Hi, thank you for making the video. I learned a few things from it including from your answers to people’s comments. I wanted to ask you a question and I don’t even know if you will see this comment since your video was made a few years back. I am on a basic plan and people are telling me that in order to get Pirateship I need to have the ‘calculated rates at checkout’ feature which comes with a higher and more expensive Shopify plan. Is that true or not?
I think that if you want the rates at checkout to be the rates from Pirateship you would have to get the more advanced Shopify Plan since pirateship is a third party rate
I'm not exactly understanding your question. If you are asking where you can purchase a label printer, they are available from many stores. I think a lot of people buy them from Amazon. I think I purchased mine from staples.com or officedepot.com. There are many brands of printer that will work. Just make sure you purchase label paper that will work with the machine you get! Mine is a Zebra brand, but I know people have no issues with cheaper ones.
It is up to you. Depends on what works best for your business. For my business that I shipped light items, I charged customers around $4 for shipping, and I paid the difference if it ended up costing more.
Hello, quick question...When you go about it this way, does this mean the Shopify transaction emails (out for delivery, delivered etc) don't go to the customers, only the automated email from Pirate ship goes to them?
The out for delivery and delivered emails will still send out. Pirate Ship transfers the tracking information into Shopify, so those emails will still send out to customers with their tracking information. If you want to double check that they are sending, click on an order in Shopify that you shipped with Pirate Ship. Scroll down to the bottom until you see the "Timeline". That timeline shows when emails got sent out. All my orders show what day Shopify sent out the "out for delivery" and the "delivered" emails.
Hey does the rates on pirate ship change? I ask because I want to charge a flat right for my product. I want to add in the shipping rate to my products and label my product as “ free shipping” to my customers so that they will not turn away from buying because of the cost of shipping. So I was wondering if the rates changes because if it does then I’d have to look for a different way.
The rates will be different based upon weights of the packages and how far you are shipping the items (how many zones the destination is away from you). Other than that, it seems like shipping services (like USPS and UPS) increase their shipping prices about once a year, and when they increase prices, Pirate Ship has to charge us more. In my experience, Pirate Ship usually sends out emails alerting people of the rate increases (or rate decreases when we are lucky). I've never noticed Pirate Ship change prices unless they are changing it in reaction to a shipping service increasing (or decreasing) prices, so it should stay fairly consistent for you. In your case, if you can find an average for the shipping fee, you could charge that amount as a flat rate and know you will win on some orders and lose on others. Make sure when you are looking at shipping rates to test some destinations that are far away from you to see what the max shipping costs are. Pirate ship has a USA USPS zone map to help out with this (www.pirateship.com/usps/zone-map) - on the map, you can hover over your location and see what areas should be cheapest and most expensive to ship to. Another good option may be to charge shipping prices around what it will cost to ship to addresses in the zone 6 range, then you are only losing a little money on shipping to the addresses in zone 7 or zone 8.
I have purchased a mini thermal printer, OFFNOVA brand with the adhesive labels of the same brand, but I have not yet installed it, to use it with this method of shipping and printing labels, do you have any video of that, even if it is a different brand printer but similar? thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, I don't have a video of setting up the thermal printer. I think your printer should work fine though. I did have to mess with my printer setting a bit - I wish I would have thought to record that or write down what I did.
Wow! This video was extremely helpful! Thank you for all the details! Quick question. I have it set up for free shipping in the US on my Shopify. Can I use pirate ship for this plus add international shipping and make sure internationals are charge the proper rates so I don't end up paying any money? Thanks
You can use Pirate Ship for all your shipments. But, you'll have to setup the part that decides how much the customer gets charges on your Shopify account. Go to Settings -> Shipping and Delivery in your Shopify account. From there, you can set the Rates for the Rest of the World to be different from the US! One more note, I haven't found where Pirate Ship imports the HS (Harmonized System) codes for products, so that can be inconvenient if you have a lot of international shipments. I didn't have too many international sales, so reentering the HS codes wasn't an issue for me.
I realized I misspoke in this video. You can use a poly mailer that is up to 18" by 18" (flat before anything is put in it) before you must enter the poly mailer as a box (not 15" like I said in the video).
Thanks for the info! That was very helpful. I have one question though, can I throw a Poly mailer with a tshirt inside for example on a regular blue mailbox in the street as opposed to having to go inside the post office and speak to a person? Thanks in advance.
You sure can! It just might not get scanned immediately. If you go in and wait at the counter, you can have the worker scan your package and give you a receipt. Then, you know for sure the tracking shows that it was shipped and not pending.
