hey everyone welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is erica and i make videos all about making and selling candles if you're interested in checking out what my etsy shop looks like or if you want to see any of my merch designs go ahead and check out the first links in the description box below today's video is really exciting it is going to be a shipping 101 video so anybody that is getting started with their handmade business i am going to be taking you guys through exactly what you need to know when it comes to shipping my last video that i did back in february of this year was a good video to learn how to ship candles but i didn't really go into depth as much as i really should have so in today's video i have a bunch of notes written down and i know exactly what i want to talk about with you guys so let's go ahead and get right into the video also stay tuned to the end of this video i will be answering some frequently asked questions that i received on my last shipping video so if you guys watch through this portion of the video and you still have some questions stay tuned to the end because i might answer your question at the end of the video so there are a few different shipping services that you can purchase labels from and ship your items through such as usps fedex and ups i personally like usps i feel like they handle the packages the best and also they have the cheapest shipping rates for us available and that's just my personal opinion so all throughout this video i will be talking about usps labels so there are two main ways that you can ship out your packages through usps the first one is first class mail the second one is priority mail you are only able to use first class mail if your package weighs under a pound so anything that weighs under a pound you can ship first class i personally choose to ship any of my first class items through something like this so this is just a poly mailer or a poly bag you can find these on amazon or ebay or you can even get some custom ones made this is just a 9 by 12 inch poly mailer and it works really well for shipping out my wax melts as well as one of my little 6 ounce 10 candles first class is definitely the way to go i would never recommend for somebody who has a package that weighs maybe six or seven ounces to ship through priority mail you are wasting your money you're throwing it away definitely always ship first class if it weighs under a pound when you go to purchase a first class shipping label you have to enter the dimensions of the package as well as the weight of the package for them to give you an accurate price based on where it's going to so first class is zone based meaning that in proximity from where you are to where the recipient is matters so the farther away they are the more it's gonna cost the closer they are to you the cheaper it's gonna cost also never try to cheat the system if it's like a tiny bit over a pound and you think you can get away with shipping first class the post office will catch you and they will either charge you or they will charge your customer when they go to pick up the package so it's a lose-lose for everybody always make sure that you are weighing out your packages before you purchase the label all right so now we are going to be talking about priority mail priority mail has a few different layers to it more than just first class mail first class is pretty simple priority is where it gets a little bit complicated but i really hope that i can try to make this as simple for you guys as possible so something i forgot to mention about first class shipping is that it is two to three days to be delivered to your customer with priority mail it is one to three days to be delivered to your customer so within priority mail you can ship either through just regular priority mail priority mail express priority mail flat rate priority mail regional rate boxes or priority mail cubic i know that sounds like a lot but we'll break down everything and exactly how the shipping works on all of them so for regular priority mail if you're shipping just regular priority mail you will be measuring out the dimensions of your package as well as the weight of your package it is also zone based just like first class shipping the regular priority mail will also be zone based shipping so the further away it is it will be more expensive the closer it is to you it will be less expensive now i get a lot of questions on what boxes can you use to ship out priority mail packages in pretty much anything with a few exceptions so i have some examples right here for you guys you can ship it out in just a regular brown box that you purchase off of uline or ebay or anything like that you can also use white boxes as well i always get that question can you is it just a brown box you could use or could you use a white box too you could use a purple box or a rainbow box it doesn't matter you can use you know basically any kind of box that will have dimensions that you can put in that is how you will be inputting your package dimensions something else to note is if you guys go on usps. com you guys can order free boxes the catch is that it has to be priority so if you have seen these boxes before that have this little priority mail logo on there that means that you have to put a priority mail shipping label on top of this package you cannot ship first class so that is definitely something to note there but also another thing to note about this box right here is that it is not labeled specifically for any type of priority mail service there's no express label there's no regional label there's no flat rate label it's just a regular priority box obviously it's flat and i haven't opened it yet but this basically just tells you that you can ship regular priority with this box um and all you have to do is just put in the dimensions of the box and the weight of the box and you are good to go with my small candle business i actually typically don't use just regular priority mail to ship out any of my packages i just found that it gets really expensive even if you are just shipping something that weighs only one to two pounds can really get pretty pricey the further away the customer is to you so that is definitely something to take into consideration priority mail express is something that you will probably not really use