International Shipping Rate Calculation, A Foolproof 7 Step Plan
Gadget Magazine
China tip, Chinavasion, Chinavasion tip, drop shipping, dropshipping, ebay reseller, ecommerce tip, Eric Chen, international shipping rate, shipping rate, Wholesale 26 Comments
By Eric Chen
At Chinavasion, a frequent question we get from eBay sellers is: how do I work out the shipping cost for different countries?
With Chinavasion’s online shipping cost calculator, this is easy to do.
Here is a seven step guide on how to quickly and safely check the shipping cost of the item you are interested in for different countries without paying for the item:
Step 1
First of all, we need to add entries of different countries to the address book.
Log in your Chinavasion account, and then click on the ‘Address Book’ button in the left hand menu of the page.
Step 2
Fill in the necessary information and choose a country.
Step 3
In international shipping, only the country will affect the rate.
So you can come up with fake addresses of different countries without changing any of other information.
Remember that the Chinavasion account can hold a maximum of 1500 entries so you could conceivably have an address for every country in the world and still have room for all your regular customer email addresses.
If you don’t want these fake addresses to mix up with real ones, you can register another account only for working out the shipping costs, using a different email address.
However, there is no need to go to this level of separation and just by using your own name for the shipping address.
Step 4
By now, we complete the first step of adding different entries to the address book.
Now we are ready to use these different entries to work out correspondent shipping freight cost.
First, let’s place an order and choose any address. As you can see the website will automatically work out the correspondent shipping freight.
Step 5
Let’s change it to another address by selecting it from your address book.
As you can see, the shipping freight shown on the website is now magically changed to the rate for United Kingdom.
And you are able to repeat the process, to work out the costs for different countries.
Step 7
In fact, shipping freight for countries within a certain area normally remains the same. For example, by choosing different countries within Western Europe, you will see the shipping rate remains unchanged. Here I placed an order for 1 piece of Odyssey – WiFi Quadband Dual-SIM Cellphone w/ 3 Inch Touchscreen. I change the address from France to Germany, then to Netherlands. You might be surprised to find out that the shipping rate remains unchanged.
Though this is normally the case, sometimes, with some shipping companies, there are exceptions.
For example, in the Mediterranean area, shipping to certain countries can be much more expensive compared to adjacent country, due to inefficiency in local logistics hubs.
However, these differences generally are very small. We suggest you take a look at all countries within a certain area. You then can work out a fixed rate for a certain area and use that as a guide.
At Chinavasion, we are constantly working to maintain the shipping prices constant and as low as possible to help you in your business.
However, most shipping companies adjust their rates monthly according to the international oil price, labor costs, etc.
Generally speaking, these adjustments are very small, however, to keep your shipping freights accurate and up-to-date, we recommend you recheck shipping rates via our website every month.
By doing that you’ll be maximizing your profits and increasing sales, and that’s got to be a good thing.
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hi, do you ship to ghana? can you give more information on that.
Hi Sylvester,
Yes we can ship to Ghana. However you will need to pay by bank transfer
How is the cost of delivery that customers will pay?, how can my customers know how much is it?, exist some kind of script that i can put in my site that customers can know directly the cost of that?, please help me and answer that question
Instead of troubling your dropshippers to “manually” work this out themselves (for every product and then every country), do you plan to make it easier for your dropshippers to integrate with the way you calculate shipping cost? The thing is, it is not logically realistic for dropshippers (especially those with own website) to find out the shipping cost for each product (because you do not even publish product weight? or do you?) this way, it is too tedious. Neither is it logical for your dropshipper to find out shipping cost only after they close the sale, isn’t it? Please correct me if I get this wrong or you have a smarter way for your dropshipper to automate how your derive shipping fee for every item (I am referring to the formula that is). Thank you.
Hi Kenny,
Thanks for your comment.
I agree it would be easier to have some definitive formula that you could use.
However, unfortunately this is not possible as our shipping team are always in talks with shipping companies to get greater and greater discounts and as a result we would always be altering the formula based on economic conditions and price changes by shipping companies.