Hello. I really need help on this. What I don’t understand is how does my customer know the exact amount to pay for shipping using pirate ship? I can see the options in the back end through pirate ship like priory mail, first class + prices and shipping times but I need the customers to see that info on the checkout page so they can pay the exact amount for shipping so none of it comes out of my pocket. I know this video is 2 years old lol
At 2:50 you clicked get rates. What I don’t understand is getting the rates after the order was placed? I (more specifically my customer) needs to know the rates before the order is placed. So that way it can be added in their total cost.
If you need exact rates charged, I recommend going in your "shipping and delivery" area of your Shopify settings and selecting to charge customer a calculated rate by USPS or UPS. When setting up the rates, select "use carrier or app to calculate rates" and then select USPS or UPS (whichever you want to use). The prices, in theory, that it charges the customer should match up to what Shopify will charge for shipping labels. These prices will be very similar to Pirate Ship, but may not be exact (you may just want to use the Shopify shipping service to print shipping labels). One important note: Shopify can only accurately calculate if you have the weights of all your items inputted. But, it still may not be completely accurate because Shopify doesn't have a good way of knowing the exact size of your packages or how much weight will be added by the packaging you select for that specific order. I just charged flat rates on my website for shipments within the United States and fully accepted I would lose on some orders while making a little on other orders. Just from my own online shopping, it seems most businesses these days set the shipping rates high and just keep the remainder of what was overcharged. *For international shipments, I did use calculated rates because those vary so much from one country to the next.
sorry if this is a dumb question, but the customer pays for shipping at checkout and you buy the shipping label for a lower price? does this allow u to save the difference between what the buyer pays and what u pay?
Like Victor said, you can charge more for shipping and then profit the difference between what the customer paid and what you paid on shipping. There are companies out there that build their business models on charging extra for "shipping and handling". For example, they charge $7 for shipping when they know they can ship orders for $4 (giving a $3 profit just on the shipping charge).
I'm hoping to! Once I get to the point of setting up shipping prices for my new store, I'll show my process of picking prices and setting up the shipping on Shopify.
You'll want the label printed wherever the inventory is, and you'll want to make sure you are entering the shipping from address into Pirate Ship before purchasing a label (there may be different rates for the postage from your other location). You can always download a label and then send the PDF to other people on your team to pack up the item, print the label, and ship it. You'll just need to know the package weight and size before you purchase the shipping label.
Sorry if this is a dumb questions but just to understand - would you just charge a flat rate for the shipping on your Shopify listing and then buy the labels on pirate ship for the actual price? There isn’t a way for it to be Calculated beforehand?
Not a dumb question! I think most sellers enter the product weights and then let Shopify estimate the shipping (you definitely can do that). Since the Shopify shipping prices will be very similar to Pirate Ship, you shouldn't have to pay extra. In my case, I wanted to charge a flat rate, and on top of that, my packaging makes it difficult for me to estimate. If I sell one cross stitch pattern it requires a cardstock mailer before it goes in a poly bag (which adds a decent amount of weight). If I sell two patterns, I still only use one cardstock mailer (so I'd be overcharging if I added the cardstock mailer weight to every pattern weight on my website). I hope that makes sense as it is hard to explain in text. One other thing. I create "custom shipping" options for USPS First Class and USPS Priority because Shopify automatically puts the estimated shipping times if you use theirs. I had too many customers thinking those estimated times included my processing time, and if the package was one day out of the estimated delivery date, I'd get a "where is my package" email. If I wanted to go based off of weights, and have the customer pay the estimated shipping costs, then the custom shipping options would be a lot more difficult to set up. With the custom shipping options, you can choose to charge a flat rate based on prices or weights, so different prices could be programmed for heavier packages (it wouldn't take into account shipping zones - further away zones are more expensive to ship to). Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi Lindsey, So im looking to set up pirate ship on my future shopify store.I want to set up flat rate lets say $5.00, However pirate ship is only charging to ship my pkg to customer $ 3.00 will i be making a $2.00 profit after i print out the pirate ship label ?
Yup! You will be. Just make sure your shipping isn't too expensive since that may be a turnoff to customers. Many sites will use the words "shipping and handling", so if the shipping is a little more than the shipping cost, customers may assume the handling part is what is making up that difference (there are labor/time costs to packing up orders, so there are more costs than just the shipping price when it comes to shipping out an order).
Although on my channel I discuss my experiences in business, I don't claim to be a mentor. My best advice is to learn from people who have gained money from running business, not just from selling courses. I like learning from Steven Black. His newest group on Facebook is "SOCIALS & SCALING | Biz Building For Creatives w/Psychology & Content". I don't think you had to have purchased his course to be part of that group, but I don't remember for sure.
