how can shopify and ship station help my small business

all right so let's talk about shipping,and sending items,from your uh digital store to your,customers and the process,from start to finish about what it takes,to actually run an online store,ship about 25 to 40 orders a day,the gear you need the strategy the,organization,all the software everything included so,that you can be,a master shipper for your ecommerce,store i'm going to run you through,literally a full process of what i do,pretty much on a daily basis to ship all,of my orders,for my website that's doing about a,thousand orders a month so about 30,orders a day,i'm going to run you through everything,that it takes and we're gonna give you,the top to bottom,let's check it out hey what's up i'm,zach and i run an e-commerce store and i,make videos about small business growth,and how to,use marketing digital marketing sticker,marketing,kind of just ideas about business to,grow and scale your business,these videos come out every wednesday i,talk about a lot of interesting ideas,that i've learned,lessons that i've learned mistakes that,i've made so go ahead and subscribe,keep coming back and hopefully i can,share some stuff with you that will help,your store grow,uh or help you become a better marketer,and today,we're talking about what happens after,you market your items and you're,actually shipping them to your customers,and the process of what it takes to,actually ship things,from a room like this through the,internet to your people so,we're going to run through all of that,definitely a lot of information i'm,going to go into a lot of details all,the links are going to be down below,about,what i use um some of the um you know,like the scale and the printer the,software all the tools and really just,the whole process of what it takes to,ship so let's get it started so today,i'm going to be shipping and showing you,how i do,everything out of this room this is a,spare bedroom in my house and i've,recently just started shipping,full-time from here about three years i,was shipping from a warehouse that was,what,uh one of my recent videos about so,check it out why i switched,from print on demand and warehousing,back to here,but i'm going to show you how i use all,of this,and this over here and all of my,organization and,some of this stuff here to um,ship all of my items and so it's going,to be a lot i'm going to shoot with this,camera i'm going to shoot with the gopro,you're going to see some behind the,scenes of what it actually takes,but definitely let me know if you have,any questions about this i would love to,answer this,i did not find this video when i was,shooting when i was trying to figure,this out for myself,so i'm going to give you some of the,details that i missed out on,but yeah let's go ahead and jump into,really the first step in,what i'm about to do to start shipping,so i use the shopify store,and i originally started shipping with,just the native shopify integration and,it's pretty good,but as i was starting to get more orders,it was not enough to,grow with it it was taking too long i,was doing a lot of the same processes,again and again,and so i recently switched to ship,station,they have a 30 day or if you look around,you can find a 60 day trial for,ship station and i've started recently,using them,they get a lot of love on the internet,and are one of the cooler people to do,this,they um it just seems like ship station,is kind of the go-to,and so definitely check out shipstation,this is what it looks like,inside of the platform so you have kind,of all of your insights your orders your,shipments,it's really well organized to help,you do this as efficiently and as,quickly as possible,to ship out all of your items and so,basically this is my first step i start,everything with,ship station because this is going to,tell me how many orders i have like i,have,67 orders to ship right now and it takes,about,um two to three minutes an order so this,is gonna be about let's say 200 minutes,this is going to take,quite a bit of time it's sunday night,and,i didn't ship yesterday or today so,now i'm catching up like i said about 30,orders a day and so once i come here,this is a great start because it kind of,gives you an overview of what you need,to do,once i'm in ship station one of the,things that i like to look at are what,are the orders,that i know i've already marked as,having,their own shipping details so,i know that i can quickly knock those,out and not spend too much time on,you know figuring out how much they,weigh or what the,um the bag that i need to use or is it,going to be,you know all i've done these before so i,have them kind of categorized,so i go through they're usually the ones,that are,only have one item in them not the,multiple because i can't see,and so these i'm basically going through,and just highlighting all of the ones,and then i'm going to add them to a,batch which is down here,which is going to allow me to batch,print them and pay for all the shipping,and everything,and so one of the cool things about kind,of my business is that i sell a lot of,single items but they're really small so,i can ship,and package some of these things really,quickly because they're,not you know i'm not having to fold,anything or they're not heavy,they're really like you know hand sized,so i can,put them into a package really easily,and then bust out,a lot of them really quickly now when it,gets to the more complicated orders,that's where it takes more time,but i'm starting here real quick with,all the simple ones,now i have all these easy options,selected and i'm going to go up here to,batch and i'm going to add them to this,batch so it's going to create a batch,of 29 eventually this is going to be all,my items so i can ship them all at once,it allows for group processing which,is a great option that shopify doesn't,have you have to do each one manually so,i went ahead,and i think that's one of the better,options for ship station,um or why i choose ship station more,because they have this batch option,so now i have all these in here for the,sake of this video i'm going to