How do i increase my sales in Canada

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hi everyone its Lindy welcome back to my channel today I want to talk to you about shipping internationally more specifically straight to Canada and one of my most recent sold videos I mentioned that I had started recently shipping directly to Canada rather than using the eBay global shipping program to do that for me and a lot of you guys expressed curiosity and wanting to know exactly how to ship internationally specifically to Canada or to other locations around the world and if you like helpful content like this make sure to hit that thumbs up that way it lets YouTube know and it lets me know that you like videos like this and I can continue to make them so now why is this important why should we consider shipping internationally well I don't think it'll take much convincing for you to realize that if you are adding other countries to your business you are growing the amount of buyers that can see your item and shop with you so now I'm one of those people when it comes to something that scares me a little bit I like to kind of dip my toe in the water I don't like to just jump to shipping worldwide by myself because I worry that if something sells I won't know how to properly handle it because I don't have the experience so I decided that I would just start to slowly ease my way into international shipping by shipping directly to Canada there's a few different reasons why I chose trying out shipping directly to Canada the main one being that they are so close you know they are just direct north of the United States it's not super complicated and I know that tracking is available from the United States into Canada another reason why I picked Canada was because I've been told over the years for multiple people that Canadian residents do not like shopping on eBay with sellers that are using the eBay global shipping program I have an entire video about how to use the global shipping program and I'll put it right up here in the AI cards it is a video that's a lot older but it's mostly just to kind of tell you how to use the program and what's all involved I'll link that video up here but it was starting to become known to me that Canadian residents were not liking the eBay global shipping program because of a lot of the import fees that were enacted on them that were unnecessary so what was happening was Canadians were buying from Americans and rather than paying the smaller shipping fee they were having to pay all of these additional fee is direct to ebay when it was really unnecessary and now that's not necessarily something that eBay did on purpose the eBay global shipping program is set up to ship worldwide from a specific center within the United States and they just kind of blanket fees to every single country that's out there they don't really go country by country and adjust the fees which let's be honest they probably could and they're just choosing not to which is completely up to them but as a seller I don't want to alienate buyers if it's really simple to ship to them so while I was at eBay opened this last year I talked to several people and asked them if they ship directly to Canada but of course the talk that I had that really made up my mind was I was sitting at lunch with Loretta and Rob who are thrift love sell on Instagram and YouTube they actually live in Canada so I was able to get their direct perspective as both buyers and sellers and Canada and really they broke it down for me to let me know that shipping to Canada is not as complicated as people think it is they also really opened my eyes to the fact that there are several million potential buyers that I've been alienating by using only the global shipping program for shipping internationally because most Canadian residents don't want to pay all of those extra import fees so they just don't buy from those sellers so the fact that I wasn't shipping directly to Canada was really excluding mill of potential buyers from me so I had made the decision that when I got home I was going to edit all of my listings and I was going to start shipping directly to Canada and I felt assured that if anything went wrong I could just send Loretta Rob a message and they'd bail me out and sure enough within 24 hours of changing all of my listings to ship direct to Canada I got my first sale to someone in Canada but lucky enough for me I figured out that it was not very intimidating to ship to Canada and I didn't have to call the red or ah bad all I was able to do it all by myself so it was actually very very simple and before I take you over to my computer screen and show you what that process looks like I just want to compare it to an APO AE mailing address so if you ship to a military base outside of the United States that is considered domestic and so you really don't have to do anything different when it comes to international the only thing that you do have to do is declare things on a customs form but when I printed the label for Canada I noticed that it looks almost identical to those APO boxes and so if you shipped APO AE before then this label and the entire process is going to look just about identical alright so we're gonna pop over to my computer real quick and I want to show you what it looks like to actually purchase a shipping label and print it and ship something to someone in Canada let's go alright so just like any other label you're going to come to the awaiting shipment page and you're just going to click on print shipping label and the page that's gonna come up it looks the same as every other shipping label you've probably ever printed you first need to make sure that all of your weight is correct you need to make sure that you have any dimensions of your package put in because that is important I believe with international shipping and then underneath that you have all of the options that you can pick for shipping international now up to four pounds you can send internationally first-class which is actually the cheapest shipping option the priority shipping options are a lot more expensive so usually what I've been doing is I've just been picking the lowest shipping cost so that the buyer only pays you know what they have to to pay for 100% of the shipping label and so far for me that's been first-class and then underneath here is the customs form so everything here is automatically populated what needs to be there and everything else is optional so if you want to fill in all of these boxes you can but it is totally not necessary the only thing you do have to check is that little box that states you're not shipping anything prohibited or restricted if you want to add any certain protections or anything you can do that but that's all that you need to do and we're just gonna purchase and print the label and then this is what the shipping label looks like the custom form is actually in the label itself so there's no extra paperwork that you need to print and all you do is print this you have to make sure to sign it and it's done that's it okay so another question I wanted to answer for you guys was how do you allow free shipping within the United States but make sure that someone outside of the United States pays for their shipping label because what I had mentioned in my sold video was that I do free shipping within the United States but if someone lives in Canada they do pay 100% of the shipping label and that part is equally as simple it is already set up in your eBay listing to charge extra for international so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you back over to my computer we're gonna take a look at creating your listing and I'm going to show you exactly how you can make sure to charge for international shipping labels while keeping shipping within the United States completely free go back roam back all right so now you are basically in any listing page whether you're editing or starting a listing from scratch you're just going to scroll all the way down until you get to the shipping area so there's two different sections the one on top is for domestic shipping and that's where you can select free shipping or charge shipping within the United States and then right under that is the section for international shipping now right here is where you would check to participate in the eBay global shipping program or you can leave it unchecked and select