When I first heard about how Poshmark had integrated shipping into their e-commerce platform I knew it was going to be something special. I had tried selling stuff on eBay at one point, and calculating the shipping to different regions in Canada and including that in the pricing was a huge headache. In Canada Poshmark has a flat $12.99 shipping fee for any standard package up to 2.5 kg or 5.5 lbs, which seems expensive but if you ship in Canada non-commercially it is usually about $18. Poshmark is able to ship for less because they purchase the postage and they receive a big discount from Canada Post because of the volume of postage that they purchase. The buyer pays the shipping for the bundle they purchase, but the seller can offer a shipping discount. The shipping discount is either $3 or free shipping. The seller pays the discount (not Poshmark) so that difference comes off the sellers profits. When a seller makes a sale Poshmark sends and email and posts a link with a label in Adobe PDF format. The seller prints the label, either on paper and then tapes it on, or on labels of some sort. You can by labels that will work on almost any inkjet or laser printer.
When I got started selling on Poshmark I printed out my labels on my Canon PIXMA MG7520 printer. This printer has been bulletproof and has a wireless connection to my network. I can print my labels from my iPhone or my laptop and I don't need a USB cable to plug it in. This has been super convenient. The problem with the PIXMA is the cost of the ink. I bought a black and a
black-gray cartridge for it last week and it was $85 CDN at Staples, which is ridiculous. Also I buy my Avery labels in the 2-label per page size at Staples and they charge just about $50 for a label pack of 200. Often I only print out 1 label, but I'm able to turn the label around and print another single on the unused portion. I had to do a lot of research to get the labels to print and ended up using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC after endless frustrations with Word 365 not printing labels that would scan at the PO.
When I got started with Poshmark it was only a label here and there, but as my closet grew I was printing more labels and buying more ink and Avery labels, and it was EXPENSIVE. I had been watching Poshmark videos on YouTube. All of the big US sellers had thermal label printers, and it all looked so easy when they were packing up their daily sales. With my Canon I always had to wonder if I had a label sheet in the printer because sometimes there was regular paper in it, and sometimes it was just empty. Or one of the ink cartridges was low on ink which stops the print job to give you a helpful error to tell me I need to go to Staples again. The PIXMA has a really small paper feed cassette, so I needed to put labels in more often than I liked. And I would forget that I had put a label sheet in it that I had already used and I would print a double label. One label would be OK, and the other label would be printed on the empty sheet where I had already peeled a label off which was a total waste of ink.
So it was more from aggravation than necessity that I felt I needed to switch to a thermal label printer. Label printers don't use ink. They use a special paper that changes color when it is heated up. The technology is really old now and is how most fax machines work. After watching a bunch of YouTube videos it seemed like DYMO was a good choice, although other label printers did also get recommended, especially Brother. DYMO was a name I knew, and Staples carried both the printers and the supplies. I really like the wireless option on my Canon PIXMA so I decided to purchase the DYMO wireless model, the Dymo Labelwriter Wireless . It was about $230 at Staples which seems like a lot, but when your ink can be $85 and another $50 for labels on the inkjet printer, it didn't seem terrible.
Buying the Dymo wireless model turned out to be a mistake. I told the salesman at Staples that I needed to print out 4x6 labels, and they nodded their head that it would, but said they were out of 4x6 labels. I decided I could buy the labels from Amazon and took the printer home and unpacked it. It came with a sample roll of file folder labels but it looked great and DYMO had a great YouTube video on how to connect it to my network. I decided I would wait until I got the 4x6 labels before connecting it to my network but I did unpack everything and plug it in. When I started looking for labels I wondered if Staples even carried the 4x6 labels, and to my surprise their website said that there were two boxes in stock at my local store. I drove back to the Staples the next day, which is about a 30 minute drive for me, and sure enough they had two boxes with 1000 labels in each box. They were about $25 a box so I bought both of them.
When I got home I went to put the labels in my new DYMO, and they were too wide. It turns out that 4x6 labels are big labels and lots of the DYMO printer models don't take labels that big. It never occurred to me to check that the DYMO wouldn't be compatible with the 4x6 labels, since I had been using a printer that used 8.5x11 sheets, but apparently in the label printer world 4x6 is HUGE. So more research was needed. DYMO doesn't make many 4x6 label printers, and the consumer model they sell is called the DYMO 4XL. I guess the XL stands for EXTRA LARGE for those huge 4x6 shipping labels. And the 4XL wasn't wireless. It turns out that DYMO doesn't make a 4x6 label printer that is wireless. The 4XL needs to be connected to a computer with a USB cable. That wasn't really a deal breaker for me, because I always have my laptop nearby, so I could plug it in when I needed to print my labels. But I will miss the convenience of being able to print without a cable.