select a,few of the more complicated ones so you,can see what that also takes,but i want to show you a little bit of,flow of how packaging,all of this stuff works so i'm going to,actually hold off on some of these more,complicated ones,until after the video or maybe later,tonight,but i'm going to go ahead and start with,the simple one so you can kind of see,this,process so jumping to some of the more,complicated ones let's say,these it says multiple which means,there's multiple items in this order,um here for example we have two flags so,i know that each of those weighs,about three ounces so two of those is,probably nine ounces,i'm using usbs first class and i have,these custom packages here which you can,choose,to for size and weight and things like,that,but um it just helps me also think about,what i need to,package um it doesn't come out it,doesn't customer doesn't see that,um but it helps for deciding things i,don't think ups matter so much,they're not going to really measure the,size and weight i think that's more ups,but for now we're going to go ahead and,keep busting through these,and it shows up and it gives you the,rate right here so it's a live rate so,if you see if you kind of bounce this,down,it refreshes and it's going to give you,a lower rate and so sometimes it's just,a couple ounces apart,and you can end up paying a little bit,more maybe it's only,you know 10 cents or 50 cents but over,60 hundred a thousand orders all those,little bitty cents,add up so i'll try to get as close as,possible,to figuring out uh which weight to use,and then i go up here and i just add it,to this batch,you can see that it pops up right here,as in a batch,so let's look at this next one tin,button pack and stickers,that's around that first class,and black poly let's do the smaller one,and so it's basically just a lot of this,of going through and looking at,you know what these different options,are this is a flag with some buttons 25,buttons,you go through usbs first class it's a,lot of repetition,um it auto populates boom add it to the,batch,so we're going through and just kind of,looking at,all at adding all of these and we're,going through kind of looking at adding,all of these,um and categorizing them so that they,get the right amount of shipping,so sometimes i come to an order where,i'm not sure exactly how much it weighs,so for example this is a,um ladies small shirt with some notepads,and,10 pins so in that case i have to pick,up,over here i can look for a small,go to the scale,that's the calibrate put this on,it said three notepads those are right,here i'm almost sold out of these,it's probably one of the last orders and,then,the 10 pins right,three,seven ten,so it's under one pound so i go back,so i go back i add the weight here which,is,let's say 14 ounces add usps,add the correct thing packing order and,boom,there we go a lot of that up and back,and measuring,and not sure how much it weighs and,getting up and running around,my mic died on my lapel,uh so i'm just going to keep shooting,this and i'm going to keep filming and,talking about this,even though it's probably not going to,be a sexy of audio but,let's keep going let's keep talking,about shipping,so i have these handy bins here right,next to the desk because i'm constantly,reaching for sticker packs,or the black sticker packs or these bags,or,different orders so these stay all here,this is where,my flags are and then i have more flags,underneath here because i'm constantly,reaching for those,and then over here i have my buttons and,my scale and my printer and some of the,other items,more flags um but this is where i'm,constantly like,grabbing for for this over here and,bringing it down and then,grabbing over here or running over here,and looking inside for shirts,so it's all really fast i can move,around here,really quickly i'm not having to run,into another room which is nice,i'm definitely going to outgrow this,pretty soon but having everything kind,of close to you is definitely important,for efficiency,okay so i validated all of these i fixed,the shipping issues the package type,and now it brought me to this page where,it's going to actually charge me,for the services i have a negative,balance at this point,and this um 39 orders is going to cost,158.89 to ship,this all goes through stamps.com so when,you sign up for you,ship station you get a stamps.com,account and it just integrates,it's great i choose the ship date which,is monday tomorrow,and then i'm going to pay for all of,this it's going to,go through shift station stamps.com tell,me i don't have enough money,i didn't do that this time i bought it,and,now i've bought all my labels pretty,easy,way faster than shopify for printing i,use the rolo printer,and it works great i got it from amazon,i'm going to drop the link down below,i have a couple of friends that run,businesses they use this printer,it works really great i recently started,to,try the ups method there's a ups,free you can get all of these from ups,for free so i'm,about to try that as soon as i can,figure out how to hang this thing,but for now i used the perforated ones,that come from rolo,they work great except i'm probably,going to run out or get really close to,running out so i always have to order,those,uh we're about 500 at a time and they go,really quickly,so they end up printing out the,packing slip which is nice and then also,the printing slip,the postage slip so i put that on the,peel and stick and you put it on the,front,of your packages so it works really well,so let's go check out hit print on here,and,we'll see what the rollo does have to,plug it in,to the computer i go up turn it on and,off just to make sure,that it is going um it's really close to,here,it's going to probably interfere with,the,camera but let's go ahead and hit print,labels,it's gonna send to the rolo and,hopefully they're gonna come out,there we go,sometimes i like to fold them like this,so,i know that the packing slip and the,order are there together but i end up,ripping them all apart,anyway um but this is kind of the,waiting process of ways to waiting for,them,cool so they