very often um unless you have a customer that is looking to get something really really fast i did have a customer one time who contacted me they lived i believe either in new jersey or new york i live in california so it was all the way across the country and they messaged me on a wednesday at 3 30 asking if i would be able to ship out a candle to them and if it could arrive by friday i really really wanted to help her out it was for her birthday so i ran out i packaged up the package as well as i could and i put it into a padded flat rate express envelope and that basically is just like overnight shipping essentially so it actually was able to get to her by friday from california so it was really cool it was about 25 or 26 dollars to ship out in that envelope so it is really expensive and all obviously not something that you would use all the time but it is a good option in those instances where you are trying to get something shipped out really quickly the next option through priority mail shipping is something called flat rate shipping so essentially what that is is it takes away the zones and you are just paying for one price to fit anything inside of that box or envelope and the saying is if it fits it ships so for instance something like this this is a medium flat rate box this ships to anywhere in the country for 13. 60 and it is pretty large so depending on how big your candles are you could fit probably about six to eight candles in here and ship just that one order to one person for only thirteen dollars and sixty cents which is a pretty good price and obviously this could be either a cheaper option or a more expensive option just depending on what you are selling so for instance if you are only shipping one candle you wouldn't want to use a box this huge to ship out just that one candle so it is something to consider that there are other alternatives that might be better for you um something that i would probably recommend for you guys to check out is a priority mail padded flat rate envelope i typically have so many on me but i don't right now so i will pop up a picture right here so you guys will be able to see it and this is really nice because you're actually able to fit a box inside of this padded flat rate envelope so for instance if you have tried to ship something like this size right here so this is a four by four by six box and if you try to use something like priority mail to ship this out in with a two pound candle it would cost you probably maybe 14 15 16 depending on where it's shipping to but you could put this box inside of the paddock flat right envelope and only ship it for about eight dollars and fifteen cents and save you so much money so that's just kind of a little trick for you guys and something that i've learned along the way there's a bunch of little tricks that you guys can try to do to get the cheapest price possible when you are shipping something out like a candle which is typically a small heavy package also something to note with the flat rate boxes and envelope you do have to specifically choose that option when you are printing out the shipping label so you have to choose that as an option and most of the time you don't have to choose the dimensions or the weight maybe you do have to input the weight but it typically won't affect it it won't affect the price as long as it's under 70 pounds so priority mail can only go up to 70 pounds but most of the time we won't be filling up something like this with something that weighs over 70 pounds the next option for priority mail shipping is something called regional rate shipping so it's something that looks like this if you guys have ever ordered from candle signs before they ship a lot of their fragrance oils and supplies within this box and for good reasons this box can save you a lot of money again depending on what you're shipping and depending on where it's going to so regional rate boxes there's a couple different sizes that you can get from usps.
com they are free boxes so you guys can go on there and order them but when you are shipping through the regional rate box it is zone based so they have their specific prices depending on where the zone is so again it's the same thing if they live further away from you it's going to be more expensive the closer they live to you the cheaper it's going to be so you guys can kind of see the zones and the pricing for the boxes on both the regional rate a boxes and the regional rate b boxes for me personally i actually have been using this kind of box a lot more frequently than i used to i used to never use this box because to be completely honest i didn't know how it worked and i didn't know that it would actually save me any money and it definitely does i'm able to ship this box with i could probably fit two candles wax melts whatever it is in here i can fit a lot of stuff in here and it can ship for a pretty good price i've been able to ship a lot of stuff to my sister in nevada before and it was only about eight to nine dollars so it was a really good price to ship it um not that far of a distance away from me but still a good amount and i was able to save a lot more money using these boxes also just like with the flat rate boxes you want to make sure that when you are printing out the label that you are specifically choosing the regional rate option either box a or box b depending on what you are using so that the label matches what the priority mail box is intended for and the last priority mail option that i'm going to be talking about with you guys is something that i discussed a lot in my last shipping video and that is priority mail cubic shipping so this was pretty new to me when i first found out about it however if you typically ship out small heavy packages this might be the best option for you when it comes to shipping out your candles so the unique thing about priority mail cubic is that the weight doesn't matter as much as the size of the box so that's where cubit comes in it's just based on how much cubic volume that the box is and that is how it is being shipped so the bigger the box the more expensive it's going to be the smaller the box the cheaper it's going to be priority mode cubic is also zone-based shipping as well so you do have to take that into consideration and that's why a lot of times when you're trying to figure out