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:
Hi, David,
This is the very first hit on my search for companies that can print and drop-ship your photos from here in the United States.
https://www.reedphoto.com/services/finishing/acrylic-face-mount-prints-to-plex/#prices
The cost is comparable to what your local shop quoted, and this is literally the very first place to come up on my search, and that’s retail–as a commercial customer, you might be able to work out a discount.
Just a thought.
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…
I suspect that, if this becomes a real consideration, I am not the only American who might be interested in assisting you.
If you are truly interested in buying a photo print this way, please drop me an email!