countries on your own so you can pick a flat rated shipping and just charge a flat fee for shipping internationally but I don't recommend that because you have no idea what the shipping is going to be so I just do calculated and then you can select Canada worldwide or specific locations so if you just want to do Canada you would select that and then you could select one of these shipping options here but like I mentioned first classes up to four pounds so you're probably going to use that and then down here you can select few other countries you might want to ship to like I've started also shipping to United Kingdom in Australia as well because tracking is total there so you select that and then the next most important part is to make sure to have the correct shipping weight that is the most important part because that is what's going to ensure that the buyer pays for all of the shipping label you don't necessarily need to worry about the dimensions unless it's over 12 inch by 12 inch by 12 inch but that weight is what is going to calculate the shipping cost that the buyer pays and then here you can also exclude countries you can also exclude areas domestic in the United States if you don't want to do a POA E or if you don't want to do those areas of the United States that are really super far away I know we all talk about how expensive it is to ship to can't Alaska and Hawaii so you can exclude there and then really quick bonus tip about returns so you would just check this box here if you wanted to accept returns internationally or not I don't have that box checked because I do not take international returns I only take returns within the United States but just keep in mind that if a buyer states that's an item not as described you do need to take the return if they file a return that way but unless that box is checked you do not have to take international returns so once you fill in all of that information that's all you need to ship internationally you can update listings list from here and just call it good so now lately it has also been brought to my attention that tracking is available when you ship directly to the United Kingdom and Australia as well so I plan to not only ship directly to Canada now but I also plan to ship directly to the United Kingdom and Australia just little by little we're just we're just gonna add all these little places and once I get comfortable I'm going worldwide baby maybe let's reel that in I don't know if I'll ever do worldwide because I kind of worry about the fear of not having tracking information available so maybe I'll just stick with the countries that have tracking from door to door I don't know either way I'll be adding a couple more countries after finding out how simple it is to ship directly to Canada also something else to note is that you do not need special packaging to shift international so the United States Postal Service does have specific international mailing envelopes but you do not have to use those when you ship the regular flat-rate envelopes that we use for the domestic United States can be used for overseas as well something else to note is that first-class is up to one pound here in the United States but internationally first-class can be up to four pounds and I wanted to make sure to point that out because if you assume that everything over a pound needs to go priority you're going to end up picky the more expensive shipping label option for direct to Canada so if an item weighs say two three or four pounds it you can still select first-class / priority so the buyer is not having to pay a significantly higher fee because it's priority over first-class so just to give you some idea of the rates for shipping to Canada for a couple of buyers that I have and I've had probably two or three buyers every single week since shipping directly to Canada um I did go ahead and look at the rates every time just because I was really curious to see if the rates vary dramatically depending on where the buyer lived in Canada and it really didn't um so the rates that I found were as follows packages up to eight ounces were $8.99 for the shipping label nine ounces to two pounds was fourteen dollars and seventy six cents between two and three pounds was twenty two dollars and forty-five cents and three to four pounds was thirty three dollars and thirty-five cents now those are not the amounts that eBay actually charges the buyer for the shipping label eBay charges them based on the retail rate not the commercial eBay rate so for instance up to eight ounces the shipping label is eight dollars and ninety nine cents but the but the eBay system will charge the buyer something like ten dollars and fifty cents which is really nice because it gives you a little bit more of a cushion in case you make a mistake in weighing your item when you create the listing but bottom line is if you're going to ship internationally you need to make sure to have the accurate weight of the item in its shipping packaging in your listing before the item sells because if you have the incorrect weight in there your international buyer is going to end up not paying enough for the shipping label and those shipping labels are expensive so that's probably the biggest takeaway I think from this entire thing is if you are going to ship to Canada or the United Kingdom or worldwide for that matter you must make sure that the accurate weight is in the listing before it sells because that is the only way that you are going to make sure that your international buyer pays 100% of the shipping label now another question that I see coming is how do you handle international returns well you can actually specify a specific return policy just for your international buyers so you can say domestic returns accepted but international returns are not accepted now of course the caveat to that is that if a international buyer receives your item and claims that as an item not as described you bei can force you to take that return back and you have to pay for that expensive label for return but you don't have to do free returns to everybody like I do free returns for domestic within the United States so that I can have my eBay top-rated plus seller status but when it comes to international returns I don't take them no international returns for me and checking or unchecking that International returns box is down in the same area as where you set up international shipping in your eBay listing but I'll write you guys that's it I really hope that this helped make international shipping specifically shipping to Canada a little less intimidating I know that it is a little bit scary because you don't know what to expect but just know that I have been shipping to Canada every single week now since August and I have had zero issues it's actually helped me increase my sales because I've been selling things to individuals in Canada and might not have sold within the United States as quickly so I do think that it's wise to broaden your buyer base as much as possible and so if that means trying out international shipping I'll do it you should think about it to just start with Canada it's close enough it's not super scary if they're all friendly up there they speak English why not and then when you're comfortable with Canada start trying out or countries you know like I said I'm going to add the UK and I'm going to add Australia and then I'm also considering doing worldwide for items that are under 8 ounces just something I'm considering we'll see how it goes right you guys thank you so much for watching if you liked this video give it a thumbs up that way I know if you have any questions or comments put them down in the comments below let me know do you do international shipping on your own or do you only use the eBay global shipping program if you have been shipping internationally let me know do you ship worldwide do you ship only to a few specific countries let me know I'm really curious and if you have been shipping worldwide I want to know I just did that I want to know how it's going for you do you feel like it's beneficial shipping worldwide do you feel like you're getting more sales because because of it let me know down in the comments below don't forget to check the video description i will put some useful links in there and do remember to subscribe if you're interested in seeing more content and i'll see you guys with my next video bye bye [Music]