4 Ways to Get Discounted Shipping Labels
You probably know that shipping can be quite expensive, especially when you need to ship internationally. Although shipping carriers try to keep their rates affordable and competitive, they still have to raise them every now and then to get enough revenue. Fortunately, there are ways to cut shipping costs for both businesses and private individuals. Here are a few ways to get discounted shipping labels and save on shipping.
USPS Click-N-Ship
A lot of people take their parcels to the nearest post office location to have them shipped because they either don’t know that they can print shipping labels online or because they think it’s too complicated. As a matter of fact, it isn’t. If you sign up at the official USPS website, you’ll be able to get discounted shipping labels online and print that at home. You won’t even need self-adhesive labels or a special printer for this; just print your label on a sheet of regular printer paper and tape it to your package.
Buying a USPS shipping label with USPS Click-N-Ship is slightly less expensive than buying it at a post office. However, discounted shipping labels for individual customers are still more expensive than commercial rates that the USPS offers to businesses. Besides, you should know that you won’t be able to buy First-Class Mail labels at the USPS website; it only lets customers print Priority Mail shipping labels, and Priority Mail rates are higher than First Class Mail rates.
If you’re a business owner, you can take advantage of the USPS Commercial Rates on all shipments, including First Class Mail.
PayPal Shipping Center
If you like to shop online, you probably have a PayPal account. But do you know that PayPal has a shipping center where you can purchase discounted USPS or UPS shipping labels? With PayPal’s postage feature, you can buy and print domestic and international shipping labels one at a time or in batches, fill out online customs forms for international shipping, and track your shipments. The discount you get depends on your postal service of choice and other factors.
eBay
If you’re an eBay seller, you can associate your USPS, UPS or FedEx account with your eBay account to get shipping discounts that range depending on the shipping service and the volume of shipping (up to 25% off the USPS retail rate, up to 37% of FedEx retail rate, and up to 34% off UPS retail rate). In addition, these carriers offer free branded shipping supplies for eBay sellers.
Third-Party Services
There are third-party services that offer customers discounted shipping labels from multiple carriers. How does this work? Such services get a commercial discount from carriers and then share this discount with their customers. One of their greatest advantages is that you can compare rates offered by different carriers and choose the best option.
PostageMaker is one of the services that offer discounted postage labels to both private individuals and retailers. It gives its customers an opportunity to buy USPS, FedEx and UPS shipping labels, both domestic and international, with a discount up to 35% of the carriers’ retail rates. You can pay for your labels with a credit/debit card, PayPal or Bitcoin. PostageMaker charges no monthly fees for its services. You just sign up, deposit funds on your account, and use this money to print shipping labels as often as you need.
For your convenience, PostageMaker offers additional services, such as a postage calculator, an address book where you can save shipping addresses, the history of all your transactions, and a tracking service. Buying discounted shipping labels with PostageMaker is as easy as one, two, three!
