A post on postage

I’m planning to start offering larger prints of my photos on my Etsy shop, to supplement the greeting cards. The prints are 30×20 cm, matted with boards to a size of 40×30 cm, which fits a standard 16×12 inch picture frame. (It’s such a mess working with a mix of metric and Imperial measurements…)

To offer these for sale, I needed to know how much it would cost to package and ship them to potential buyers, so I could price them accordingly. There’s a place near me that does packing and shipping of stuff, so I went there to get a quote. They quoted me $20 to package a print, and $60 to ship it within Australia, or $96 to ship it to the US or Europe. I took the quote and thanked them for their assistance.

This seemed like an awful lot, so I checked Australia Post. They can ship package of this size within Australia for $26 by Express post, or just $19 by regular parcel post. And I’m sure I can pack a print with a few sheets of cardboard, taped up, to keep it safe and prevent it bending. So that seems a lot better.

The only issue is that this print size is just over the maximum dimensions for a package for Australia Post to ship overseas. And I mean just… the matting board itself is exactly the maximum possible size, but by the time I add packaging it will necessarily be a bit bigger.

So I think for now I’ll only be offering these for sale within Australia. I need to take some product photos and set up a new listing on Etsy, but hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

New content today:

4 thoughts on “A post on postage”

    1. Ah, I hadn’t considered trying that. That’s a good thought – I’ll ponder that a bit. The thing is I want some guarantee of quality before I start selling that way, and that’s hard to get without me inspecting the result with my own eyes.

      I wonder if anyone would be willing to buy a print made in the US as a test case and give me a detailed review…

      1. I suspect that, if this becomes a real consideration, I am not the only American who might be interested in assisting you.

        1. If you are truly interested in buying a photo print this way, please drop me an email!

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