4 Benefits of Printing Your Shipping Labels Yourself
A shipping label is a piece of paper that contains all information required to get a package to its destination (sender’s name and address, recipient’s name and address, contents description, tracking barcode, proof of postage payment, etc.). When you ship a package from your local post office, an employee would generate a shipping label and attach it to the package. But many people prefer to print shipping labels themselves for a number of reasons. Here are some of them.
First, let’s figure out how printable shipping labels work. There are many online tools that allow to print shipping labels from anywhere with an Internet connection. Some of these tools are provided by mail carriers; for examples, if you have a USPS account, you can use it to create and print USPS labels. Others are third-party tools that allow to generate shipping labels for multiple carriers.
Generally, all you need to do to create a shipping label is enter your package information, pay for postage (for example, by card or PayPal), and print your shipping label or save it to print later. Naturally, many people prefer these tools to standing in line at a post office, and here’s why.
It Saves Your Time
Instead of walking or driving all the way to the nearest post office and standing in line there, you can print your shipping labels from home or office and schedule a package pickup or drop the packages at a post office without having to wait in line. That’s it, quick and easy! You will definitely appreciate it during the holiday season, when post offices are overcrowded because everyone is shipping presents for their friends and family.
It Saves Your Money
And we don’t only mean gas money or public transit fare that you spend getting to a post office. Many carriers offer shipping discounts to those who print shipping labels online, partly to build customer loyalty, and partly because it helps reduce workload for post office employees.
Interestingly, third party services also offer cheaper shipping labels, sometimes with a really huge discount. How are they able to afford it? Shipping carriers give these services a discount due to the large volume of shipping labels they generate, and the services share this discount with their customers. In the end, everyone wins.
All You Need Is an Internet Connection and a Printer
To generate a printable shipping label, you can use any computer or smartphone with an Internet connection and a browser. Contrary to a popular misconception, you don’t need a special printer, adhesive paper, or some other special equipment and supplies to print a shipping label. Most shipping labels can be printed out on regular paper using a regular printer, and then affixed to packages with glue or packing tape.
It Is Better for Small E-commerce Businesses
If you’re running a small online shop from your home office or garage, printing label shipping tools are just what you need to make your business more organized and save not only valuable time and money, but also precious nerve cells. It’s much easier to print your own shipping labels for a large amount of shipments and schedule a package pickup than to take all these packages to a post office and wait until someone has shipping labels printed for you, one by one.
A lot of shipping services and apps offer special tools for e-commerce business owners (for example, batch order processing or an address book where you can save and manage the addresses of your return customers), making the process even easier. The less time you spend packaging and shipping orders, the more time you have to focus on developing and promoting your business.
