Shipping and Pricing your Artwork

This week I focused on understanding shipping options and especially how to offer free shipping without ending up losing money. This is still a work-in-progress for me but I put together a handy list of notes and links if you'd like to pursue this with me. Most resources are related to Printful unless otherwise specified.

Shipping

Shipping video

Shipping rates page – use this to add shipping into the cost and then offer free shipping; I did find this a bit confusing because I need to set prices before I know what they are ordering so how will I know ahead of time whether to charge for multiples of the same items?

Offer free shipping – options (article)

• Order minimum? “free shipping over $50”?

• free shipping to specific locations only (US? WA state?) – need to see if either this or the former one are possible in Etsy

• increase cost to cover only part of shipping cost

Companion article from Etsy 

• Remember to add in Etsy fee: 6.5%

Pricing

How to market expensive products so they look like a steal (article)

• don’t use odd pricing (12.99) – stick to round pricing (13.00)

• smaller font, no $ sign, different color background (white best?)

• put more expensive product (B) next to another (A) to sell more of (A) – use no more than 3 different priced items together so customer can easily choose the middle one

• use storytelling – use sensory words

• offer extras:

  • An easy and free return process

  • Friendly round-the-clock customer service

  • Clear product warranties

  • Exclusive access to content (ebooks, guides, etc.) and communities (like private Facebook Groups and forums)

• Use good visuals (Printful provides these), even using video (?); have at least one macro shot so shoppers can see quality up close

Next I played around with other products in the Printful store and designed some phone covers and one canvas print.

There isn't much more I can do there until I receive the items I ordered to check that the quality is acceptable.

I did watch a video that compared Printful to Printify and concluded that Printful's quality and service were superior. That's encouraging.

Then I stumbled upon Printful's statement about taxes.

It scared me because I am not a business major and have never been good with numbers. It seems like it would take a degree in business to understand taxes and not get myself in trouble.

Of course, hiring a CPA would solve this but it doesn't make sense to me to pay for a service when I currently have little to no art income.

So, maybe next week I will try to tackle this and see if there is a "taxes for dummies" explanation somewhere. If I find this and can make sense of it, I will post what I've learned.

Take it with a grain of salt and always do your own follow-up research.

Have a colorful week, my friends!