Separate Shipping - Selling Strategies...

[rdemaree]

I am trying to solidify my selling strategies in this new era of uncertain trade policy, inflation and poor policy decisions on the behalf of ebay.

From the time that I started taking selling on ebay seriously in 2019 up until early 2025 my strategy was to list on .com in USD and to bake the shipping fee into ALL of my prices and I also from 2021 until December 2025 ran the minimum 2% promoted ad.

I stopped using .com / USD and switched to .ca / CAD in order to access Canada Post labels and calculated shipping for ALL countries from Canada to USA to everywhere on the globe and this worked great until August when the de minimis went under and I was forced to offer flat rates to non-Canadian buyers (all because I cant use calculated for USA because there are no competitive/ CUSMA options for USA via ebay calculated).

So more or less now that a year has gone by since all of the madness has ensued I am trying to see the dust settle as much as is actually possible so that I can plan for the future and get into a rhythm as a seller.

I am wondering if a hybrid approach might be the most appropriate? For some background- I STRICTLY sell unique/ handmade/ and antique/ rare items. Most of my stuff is handmade/ CUSMA approved. 

I am wondering if I should keep shipping separate for all items under $100 CAD and anything above offer free shipping as promo? (I would adjust the price fairly depending on the actual shipping cost of the item).

And to a much much lower extent wondering if I should use the new scammy promoted listings strictly for a small handful of my biggest ticket items say 150 CAD + only? I probably wont do this but im open to it. I dont really want to use the new promoted listings on my smaller items.

An issue I have noticed with promoted listings in the past is that customers who I have had over the years and were already planning on buying from me or people in general who I already knew were planning on buying something after an email convo or they buy 1 thing that isnt counted as promoted listing + 5 other items (all counted as promoted listings) seems kind of ineffective for me the seller because no value was added to the transaction for me since the seller didnt find the ad via a search engine or similar they merely saw the ad on one of my listings that they found or clicked on (in case they favorited my shop) organically and thus the new clicks counted as promoted listing clicks since they were ads on my listings that they found organically.

Anyways- It is my speculation that promoted listings are sort of a racket and only truly truly beneficial to sellers who sell used clothes/ luxury watches/ trading cards etc. (highly saturated commodities) whereas I sell unique and handmade items. I didnt use promoted listings at all in 2020 and that was my best year in business and even better than 2021 (both being pandemic years so its hard to consider those 2 years too much). Although I did run the suggested ad rate for much of 2021 (7-9% or something like that - talk about a waste of money!). 2020 with ZERO promoted ads and even less lisintgs and less polished listings and I still outperformed 2021 by around 15%.

Let me hear your experiences please. I am primarily interested in free shipping vs non free shipping and if each might have their place depending on the item and value of the item. I am still interested in some discussion on promoted listings but my mind is mostly made up on those and I feel they are minimally useful, and hardly (if at all) useful to people who sell uniqe/ rare/ handmade items. 

DISCUSS! thanks

[recped]

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@rdemaree wrote:

Let me hear your experiences please. I am primarily interested in free shipping vs non free shipping and if each might have their place depending on the item and value of the item. I am still interested in some discussion on promoted listings but my mind is mostly made up on those and I feel they are minimally useful, and hardly (if at all) useful to people who sell uniqe/ rare/ handmade items. 

DISCUSS! thanks

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The choice of using free shipping or paid shipping varies depending on what you sell.

99% of what I sell is in the Music Category

On ebay.ca there is currently 8,771,603 listings available, only 511,153 offer free shipping (5.8%)

On ebay.com there is currently 11,891,394 listings available, only 2,591,403 offer free shipping (21.8%)

Looks like free shipping not a very popular choice in my Categories.

Things that affect the numbers above. The available listings includes listings that ship to the US or Canada but may be listed on neither of those sites or they may ship to Canada but be listed on .com (or vice versa). Since free shipping on International orders is always less frequent than domestic (especially in the US) it would take too much data manipulation to run the numbers for each ebay site as a stand alone. The numbers eBay provides when you try to restrict to only listings actually listed on .ca it's difficult because eBay will still include some non .ca listing (same goes for getting those numbers for .com).

Suffice to say, the majority of listing in my category charge for shipping, buyers therefore are used to paid shipping and are generally intelligent enough to pay attention to the total price. Music items also tend to have established prices that do not account for shipping which can vary dramatically from seller to seller.

I almost never use free shipping, only when I list high value items (ie: $500+) and I don't sell items of that value and rarity very often.

I do offer competitive shipping rates but it's so easy to compete with sellers using "classic" shipping methods (Canada Post or USPS) I can include reasonable handling and still match or undercut the majority of my competition. In the music category (not new releases) condition is of the ultimate factor in most purchases, buyers who feel they will get high grade items will willingly pay more and leads to many repeat buyers.

Of course in some Categories buyers simply want the cheapest available and can be easily swayed by free shipping.

In your primary category (Art-Painting Supplies on .ca) 167,523 listings, 56,293 with free shipping (34%).