I think it requires you to have an address on the label. BUT, you can get a PO box with a postal service if you are in the US. USPS and UPS both offer boxes for a monthly fee. Then, you can put those addresses. My packages ship with a PO box number, so I don't have to share my personal address.
I had so many items, and the way I had to package, the weights varied so much. But, you are right that if batches are possible, it would/could speed it up a lot! I was also so paranoid about shipping the wrong package to someone if I didn't print the labels one at a time 😅.
do they take a percent of your profits????? did you leave that part out? How much per year??? etc. you never really told the facts to join any place. Do they charge for a mailing list from your clients????? can you pass all fees to the customer?
Pirate Ship doesn't cost anything to use besides the shipping fees you pay. :) So, there are no extra, random fees or percentages that they take. Shopify, of course, still takes their usual percentage and transaction fee (those fees don't change regardless if you ship on the Shopify platform or with a third party app like Pirate Ship).
@@lindseytall3817 does Spotify force you to give refunds or put your products on sale? Do they charge you to list items? How much do they get for each sale?
@@samwilson6033 Shopify does not force you to give refunds or put anything on sale. Of course, you can do both of those if you want. Shopify takes 30 cents plus 2.9% of each transaction. There is also a monthly payment that starts at $29 per month (there are different plans you can select, but if just starting on Shopify, the $29 plan should work just fine).
THANK YOU THANK YOU LINDSEY! YOU HELPED ME FULFILL MY FIRST SHOPIFY ORDER 🥳
Congrats on fulfilling your first order!
What were you worried about most before starting with the technical stuff like this that you're still not sure about, or now know about.
Hi, thank you for making the video. I learned a few things from it including from your answers to people’s comments. I wanted to ask you a question and I don’t even know if you will see this comment since your video was made a few years back. I am on a basic plan and people are telling me that in order to get Pirateship I need to have the ‘calculated rates at checkout’ feature which comes with a higher and more expensive Shopify plan. Is that true or not?
I think that if you want the rates at checkout to be the rates from Pirateship you would have to get the more advanced Shopify Plan since pirateship is a third party rate
Thank you so much for such a detailed video, and sharing this information!!
What if you don’t have a weigher, how do you put in the weight for your poly mailers?
thank you so much for the video... i was wondering while i can i buy label printer set?
I'm not exactly understanding your question. If you are asking where you can purchase a label printer, they are available from many stores. I think a lot of people buy them from Amazon. I think I purchased mine from staples.com or officedepot.com. There are many brands of printer that will work. Just make sure you purchase label paper that will work with the machine you get! Mine is a Zebra brand, but I know people have no issues with cheaper ones.
This was so helpful! Thank you!
do we account for the shipping price in the cost of the product price or how do we pay for the shipping ?
It is up to you. Depends on what works best for your business. For my business that I shipped light items, I charged customers around $4 for shipping, and I paid the difference if it ended up costing more.
Is it only going to load the orders that are only international shipping?
It should load all orders!
Top video. Need more examples of this.
Hello, quick question...When you go about it this way, does this mean the Shopify transaction emails (out for delivery, delivered etc) don't go to the customers, only the automated email from Pirate ship goes to them?
The out for delivery and delivered emails will still send out. Pirate Ship transfers the tracking information into Shopify, so those emails will still send out to customers with their tracking information. If you want to double check that they are sending, click on an order in Shopify that you shipped with Pirate Ship. Scroll down to the bottom until you see the "Timeline". That timeline shows when emails got sent out. All my orders show what day Shopify sent out the "out for delivery" and the "delivered" emails.
Hey does the rates on pirate ship change?
I ask because I want to charge a flat right for my product. I want to add in the shipping rate to my products and label my product as “ free shipping” to my customers so that they will not turn away from buying because of the cost of shipping. So I was wondering if the rates changes because if it does then I’d have to look for a different way.
The rates will be different based upon weights of the packages and how far you are shipping the items (how many zones the destination is away from you). Other than that, it seems like shipping services (like USPS and UPS) increase their shipping prices about once a year, and when they increase prices, Pirate Ship has to charge us more. In my experience, Pirate Ship usually sends out emails alerting people of the rate increases (or rate decreases when we are lucky). I've never noticed Pirate Ship change prices unless they are changing it in reaction to a shipping service increasing (or decreasing) prices, so it should stay fairly consistent for you.
