What Makes Selling More Difficult Part 2

This is a continuation of my post from yesterday.  In short, I am heading towards an immediate shutdown of both online stores, even though I'd prefer to stay open if possible.

What Makes Selling More Difficult 

I finally heard back from the international buyer who wanted me to find a cheaper option to ship four books via international mail.  The buyer thinks that I can ship the four books abroad for $3.95 media mail, and they say that Thriftbooks did it.  Thriftbooks couldn't have used media mail, but they may very well have a sweetheart deal with the postal service that allows them to mail books abroad for under $5.00.  I am not a large company, so I do not have access to sweetheart deals.

I decided to look at whether Thriftbooks has these books available and for how much.  They have three of the four books at a total cost of $46.07 before shipping.  The same three books in my store cost $17.97 before shipping.  Let's assume that Thriftbooks does ship internationally for $3.95, even though media mail actually starts at $4.63.

Those three books from Thriftbooks would cost $50.02 including shipping.  Those three books from me would cost $51.97. 

Thriftbooks doesn't have the fourth book on its site.  They do on eBay, but the orders wouldn't combine.  On eBay, the fourth book is $18.00.  The fourth book from me is $5.99.  All four books from me would cost $59.96.  If the buyer were to purchase three books from Thriftbook's site plus the one from eBay and were charged $3.95 shipping on both orders, the total cost of the books would be $71.97.

Whenever I am looking to buy certain books, I don't worry about what a seller charges for shipping.  I look at the overall cost and choose the seller who will deliver the books to me for less.  I also will choose to buy all of the books from one seller rather than several sellers if I see that one seller has all of them, so long as the cost isn't noticeable more.

I know what I would do in this case, if I were the prospective buyer. 

International buyers have a tendency to attempt to negotiate shipping costs.  It happens at least once per month.  They think they can bargain me down, like I have fake high shipping charges.  All I can do is check my charges up against what I will be charged and adjust for the specific buyer.  I cannot create magical discounts.

The situation might be better if I were to offer calculated shipping on Etsy.  I set up a shipping profile on Etsy for combined international shipping.  It returns an error message in the batch editor.  Apparently I would have to edit all 300+ listings individually to change them to calculated shipping.  I won't do it.

Therefore, I created a shipping profile on Etsy where I don't ship internationally.  I just changed all of my Etsy listings to that profile except for the four listings that this one buyer has in their shopping cart.

I know what will happen now.  International buyers will ask why I don't ship internationally.  I'd like to say it's because of how much time the shipping questions waste.  I won't do that.  More likely, I'll give them a rough estimate and overdo it by a bit.  If they are still interested, then I'll figure out the actual cost and edit just a few listings.  

If this doesn't reduce the time suck, then I will close my stores until October.