The Value Of Drop Delivery: The Calculation

Before we determine what your time is value to you, let’s discover out just how a lot time is saved through the use of drop shipping.

As an eBay PowerSeller, I have some expertise in both conventional packaging and shipping, as well as using drop shipping. To begin our calculation, we are going to take a look at how long it took me to run a conventional auction. Regardless as to whether you use drop delivery or not, some issues take the identical amount of time (such because the listing time, time spent making ready an item description, market analysis time, etc.). These things won’t have an effect on our calculation, so we’ll ignore them.

First, the item description. For essentially the most part, there will not be any distinction here. Nonetheless, by utilizing drop delivery you are able to use the supplier image. This can save some time in that you simply won’t want to worry about taking photos, enhancing photos, and uploading them to eBay or a 3rd-social gathering image internet hosting service. In the case of Doba, members are literally given rights to “hot hyperlink” to the pictures hosted on our servers. This will save even more time.

I am a little bit of a perfectionist. It will take me a minimum of 30 minutes to take and edit several footage (I almost all the time use a number of photos in my merchandise descriptions). For example that for anyone else, we’ll conservatively estimate quarter-hour for pictures.

Whole time used so far: 15 minutes

After itemizing the public sale, we wait till it has ended. After accepting cost and receiving the delivery data, we need to bundle, address, and ship the item.

Packaging time can vary. Something small that may fit in an envelope will only take about a minute to package. Something larger may take a number of minutes. Add on prime of that the time required to print or write out address labels. Then there may be the price of packaging materials resembling packing containers, packing peanuts, packing tape, etc.

Let’s make a conservative assumption of 5 minutes to deal with and package an item.

Total time used so far: 20 minutes

Times on getting the merchandise shipped can differ greatly. If you are utilizing the Postal Service, time spent in line can take as much as an hour or more depending on how busy the post workplace is. Alternatively, most submit offices now have self serve counters where you possibly can weigh your package, input the size, and pay at a machine that calculates the postage for you.

However you continue to must drive to the put up office. Let’s assume a mean to-and-from commute time of half-hour (that is about how long it takes me, being about 15 minutes from the submit office) plus a minimum of 10 extra minutes spent working with the self serve machine (assuming one is free to make use of right away).

Complete time used so far: 60 minutes

Now you’re accomplished! It only took an hour. In addition to time, there are other associated costs. We already mentioned the packaging materials. Let’s go for a conservative common of $2 per merchandise shipped. Then there may be the gasoline needed to drive to and from the submit office. Even if your automobile gets a 35 miles per gallon, and assuming a round journey of 10 miles, you’re still taking a look at somewhere between 1 / 4 to a 3rd of a gallon is spent (28.5% of one gallon to be exact).

Where I stay, gas is at present $2.eighty per gallon (assuming you do not get premium). My 10 mile journey, assuming optimal mileage, would cost $0.80. So we can add $2.eighty ($2 for delivery materials, $0.eighty for gas) onto the cost of transport an merchandise by ourselves. We can’t bother getting ticky tacky with associated upkeep costs of your vehicle.

Okay, now let’s calculate the total price so far. We have spent 60 minutes of our time. Only you may determine what your time is price to you. Solely pay yourself minimum wage? Then you should anticipate a reimbursement of $8.05 from your sale. If you are a high-paid advisor that instructions $300 per hour, properly, hopefully the item you just sold went for a nice high price.

To calculate what you should expect, simply add $2.80 onto you worth of time per hour. Easy, proper?

Sick admit, there are ways to minimize the time and price concerned with doing it yourself. For instance, you can (as I as soon as did) package a number of objects and take all of them right down to the post office on the same time.

Here’s my counter to that speaking from private experience. In less time than it takes me to label each of those packages with the appropriate shipping tackle, I might simply enter the addresses into my Doba account. At that time I’m performed, and believe me I’m a happy camper in consequence!

Next, we’ll calculate how much time it takes to do the same process using a drop shipper like Doba.

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