by Mike Gibson

Created on: April 10, 2009

What is the cheapest way to ship online? I've heard the commercials for stamps.com and have read about Amazon sellers using Endicia.com to ship items instead of going to the post office. I decided to check these sites out and have come away with one conclusion: AVOID them!

The fees are way too high!
Stamps.com charges a flat $19.99 a month - if you sell books this is about the same as the cost of shipping

over 7 books. Endica.com starts at $9.99 a month but that does not include stealth postage. Stealth postage is great it doesn't print the cost of the postage on the label (
This is especially useful on sites like eBay where the customer sees that the cost of postage is less than what they were charged for shipping and feel ripped off). Customers don't factor in the price of the shipping materials or the time that you took to package the product carefully, or the fact that you charge a flat shipping fee that covers the whole country. To get the stealth postage on Endicia.com you need to upgrade to the $14.99 a month service. In addition to these fees, stamps.com requires a scale that they sell you.
Endicia.com also sells scales but I don't think that they require the use of their scale.

So how do you avoid these fees and still avoid waiting in line at the post office? There are a couple of ways. If you ship large or heavy products, you can sign up for an account with UPS or FedEx. You can easily set up accounts with both companies online and weigh your packages and print shipping labels from your home. Depending on how many packages you send, you may need to take them to a drop off point (usually a shipping store of some sort) but there are usually several in your area that you can find through the carriers website. Shipping scales are expensive right? Wrong! In stores they are, but you can find them on eBay and Amazon dirt cheap. I paid about $20 including shipping for my scale which weighs boxes up to 52 lbs. Go to eBay or Amazon and look for a scale that holds at least 35 lbs and costs less than $35 including shipping and you will be set for years.

The easiest way by far to ship online is by using PayPal. If you sell on eBay I'm sure you're familiar with PayPal. If you're not, log onto Paypal.com and join it's free.
PayPal not only lets you take payments on eBay and ship products that you sell on eBay. You can ship products that you sell anywhere using PayPal as well.
Just go to the PayPal MultiOrder Shipping tab. Here, you can enter in addresses by hand, the size and weight of the package, and the shipping method you want to use. You can ship using either USPS or UPS. PayPal doesn't charge any fees for shipping and you can use stealth postage. The only fee is that delivery confirmation is required but it is discounted to 29 cents (I believe). If your running a business you should purchase delivery confirmation on all of your shipments anyway customers like it and if something gets lost you have proof that you shipped it.

In summary, don't waste money joining sites like Endicia.com or Stamps.com. Use PayPal to do your shipping and purchase a scale for a great price on Amazon or eBay.

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