The system set up by Eric is possibly the best alternative to this as it does give a system to working out average shipping costs.
Hi Patrik,
Unfortunately no, there is no such formula. However, by using the method that Eric has described on a range of different products you should be able to set out a shipping formula which works out financially for both your customers and yourself.
It would be easier to have some formula that you could use, this is a ‘must’.
i agree with Micheal and everyone here we need a script or a shipping calculator for our website, This will grow the sales of company because it will help our lives more easier and we would be more then willing to do business with you.
[...] sure how? Fear not, once again Chinavasion is here to help! Have a look at our blog on claculating shipping [...]
I agree with everyone else. What good is it to know the shipping amount AFTER the customer has already ordered?
Hi Jennifer,
The point of this blog is to demonstrate that you can actually get shipping costs in advance by using dummy accounts for whichever country to ‘test’ orders that you are receiving from real customers.
Since couriers are always changing their prices we cannot offer a table of shipping costs, as it would immediately be out of date.
However, we can and do update the computer system as soon as there are any changes to shipping costs. Therefore, the costs that you get from researching shipping costs in this way should be current.
I hope this helps!
And you have to do this for each product for every country one by one? That is insane and ridiculous. Surely you have a better system than this!
If you could provide the weight of all of your products on a list for resellers, then the resellers could calculate their own shipping costs. You NEED this information. It is critical.
How much dollar “Aspire – Quad Band Dual-SIM Cellphone with QWERTY Keyboard” up in Albania?
Hi I need some information I am from Mexico and is always used shiping FEDEX, but at this moment you do not offer this service and buy some orders by UPS, but and has a lot of problems and I prefer FEDEX there any way I can send my orders FedEx?
Hi Alfredo,
As I know FedEx is currently an available option for Mexican customers, so I’m unsure of your issue here. It is best to send an email to: support[@] chinavasion [.com]
Thanks!
I feel that you need to have the weight of all of your products so we can put on my website. Also I need the shipping chart.
Hi Constance, I will pass on your feedback to management. It’s useful.
In the meantime perhaps this blog can help? http://blog.chinavasion.com/index.php/2815/international-shipping-rate-calculation-a-foolproof-7-step-plan/
Thanks for letting us know.
Is it possible to give the most expensive country and the cheapest? This could help me to determine a flat shipping rate and I have not to try out 150 countries first.
Hi Angela,
Actually, shipping rates mainly depend on the weight and size of products. there is no way to say which country is the most expensive or the cheapest destination to ship a product.
Hi perhaps at least you can put a link of courier companies you deal with in china that has calculation in their website. For example FEDEX from Shenzen China website that has built in shipping calculator base on weightage (base on size) and destination. So we can toggle the calculator ourselves.This way, they will update their own price everytime, so no hassle at your part to keep update .
At your part, you can put on all the product weightage in product description. So at least when we go to shipping company website calculator by ourselves and fill in the weight and destination, Voila!..we got our shipping cost. So we left out your burden as well .. In both ways, win win situation.
Bonjour,
Lorsque je simule une commande de 500 pieces, le cout de port est moins eleve que piece par piece.
Si je veux envoyer 500 pieces a 500 clients differents, est ce que je dois diviser les frais de port par 500 ou est ce que je dois prendre les frais de port à l’unité car parfois les frais de port sont plus eleves que le produit commandé.
Exemple:
Je souhaite commander 500 gants de piano.
Les frais de port sont de 2710€ soit 5.42€ par piece
Or les frais de port sont de 18,60€ par tranche de 1 piece.
Combien vais-je payer de frais de port par client sachant que tous les clients sont en France métropolitaine?
18.60€ ou 5.42€: je précise que j’utilise le dropshipping.
Merci.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your comment, our customer support staff will contact you in 24 hours!
Hi,
How much would be the range of shipping cost within the US?
Hi Marianne,
Thank you for your comment.
The shipping cost entirely depends on the size/weight of orders, you will see the fee in our check-out system! Enjoy shopping
Hi Alice,
Had a good chat. You answered all my question. Good online support.