In your case, if you can find an average for the shipping fee, you could charge that amount as a flat rate and know you will win on some orders and lose on others. Make sure when you are looking at shipping rates to test some destinations that are far away from you to see what the max shipping costs are. Pirate ship has a USA USPS zone map to help out with this (www.pirateship.com/usps/zone-map) - on the map, you can hover over your location and see what areas should be cheapest and most expensive to ship to. Another good option may be to charge shipping prices around what it will cost to ship to addresses in the zone 6 range, then you are only losing a little money on shipping to the addresses in zone 7 or zone 8.
Love your video! This is so helpful!
I have purchased a mini thermal printer, OFFNOVA brand with the adhesive labels of the same brand, but I have not yet installed it, to use it with this method of shipping and printing labels, do you have any video of that, even if it is a different brand printer but similar? thanks in advance.
Unfortunately, I don't have a video of setting up the thermal printer. I think your printer should work fine though. I did have to mess with my printer setting a bit - I wish I would have thought to record that or write down what I did.
Wow! This video was extremely helpful! Thank you for all the details!
Quick question. I have it set up for free shipping in the US on my Shopify. Can I use pirate ship for this plus add international shipping and make sure internationals are charge the proper rates so I don't end up paying any money? Thanks
You can use Pirate Ship for all your shipments. But, you'll have to setup the part that decides how much the customer gets charges on your Shopify account. Go to Settings -> Shipping and Delivery in your Shopify account. From there, you can set the Rates for the Rest of the World to be different from the US!
One more note, I haven't found where Pirate Ship imports the HS (Harmonized System) codes for products, so that can be inconvenient if you have a lot of international shipments. I didn't have too many international sales, so reentering the HS codes wasn't an issue for me.
I realized I misspoke in this video. You can use a poly mailer that is up to 18" by 18" (flat before anything is put in it) before you must enter the poly mailer as a box (not 15" like I said in the video).
Thanks for the info! That was very helpful. I have one question though, can I throw a Poly mailer with a tshirt inside for example on a regular blue mailbox in the street as opposed to having to go inside the post office and speak to a person? Thanks in advance.
did you figure this out? im in the process and wondering the same. after i buy the label for a hoodie im shipping out
You sure can! It just might not get scanned immediately. If you go in and wait at the counter, you can have the worker scan your package and give you a receipt. Then, you know for sure the tracking shows that it was shipped and not pending.
Hello. I really need help on this. What I don’t understand is how does my customer know the exact amount to pay for shipping using pirate ship? I can see the options in the back end through pirate ship like priory mail, first class + prices and shipping times but I need the customers to see that info on the checkout page so they can pay the exact amount for shipping so none of it comes out of my pocket. I know this video is 2 years old lol
At 2:50 you clicked get rates. What I don’t understand is getting the rates after the order was placed? I (more specifically my customer) needs to know the rates before the order is placed. So that way it can be added in their total cost.
If you need exact rates charged, I recommend going in your "shipping and delivery" area of your Shopify settings and selecting to charge customer a calculated rate by USPS or UPS. When setting up the rates, select "use carrier or app to calculate rates" and then select USPS or UPS (whichever you want to use). The prices, in theory, that it charges the customer should match up to what Shopify will charge for shipping labels. These prices will be very similar to Pirate Ship, but may not be exact (you may just want to use the Shopify shipping service to print shipping labels).
One important note: Shopify can only accurately calculate if you have the weights of all your items inputted. But, it still may not be completely accurate because Shopify doesn't have a good way of knowing the exact size of your packages or how much weight will be added by the packaging you select for that specific order.
I just charged flat rates on my website for shipments within the United States and fully accepted I would lose on some orders while making a little on other orders. Just from my own online shopping, it seems most businesses these days set the shipping rates high and just keep the remainder of what was overcharged.
*For international shipments, I did use calculated rates because those vary so much from one country to the next.
This was very helpful thank you!
sorry if this is a dumb question, but the customer pays for shipping at checkout and you buy the shipping label for a lower price? does this allow u to save the difference between what the buyer pays and what u pay?
Hey, yes. Thats what I was doing before switch to Shopify Payments. Now that PS has UPS I'm ready to get back to it. They are great.
Like Victor said, you can charge more for shipping and then profit the difference between what the customer paid and what you paid on shipping. There are companies out there that build their business models on charging extra for "shipping and handling". For example, they charge $7 for shipping when they know they can ship orders for $4 (giving a $3 profit just on the shipping charge).
Can show us how to setup shipping prices..
I'm hoping to! Once I get to the point of setting up shipping prices for my new store, I'll show my process of picking prices and setting up the shipping on Shopify.
your the best!