I drove back to Staples (again) and exchanged the wireless model for the 4XL. Unfortunately it cost me an extra $140, but don't say whoa in a mud hole, I paid the difference. I brought it home and unpacked it but didn't plug it in to my laptop right away. There is a red warning label to install the DYMO software first. I downloaded the DYMO software from their website and installed it. They have label making software with templates for the 4x6 labels and after plugging in my laptop with the supplied USB cable I was printing out some samples pretty quickly. The roll of 4x6 labels are easy to load into the printer, and they come out of the printer with a bit of a curl, which was a complaint that a few reviewers on YouTube mentioned. But the labels are in a roll - what did they expect would happen?
I needed to make a change in my Account Settings > Shipping Label Settings to switch to labels being sent from Poshmark that weren't 8.5x11, to labels that were the 4x6 size. I downloaded the label for my latest sale, which opened in Adobe Acrobat. I clicked on Print and I selected the DYMO 4XL printer and a paper size option for the 4x6 labels. The Print Preview looked like it would cut off the label at the edges, so I selected the Fit to Page option, and it all looked good. I double-checked my settings one last time and pressed Print. Five seconds later I had a label that I could tear off the printer. It looked perfect! First time! I have to say that the Canon was pretty pokey about printing labels, probably because of the wireless connection, but the time saved in printing with the DYMO was nice. I wrote the products that I needed to pack up on the back of the label (that part gets peeled away when you're ready to stick it on your package) and packed up my sale. There are lots of great YouTube videos on how to set up the DYMO 4XL for label printing on Poshmark, so this isn't meant to be a complete tutorial. Just type "DYMO 4XL Poshmark" into the YouTube search and you'll get 100+ great tutorial options on how to set up the DYMO 4XL for your Poshmark labels.
Like I said before, the biggest reason I wanted to try out the thermal label printer was my aggravation with my inkjet, but now that I gave up my wireless printing with the Canon (actually the Canon is stilled hooked up, so I can still print to it if I wanted to), I started to wonder what the cost saving was and if the DYMO would ever pay for itself. So I put some basic napkin calculations into my spreadsheet to see if this was a good investment in my Poshmark business. I know I should have thought about this before, but after that trip to Staples for $85 in ink, I was feeling a bit ripped off. When I bought the Canon PIXMA I thought it was cheap for a printer that was so capable, but I was told that they make their money on ink, and I think that is true. I have spent the initial purchase price of the printer many times over in ink.
So these numbers aren't exact, especially because I don't have an exact value for how often the ink needs to be changed. And we use the Canon for other printing. It seemed like I needed at least one of the ink cartridges, usually black or black-gray every 400 labels, so I used that for my calculation. I have to say that the Canon eats ink. About $50 for a pack of Avery labels, and a half cartridge of ink for $25, and then divide and all that stuff, and it turns out to be $0.38 per label to print on my Canon inkjet. That is almost 4 times what I pay for my Mylar shipping envelopes, so printing the label is a bigger cost than all of the other packaging.
The DYMO 4x6 labels cost $25 for 1000 labels, so that calculation is easier. There is no ink, just the label, so each label costs less than 3 cents to print. $0.025 exactly. Wow! That is a big difference. So about how many labels do I have to print so that the little DYMO pays for itself? Subtract the difference per label between the Canon and the DYMO, which is 35 cents, and divide that into the cost of the DYMO, which was $370.
And the answer is ...
1000 labels! Or 1000 sales.
Again. Wow! That number is way lower than I thought it would be. Depending on how many packages you are mailing that might be a few months or a few years. But I was surprised by that. What that means is that when that little DYMO runs out of its first roll of labels it will have paid for itself. And I optimistically bought two boxes of labels, so that means it will have saved me over almost a $800 dollars in label printing when those two boxes are gone. In ten years. By the way, on a few of the YouTubes that I watched they mentioned that you could pick up the DYMO 4XL for $50 used, but I'm always suspicious buying used electronics. I bought the $60 no questions asked we'll give you a new one if its broke insurance on the DYMO from Staples because I hate the aggravation of broken electronics. I guess I just don't like being aggravated. I didn't include that in the calculations, because the DYMO probably won't break, and it comes with a year manufacturer's warranty which is included.
Now I just need to sell a few more things! Well maybe a lot more things.
Kelly.
Poshmark closet https://poshmark.ca/closet/cowboycentral
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