It’s an exciting time when you first start making sales over eBay. Whatever product you are selling it’s great to see it making an impact and you should do everything you can to keep the momentum going. One thing that can reduce your efficiency is not having a decent shipping process. It has the potential to be costly and only becomes more time consuming when your eBay business gets busier.
When sellers first start making sales the process can be quite simple. You print out the invoice and the label separately and pack the item off – your work is done. But with increasing sales, this process can end up costing you time, paper and ink. If you are starting to make good sales on eBay, it might be worth trying to think of a more practical solution.
Thermal Label Printers
One solution is using a thermal printer. This is the same type which is often used in large businesses exclusively for labels. They are quite cheap to run – you don’t need ink cartridges, toner or ribbon and they are built to be durable. The printing on the label tends to be very clear and durable and unlikely to smudge.
Before buying one though, you’ll need to consider whether it is a wise investment. These printers are generally quite expensive and you’ll need to print invoices separately. Additionally, you might come to find that the printer you already have does the job just as well if you are not using it on an hourly basis.
Label Sheets
A very popular and economic solution is the use of A4 label sheets. It is a very straightforward process if you need to make a few labels all at once. Most office packages have a function to create address labels and you need only input the data on each section, align the printer to the labels and print away.
This process of label generation is certainly one of the cheapest and easiest solutions but a couple of things can go wrong if you’re not careful. As any office administrator can tell you, labels don’t always marry up to the print feed, which means you’ve potentially wasted paper. Additionally, you will still need to marry up the label, the package and the invoice altogether, which can be a bit of a headache when you have many orders to get through.
Integrated labels
A practical solution to both the issue of generating labels and creating invoices is to use an integrated label sheet. These are becoming increasingly easy to find in shops and online on websites like LG Business Systems and can save you the expense of investing extra money and time into your shipping process. You won’t need to buy any new printers or keep switching between A4 paper for invoices and labels sheets on your home printer.
You can simply print off everything need all in one go and then get down to sticking labels on your packages after you’ve done your printing. eBay offers you the option of printing on integrated labels, too, so there will be very little configurations to be done.
Work Out What You Need
Ultimately different eBay businesses will require different label and invoice solutions. Things to consider include:
- Your budget
- The size of your customer base
- How many items a particular customer will order
- How much time you will allow to process each order.
If you are very particular about the aesthetic of a label, you might consider the generic eBay integrated template a bit bland. Alternatively, if you have a huge amount of orders going to one place and need to generate a separate invoice, then investing in athermal printer might be worth considering.