What if our inventory is in another place
You'll want the label printed wherever the inventory is, and you'll want to make sure you are entering the shipping from address into Pirate Ship before purchasing a label (there may be different rates for the postage from your other location). You can always download a label and then send the PDF to other people on your team to pack up the item, print the label, and ship it. You'll just need to know the package weight and size before you purchase the shipping label.
Sorry if this is a dumb questions but just to understand - would you just charge a flat rate for the shipping on your Shopify listing and then buy the labels on pirate ship for the actual price?
There isn’t a way for it to be Calculated beforehand?
Not a dumb question! I think most sellers enter the product weights and then let Shopify estimate the shipping (you definitely can do that). Since the Shopify shipping prices will be very similar to Pirate Ship, you shouldn't have to pay extra.
In my case, I wanted to charge a flat rate, and on top of that, my packaging makes it difficult for me to estimate. If I sell one cross stitch pattern it requires a cardstock mailer before it goes in a poly bag (which adds a decent amount of weight). If I sell two patterns, I still only use one cardstock mailer (so I'd be overcharging if I added the cardstock mailer weight to every pattern weight on my website). I hope that makes sense as it is hard to explain in text.
One other thing. I create "custom shipping" options for USPS First Class and USPS Priority because Shopify automatically puts the estimated shipping times if you use theirs. I had too many customers thinking those estimated times included my processing time, and if the package was one day out of the estimated delivery date, I'd get a "where is my package" email. If I wanted to go based off of weights, and have the customer pay the estimated shipping costs, then the custom shipping options would be a lot more difficult to set up. With the custom shipping options, you can choose to charge a flat rate based on prices or weights, so different prices could be programmed for heavier packages (it wouldn't take into account shipping zones - further away zones are more expensive to ship to).
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi Lindsey Keep Growing
Hi Lindsey, So im looking to set up pirate ship on my future shopify store.I want to set up flat rate lets say $5.00, However pirate ship is only charging to ship my pkg to customer $ 3.00 will i be making a $2.00 profit after i print out the pirate ship label ?
Yes
Yup! You will be. Just make sure your shipping isn't too expensive since that may be a turnoff to customers. Many sites will use the words "shipping and handling", so if the shipping is a little more than the shipping cost, customers may assume the handling part is what is making up that difference (there are labor/time costs to packing up orders, so there are more costs than just the shipping price when it comes to shipping out an order).
well done!!
I wanna to start E-Crommce Can you Guide Me
Although on my channel I discuss my experiences in business, I don't claim to be a mentor. My best advice is to learn from people who have gained money from running business, not just from selling courses. I like learning from Steven Black. His newest group on Facebook is "SOCIALS & SCALING | Biz Building For Creatives w/Psychology & Content". I don't think you had to have purchased his course to be part of that group, but I don't remember for sure.
What is the price@@lindseytall3817
I think Steven Black has some free info on Facebook. I wouldn't pay anything starting out.
my printing label has my adress on it, how do I take it off
I think it requires you to have an address on the label. BUT, you can get a PO box with a postal service if you are in the US. USPS and UPS both offer boxes for a monthly fee. Then, you can put those addresses. My packages ship with a PO box number, so I don't have to share my personal address.
Thank you!
Girl you need to do batches... You could save 2/3 of your time. You need to do some automations, it would speed you up so much
I had so many items, and the way I had to package, the weights varied so much. But, you are right that if batches are possible, it would/could speed it up a lot! I was also so paranoid about shipping the wrong package to someone if I didn't print the labels one at a time 😅.
Good video.
do they take a percent of your profits????? did you leave that part out? How much per year??? etc. you never really told the facts to join any place. Do they charge for a mailing list from your clients????? can you pass all fees to the customer?
Pirate Ship doesn't cost anything to use besides the shipping fees you pay. :) So, there are no extra, random fees or percentages that they take. Shopify, of course, still takes their usual percentage and transaction fee (those fees don't change regardless if you ship on the Shopify platform or with a third party app like Pirate Ship).
@@lindseytall3817 does Spotify force you to give refunds or put your products on sale? Do they charge you to list items? How much do they get for each sale?
@@samwilson6033 Shopify does not force you to give refunds or put anything on sale. Of course, you can do both of those if you want. Shopify takes 30 cents plus 2.9% of each transaction. There is also a monthly payment that starts at $29 per month (there are different plans you can select, but if just starting on Shopify, the $29 plan should work just fine).
My god. Calm down. There's no hidden tricks. They are that good. Period.
@@victordavidup they take 30%
I am New I need Please Waiting for Your Reply
I can't hear anything...