How do you handle your shipping?

[jacobsen1]

I'm starting to actually sell prints from my online site. Right now I print my prints at Mpix.com, have them ship to my house, verify that everything looks perfect, then send that box out to the customer. It works pretty well so far because the print comes prepackaged from Mpix, and they only charge $4.95 which I've built into my print price. I also charge and additional shipping/handling fee that covers my cost in sending the box to the end customer.

What I've been doing is taking the box from Mpix down to the UPS store and have them ship it. Since it's pre packages in it's own box, I just have to pay for the shipping. With the typical dimensions (24" x 21" x 2", 3lbs) it costs me $8.18 provided it's not a rural delivery.

What I'm wondering is how setting up my own online account with UPS would work? There is a drop box that's just as easy for me to get to, but will a 24" x 21" x 2" box fit in a drop box? Can I still drop my boxes at a UPS store? How much cheaper will it be using a small business account and printing the labels myself? I'll consider USPS if it saves me a bunch of money, but it must be cheaper since their tracking is horrible/nonexistent.

Thanks!

[Mario.]

As of now I hand-deliver most of my prints. I like to sit down with my clients, let them look over the prints, verify everything looks right, and make sure they are happy. It's extra time involved (sometimes up to 30-45 minutes each way), but that's a part of my business plan is to go that extra mile with customer interaction. I'm managing this with about 2-3 shoots a week. If I start to shoot a lot more than that, I will most likely revert to shipping prints to my clients, but will be looking into custom envelopes and package inserts.

[jacobsen1]

Wow, I wish I could do that, but this isn't for local customers. He was ~4 hours each way away from me.

[Mario.]

Well of course I'll ship for customers who aren't local then, but sorry I can't be of any more help for you, hopefully someone else can chime in with the answers you are looking for.

[ssim]

I would never ship it in the box or envelope that came from the lab that did the printing. For starters that just looks cheap to me and secondly all they have to do is go the internet to find out what you paid to have the prints made.

I had envelopes of my own printed and then put these inside of whatever courier service I may be using at the time. I only ship with a method that I can have a tracking number for.

I would doubt that many photographers would ship images to local customers. If they do, they are certainly not customer focussed and will eventually pay the price for it.

[MJPhotos24]

I try to hand deliver but since I can't most the time one of two things happens...

If they order it through me (not online) and I have to mail them I have them shipped to me, make sure they're good to go, repackage them using my supplies trying to make it look professional as SSIM said and ship - just using whatever companies wouldn't look to good, more expensive yes but worth it. It costs me under $2.00 to mail them in a professional manner including the postage (usually, if it's a bigger package it could get to $4.00 or so).

If they order online the company I use (Exposure Manager) does all the shipping in a very professional manner so nothing to worry about. I know the print quality is there so no need to ship it to me and double check it.

UPS has all that info on there site I believe...or there's a DVD thing you can get with it. I know I've seen it somewhere, think the post office gave me one when I came in with 300 packages to mail and didn't want to do the work :)

[tim]

I repackage using my own simple supplies, then put them into a courier envelope/box, the courier picks up from my house and delivers the package. Simple.