Hi everyone,
My name is Florina and my shop is Flosart88.
I will hopefully be selling my paintings but i am a bit stuck on how much should i charge for a delivery in UK. What company to use ?Do i bother with international? Thank you in advance for your help.
Florina x
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You need to do a dummy parcel - wrap up one of your paintings as if you were going to post it and then use the Royal Mail postage calculator to find out how much it will cost and then add on an amount for the packaging materials (bubble wrap/ box etc). You’ll need a ruler and scales for the dimensions and weight. If you have paintings of different sizes then you’ll need to repeat the process for the different sizes.
https://www.royalmail.com/price-finder
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Welcome to Folksy Florina!
As Sasha has said, you need to do some trial parcels, it seems a faff, but you don’t want to get caught out by undercharging and it will get easier as you get more experienced.
I’d say don’t worry about working out the postage abroad until you have got to grips with selling here, you could put something like ‘please contact me for P&P outside of the UK’ on your listing to start off with.
I have only ever used Royal Mail, but most things I sell are fairly small. I’m sure other sellers will suggest some alternatives.
Good luck, I’m looking forward to seeing your art.
Amanda xxx
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Thank you both for your help @SashaGarrett @plumporridge i will have to try that out as my paintings do vary from 20 cm to 120 x 100. Thanks again x
I just use Royal Mail (and Parcelforce for really big things but that’s still through the post office).
I sell my smaller items internationally but don’t bother if they’re bigger than 30cm x 40cm because then they’re too big for standard airmail and get really expensive… but I agree with @plumporridge if you’re just starting out it’s probably best to get the hang of UK first, and then once you’re happy with that consider if you want to add international.
Remember to pay attention to the size as well as the weight, as there are 3 different parcel sizes (small - up to 35cm x 45cm, medium up to 46cm x 61cm and large up to 2.5m) and the same weight at each size will cost a different price. Once you’ve done a few parcels you’ll start to be able to estimate what weight they’re likely to be (and I normally guess my packaging will add around 5cm extra to the canvas dimensions).
I use this to get my prices: https://www.royalmail.com/sites/default/files/royal-mail-our-prices-25-march-2019.pdf
and add on a little extra for the cost of packaging materials.
So jumping in on this convo, I am still getting to grips with international postage.
How can you just say ‘contact me for PP’? Surely you need to pop the postage amount into the postage section because if you put nothing won’t the buyer presume it is free? Am I missing another tab option when setting up new listings?
I think that if you don’t fill in the international section, then only ‘United Kingdom’ appears in the shipping section.
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@RobynCoetzee @plumporridge is correct. If you put 0 in the box then it will show as free, but if you leave the box blank, that shipping area won’t show up on your listing.
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Correct PlumPorridge and Konyskiw 
Thanks Plum P and @konyskiw, that is helpful. So then I can say in my listing, ‘contact me for postage costs to abroad’ etc…
I am wondering whether many people do international sales?
So far on Folksy I’ve just had 1 to Australia. I think people do get the odd international sale, but probably not as many as on that other site.
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I get the occasional order from the USA and have had someone contact me about postage to the USA when I didn’t have it set on the listing so if they love the item enough they will contact you.
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That’s good to know, thank you both, @konyskiw