what is going to be the cheapest option for you it can depend on so many different variables how close the customer is to you that would depend on whether or not a flat rate option would be cheaper a regional rate option would be cheaper or priority mail cubic option would be cheaper so when you are wanting to ship through priority mail cubic it's all based on the dimensions of the box so once you enter in the dimensions it will give you your tier so your cubic tier which basically just gives you um on whether or not your package is going to be cheaper or more expensive so the bigger the box the more expensive the smaller the box the cheaper it's going to be depending on where it is shipping to in the country so in my last shipping video i talked a lot about pirate ship because it kind of amazed me that you were able to use something called priority mail cubic and if you guys don't know what pirate ship is it's basically just a web-based shipping software where you can print out shipping labels it it has integrations with etsy and shopify and probably a bunch of different type of ecommerce websites if you have that and you're able to import data from your customers and use pirate ship to get the discounts that they have i had so many people on my last video tell me that you aren't able to use priority mail cubic unless you are shipping out multiple orders in huge quantities and that you aren't able to use it as an option because they called usps to get that option or they went in to use that and you aren't able to walk into a usps or um go online to usps. com and use the priority mail cubic option and i think that's what confuses a lot of people so the way that i use priority mail cubic is through pirate ships so pirate ship is just a web-based shipping software and they just allow you to get the best discounts on usps labels they don't up charge you they don't add in extra fees or cost there's no monthly charge it's fantastic and that is how i'm able to get that priority mail cubic option now the one downfall to using pirate ship for some reason if you guys are using four by four by four boxes they don't allow you to put in that as a dimension it says that it's too small so i don't necessarily know what that's all about but just so you guys know um that if you are using a four by four by four inch box that it won't allow you to purchase a label for that again i don't know why um but in that circumstance if you guys are using that size box just put it inside of a padded flat rate envelope you're probably going to save more money because it's just a flat rate no matter where it's going and it will be able to fit inside there and ship to anywhere and the last thing to note with priority mail cubic is that you are able to use any brown box white box just like with regular priority mail you can use any of these boxes for a priority mail cubic you can also just use the uh plain priority mail boxes that you can get for free on usps so like this box right here that i said that it doesn't have any other type of flat rate or regional rate or express or anything on here it's just regular priority mail the only thing about this one though is i believe that it measures over 18 inches long and priority mail cubic you cannot have one of the length of dimensions to be over 18 inches so as long as none of the dimensions are over 18 inches you can use priority mail cubic so if you guys are wondering if your package would be beneficial to using priority mail cubic you can use the calculator on pirateship. com so i will leave a link in the description box below so you guys can go over there and check out the calculator you just enter your dimensions and it tells you what cubic tier you would be under and then you can go down to the list to see kind of the range maybe eight to thirteen dollars or whatever it would cost you for that cubic tier depending on where you are shipping it in the country it's really helpful to know um if you guys are shipping out the same type of size of packages to know kind of the range that you're shipping would be using that type of priority mail okay so now it's time for the frequently asked questions portion of today's video so to be all about shipping and i'm just going to be answering some questions that i get a lot when it comes to shipping when you guys are going into the post office with your packages with the labels already on them they are already pre-paid for you don't typically have to wait in line unless you prefer to get a receipt i typically don't but if you want to you can when you go inside of post offices typically they either have a really large bin that you can toss your packages into or they have this huge like metal pull down thing where you pull it down you put in your packages and you pull it up it's kind of a pain sometimes it gets jammed but it's a nice way without having to go and wait in line and talk to people and pay for things right there so much easier to just have everything paid for drop it off and you're good to go when you guys are entering the weight and the dimensions of a package make sure that it is the complete weight and package of everything together so if you guys are shipping something out put everything in here so your candle your samples your whatever else you're putting in there your tissue paper your bubble wrap whatever it is and put it on a scale so take this box with everything on it put it on a scale and that is going to be the number that you guys are entering into the shipping label option before you purchase it the same thing is true for poly mailers for first class shipping as well i always get this question and rightfully so so a lot of people are asking me when you enter the dimensions for a poly mailer is it when it's laying flat or after you've closed it and it looks more like this depending on what you're shipping a lot of times mine look like this so it's when it looks like this so this is a nine by um a nine by 12 or a 12 by nine or whatever and i typically put a 12 by nine by two i don't know why this isn't two inches this is like tiny tiny amount but most of the time they have you put length times width times height so i typically do 12 by nine by two and i'm able to ship it just fine and when you guys are shipping first class make sure that you guys are rounding up so if i'm weighing out a package and it's 12.
