Delivery Costs

[ilmf44]

Hi there,

I have been looking into Mug pressing and look forward to creating some personalised mugs...

I have been checking on the cost for delivery and it appears that:

325 gram Packet Special Next day Delivery £5.50

A lot of the sellers on eBay are selling for £5.50 which means there would be no profit at all when they sell?

[Paul]

coz they use 2nd class standard delivery
I think is about £1.80 but iam not sure.

[bms]

Think about your costs - to print a mug will cost you around £1.50 (absolutle maximum) including the cost of a decent quality dishwasher safe mug. This would include ink cost, 1/3 sheet of paper, small amount of heat tape (will exclude your cost of time, i.e. profit). You'll need some form of postal packaging (smash proof box or poly postal box, say 40p) and then the cost of sending the item by post (recorded peferrably).

Ebay is great for sourcing cheap items, but not necessarily the best place for pitching a fully customised product where time and effort is need to make a good looking product. You'll need to think about what you unique selling point is (as opposed to copying the rest of just putting a picture on a mug) - can you sell to you local area, shops, schools, markets, local companies etc etc. Ebay may give you pocket money on sales but not enough to make a living (especially selling at £5.50 a time if that includes p&p)

[Dave S]

Hi there,

I have been checking on the cost for delivery and it appears that:

325 gram Packet Special Next day Delivery £5.50

A lot of the sellers on eBay are selling for £5.50 which means there would be no profit at all when they sell?

Hi,
I sell my Sublimation Printed Mugs on ebay for £4.99 per mug plus £2.99 postage, I alway's sent first class, £2.24 (and get proof of posting) other associated costs to take into consideration are Mug Box, bubble wrap, tape, printing of postage label and getting to post office. Once all these costs are worked out, there is no profit to be made from charging £2.99 p+p for a mug.

[Ian M]

I agree with everything that Martin says on this subject. The problem with Ebay is that there are just too many people selling mugs on there at too cheap a price. I really think that Ebay is just to earn pin money to be honest. I had a mug on there well before Christmas & it sold like hot cakes & for once I made some serious money for once. Now Christmas has come & gone & I haven't sold one since. I think you have the right prices on your mugs for Ebay but, there is always going to be several people under cut you on there all the time. You have to look for other markets if you want to make some serious profits in the end.

[JSR]

Remember that delivery prices are going up significantly at the beginning of April.

A mug sent by First Class Recorded will go up by 27p (Second Class Recorded will go up by 24p) - just in delivery costs alone. That's almost a 10% increase.

The cost of sending two mugs together will go up by 39p (or 34p) using the Recorded services.

More details - http://www.dyesubforum.co.uk/vbforum/showthread.php?1566-Postage-increases-April-2011

[Jacko]

I send all my mugs by Royal Mail 2nd class because, in many cases, it will get there just as quick as 1st class.
At the moment it cost's me £1.95p to send by 2nd class. Not sure what it will go up to soon.
Last year I only had 2 people say that they hadn't received their mug and only 1 person who received it damaged. I send my mugs out in the smash proof boxes from Listawood or Subli Supplies.
If I sell a mug on eBay, I charge £6.99 + £2.99 postage. I don't do much on eBay but when I do, I try to make it worthwhile.

Remember those listing fees!
£0.40 to list the mug.
+ £0.99 when it sells.
+ £0.54 that Pay Pal take.
= £1.93!
Add to that the cost of producing the mug (around £1.50)
and the postal box (about £0.50p)
and postage (£1.95).
It works out close to £4 per mug in fee's + costs etc!

[ilmf44]

Some great advice there, I think as a starting point this will be ok, but to build up the costs of the equipment I think a benefit would be selling a number of mugs at once rather than singles.

I can only start trying to sell the products when all equipment is in full use to local companies, schools and the such (mug machine & flat press). My plan is to go for the mug press only to start.

Starting off this is going to be hard to bring back the cost of equipment at around £750 (mug equipment only) it would take around 227 mugs to be made with no problems or accidents, just flawless mugs, then start seeing an actual profit.

Judging by the amount of actual mugs up for sale on ebay the average seems to be 1 or 2 a day, so this could take 6 months to make a profit as well.

Estimated cost £6.99 + £2.99 postage and packaging

[bms]

Starting off this is going to be hard to bring back the cost of equipment at around £750 (mug equipment only)

You can get a starter package cheaper than that. For well under £600 you could get printer, inks, mug press, paper, tape and plenty of dishwasher safe mugs to get you going. This package is with the Ricoh GXe3300 printer.

[Ian M]

You can get a starter package cheaper than that. For well under £600 you could get printer, inks, mug press, paper, tape and plenty of dishwasher safe mugs to get you going. This package is with the Ricoh GXe3300 printer.

Sounds like a real bargain to me does that Martin.

Lets get back to reality as any new business does not make any profit in the first couple of years does it. Maybe we could start adding free start up equipment to the free advice too & still someone wouldn't be happy.

As we say here in Yorkshire 'you don't get owt for nowt anymore'