How to Ship Furniture on Etsy
Do you want to sell your furniture online, but you have no idea where to start? I would totally recommend you to sell your furniture on Etsy. Right behind that recommendation, I always get this question though! Here’s how to ship furniture on Etsy, so you can start selling your furniture online!
Are you looking for more information on shipping furniture? See our other posts on how to ship furniture!
So, you want to start selling painted furniture online. Etsy is the easiest way to get started!
Etsy drives over 200 million visits each month! Don’t you want a piece of all of those customers instead of trying to drive traffic to your own website each month??
They also collect sales tax from your customers and even send it in for you, they do a lot of advertising, and they have an easy to use platform.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I also may earn from other qualifying purchases with other companies or get free product to review and use. All opinions are my own.
Selling Upcycled Furniture on Etsy
If you haven’t already, set up your Etsy account. (If you use this link for a brand new seller’s account, you get 40 free listings!)
Then, take really nice styled photos of each of your pieces of painted furniture.
Edit those photos so they are pleasing to the eye.
Write out a detailed description of each piece of furniture you’re selling.
- What color is it?
- How many drawers does it have?
- What can it be used for?
- Was it made by a certain brand?
- What is the finish like?
- Make sure to include dimensions of the piece as well!
How to Ship Furniture on Etsy
If you’re filling out a listing, you’ll end up getting to the shipping part. The part that freaked me out to no end when I was getting started selling furniture on Etsy.
I honestly saved my listings as drafts, because I had no idea how to handle how to ship furniture. Let alone how to even enter it into Etsy’s listing!
How to Fill out the Shipping portion of an Etsy Listing
*Note – this is so much easier on the desktop than on a phone. The process is a little bit different on your phone.
- When you get to the shipping options at the bottom of your listing, select ” Enter custom shipping options”
- Then in the drop-down menu that says “calculate them for me”, click down to “I’ll enter fixed costs manually”.
- Make sure your shipping origin is the right country.
- Then select your processing time in the next drop-down menu.
Processing Time
The processing time is the time it will take you to get the piece of furniture shipped out.
So, your processing time depends on your method of shipping. If you are packaging your furniture and offering a fast service like freight delivery, UPS or Fed Ex, then you can offer a faster processing time.
However long it will take you to package up that furniture and have the company pick it up, or for you to drop it off at the terminal.
If you are shipping with a slower service like White Glove Shippers, or possibly a uShip company, then you will want to account for how long it will take them to be in your area to pick up your piece of furniture.
Talk with the shippers that you are planning to use before setting your processing time. They might come to your area once a month, or once every other month.
- Under “Fixed Shipping Costs”, navigate to the Shipping Carrier drop-down menu.
- Select “Other”.
- And then select how long it will take your shipper to deliver your furniture to your customer in the next two drop-down menus.
Delivery Time Estimates
If you’re using a freight company, UPS or Fed Ex, the delivery time is usually less than 7 business days depending on the area it will be shipped to. Get some quotes for a location near you, and a location across the country from you. Enter the quoted days as your estimated delivery times.
If you’re using a white glove shipper, ask them how long it usually takes to get to different areas. They may know, and they may not really know. But consider how long it takes for them to get to your area.
In my area, my favorite white glove shippers only come once every other month. Based on that, I set my delivery time to the max that it allows (which basically comes out to a month).
- Next, select your choice from the “what you’ll charge” drop-down menu. Either a fixed cost or free shipping.
Fixed Cost Shipping
You have two ways of charging for shipping under the fixed cost method.
First, gather quotes from your preferred shipping companies, based on locations near and far, depending on the size of the piece of furniture to be shipped.
Then decide what it would most likely cost to ship that piece of furniture based on the quotes.
Enter that number into the fixed cost.
You can also enter an average shipping cost, and then in your listing description ask for the customer to contact you for a specific quote to their zip code. That way you don’t have to suck up any extra shipping costs if it gets shipped to a faraway destination that costs more.
Free Shipping
I’ll talk more on free shipping in a little bit, but if you offer free shipping, you need to include your shipping costs into your listing price.
- Decide if you are willing to ship outside of your country or not. If you will only ship inside of your country, delete the “Everywhere Else” option.
- If you want to use this shipping method again, click on “save as a shipping profile.” You can save multiple shipping profiles!
How to Ship Furniture for Free
Etsy recently announced that they want every seller to offer free shipping on orders over $35. Learn more about their free shipping program here.
As an incentive, they are showing the “free shipping” products higher in the search than products that don’t come with free shipping.
You’re probably wondering though, how in the world do you offer free shipping on a huge piece of furniture if you have no idea how much it’s going to cost to ship furniture across the country??
First, take a step back and think things through one step at a time.
If you’re new to shipping furniture, you probably shouldn’t offer free shipping. There are a lot of risks, and you should probably ship at least 5 pieces (probably more) before diving into the world of shipping furniture for free.
Here’s what free shipping basically means.
You are rolling the cost of shipping, (packing as well!) and the cost of the furniture into one big listing price.
So instead of saying that your dresser is $400, and shipping costs are $300, you are going to list your piece of furniture for $700.
Customers love free shipping. Don’t you?? I know I love Amazon Prime free two-day shipping! I hate going to check out on a website just to find that I really can’t afford something because of the shipping costs.
With buyers in mind, Etsy is trying to make it easier for them to purchase. And they are rewarding sellers for doing so (by showing “free shipping” products before products with regular shipping.)
That doesn’t mean that you need to jump on the free shipping bandwagon if you are brand new to shipping furniture.
Wait until you are more comfortable with shipping, and then look into offering free shipping!
If you jump into shipping furniture for “free,” you may end up eating shipping costs!
Gather Shipping Quotes for Furniture
Now go gather some shipping quotes from your preferred shipping companies! Make sure you ask for quotes for different sizes of furniture, how much it costs to ship across the country or to a city only 200 miles away. Also, check on quotes in big cities and places in the middle of nowhere.
Gather up those shipping quotes, and decide how much to charge for shipping. Then finish off your listings!
How to Ship Furniture – The Ultimate Guide
Want to know more about how to ship furniture? We’ve only skimmed the very surface!
Learn how to package furniture to prevent damage, the best companies that ship furniture, more on how to ship furniture on Etsy, and a whole lot more!
We answer your burning questions that will make it easy. You’ll be shipping furniture across country in no time!
Now that you know how to ship furniture on Etsy, learn more about how to ship furniture across the country, including how to weigh furniture, how to package furniture and different shipping companies.
Make sure to pin this post for later!
Follow us on YouTube to get more tips for painting furniture.
Or share your project with us on our Facebook Group and be part of our community. See you there!
I am new to etsy and trying to see how I add the furniture cost after the sale? Can you do that?
Hey Linda!
I’m not really sure what you mean by furniture cost after the sale. Can you give me more context so I can help?
If you are saying free shipping, do you say zero in fixed shipping costs, or do you put in the amount you are planning to charge?
I put zero in the shipping costs. But I add my estimate into the price of the item. Be sure you know a good estimate so you aren’t losing or charging too much.
Do have a scale for weighing your furniture?
yes and no. I use 2 household scales to weigh large furniture. I talk more about it in my ebook!
Just wanted to say thank you so much! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to start selling (furniture) on Etsy and stop because I haven’t figured this part out yet! This was super helpful!