didn't use all these up so,i'll probably have enough to maybe,finish this batch but this is nice just,kind of,oh no there's an error i wonder what the,error is,ah interesting,i wonder what caused that i wasn't i,didn't think that this would be,huh interesting,i'm not quite sure what that was about,uh you saw that red button,i haven't seen that before but i just,hit it in a reset so it's continuing to,print,hopefully they're all the same double,check because the worst is to,go through and uh figure out that you,were wrong and,something was wrong and you like double,packed all your orders or something like,that so,let's double check on these to make sure,that they're all correct so up until now,this has been all,really easy um just going through ship,station,and um where it aggregates all the,orders then i send it,you know i go through that process buy,the stamps send it to my rolo those,print out,and i break them down so it's really not,that complex,but it just ends up taking time um,working on getting better at,systematizing that but so far,that's what it looks like and then now,i'm going to,take all of these and put them onto,um packages and grab a little stuff and,put them in there and so,that's kind of the next step is actually,now packing the orders,when i first started shipping all my,items i wasn't sure about what kind of,packaging to use so i just went on to,amazon and bought a bunch of different,types i had a blue one i had some white,ones,i had different size black ones uh and,then i ended up with these poly bags too,so i tried mailers i even had some,some cardboard ones at some point but i,really settled on to,these uh kind of matte black mailers,they're super cool,i have a couple of different sizes of,them,they stay kind of over here but these,are for the small,orders the big orders and then even,these really big orders over here so,these are the ones that i pretty much,use for everything,i'm trying to get rid of some of the,other colors but i really love these,black ones,and they're pretty much what everything,gets shipped in and they look really,clean,when there's a white liver grade storage,sticker on them after all this is done,so the link for these is down below,i have 39 of these and they're going,uh the same amount and it's not messed,up one of these i messed up on,and accidentally did media mail so i,need to remake this,um but now it's time to ship,all of this into here so i cruised,through the first batch,and i finished it all up it was the,easiest stuff so i'm actually going to,move on,to the next thing but one thing i forgot,to mention is that i like to track,all of my hours so that i know how much,time i'm spending on,shipping and all the other roles of the,business and so i use something called,toggle,it looks like i've been working for,about two hours today on all this stuff,um an hour and 43 minutes but i like to,keep track of it so that's how i know,how much time uh it ends up being,about two to three minutes,per order averaged out the stuff that i,just did was a lot easier and a lot,quicker,but the other stuff ends up taking a lot,longer so this next session is gonna be,more uh let's see i have um,let's see here,i'm gonna check how many more orders i,have to go,and then we're gonna keep going we're,going to keep rocking and rolling,looks like i have another 29 orders this,is going to for sure take at least,another hour,i'm going to try to get started and bust,out as much of these as possible,on my packing sheets it actually shows,up with the coupon,so if someone is a new customer i can,see that they use,that welcome coupon and i'll go ahead,and write them a note,uh that's like hey welcome to the live,great story movement,and i sign it with my name and founder,um,hopefully that adds a little bit of,inspiration to people um,getting kind of a handwritten note from,the founder and of course using the,live grade story pins,put it in the bag,put in conservation sticker pack,shirt packing slip,extra buttons,seal it,press all the air out,and a sticker on the bag,that's what it looks like,one of the things that i've started,doing is adding,stickers to every order and so every,order,gets extra stickers and now even,buttons because before i,i couldn't do that at the way that i was,using my warehouse,and so now everything gets buttons and,then also the outside of it,gets a sticker,gotta have a beverage this must be a,long night,so i ran out of labels as it happens and,i need to now set up,my ups deal to try to make it work,and this is how i kind of rigged it so,check it out,i used this shoelace,and i just tied it up here with these,hooks,and i'm going to feed this through and,it should just spin hopefully,and work so i'm gonna kill these,last couple of these and then try this,out for the first time,it's kind of shaking everything,so these are the rolls from ups and,they're free so i think i got,like 900 of these or something crazy for,free,which probably saves about maybe 40,dollars,but they don't come perforated so i'm,not sure if they're gonna actually rip,or not,but if it's pretty seamless then it,should be a good move so let's go ahead,and try this out,not bad let's go let's go for a couple,of them,all right my toggle is saying that i've,been doing this for now,almost three hours the filming has,definitely taken a little bit longer,than expected,um to ship so that's probably not the,most accurate representation of shipping,but all of this has definitely taken,quite a while i have about two of these,up have all of these obviously fixed,this this is rockin this is all the,paper that i'm throwing away um but,it's been quite the time to ship all,this and this is what it looks like,to ship uh from the all the orders and,running,the shopify store and shipping out about,30 orders,a day so um hope you learned some of the,things,see what it looks like behind the scenes,and let me know drop any questions below,let me know if you have any questions,about shipping or e-commerce or,marketing,check out the rest of the videos keep,coming back every wednesday catch you,next time

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