Whether you sell items on eBay, with a web based shopping card, a catalog, on TV or as a direct sales solicitation, these two words can dramatically increase your total profits.

Those two words are Free Shipping.

I sell through a variety of outlets and am always testing my offers to customers to see which offers increase sales and more importantly net profits.

The one I found the most powerful, especially on eBay is to put the phrase FREE S&H in the title of the ad. I find that with this phrase, I will often sell something that wouldn't sell before - or I can sell something at a higher price than otherwise possible. People seem to put a high value on getting something for free, even when it is just a small fraction of the entire price.

As an example, one of the items I sell on eBay is "commodity" coins. These are coins that are just sold as generic old coins rather than specific rare coins. A good example is circulated wheat pennies. Lots of beginning coin collectors like to buy these in lots to start building a collection and others like the idea of a "treasure hunt" in the chance that they will find a rarer than average specimen in the lot.

When I started selling "commodity" coins, I did very normal ads. Pay X plus Y S&H and get Z coins. And sales were profitable. I then modified the ad to include free S&H for a specific quantity purchased. In other words I would do something like "Purchase 5 or more lots and get Free S&H." Offering this bonus increased both the total number of sales and the quantity sold.

In fact, it increased profits for these auctions by 42% as measured over the course of a year.

This incentive induced more people to buy larger quantities than they normally would buy just for the opportunity to get the free shipping offer. Of course, the total profit of an order with free S&H is smaller than on 5 orders of one lot but since I was selling more lots in total, the total profit in my pocket increased. By giving up a little profit on larger sales, I actually put more money in my pocket.

And I have tested this with many other product offerings and have found similar results.

Offering free S&H works well when there is enough profit in the items to make the numbers work for you. But suppose the numbers don't work and you can't structure an offer that sells the item and gives free S&H. In that case, you can test by offering the same item at a higher price so that the shipping charges are buried in the higher price.

Here is an example. Lets say you were selling an item at $4.95 each and was charging $4 to ship it via priority mail to the customer. Suppose you ran a test to sell the item at $6.95 and shipped first class mail to get a lower total rate. At the higher price, you have $2 extra to buy a padded envelope and ship about 6-7 ounces. If this can work for you, you should test it. It may result in more sales - and more profits in your pocket.

The only way to know for sure if this offer will work for you is to test it. If it doesn't work for your particular product line, the test should not cost you too much. But if it works, it could result in much greater profits for you.

One other application of Free S&H.

This is an eBay bonus application. Lots of us sell a variety of one of a kind items that we purchased from garage sales, auctions, antique shows, etc. If you list it and it doesn't sell, consider offering free shipping in the title before you drop the price. Just these past two weeks, I was offering a lot of 2500 coin holders for a specific price plus $20 S&H. It didn't sell the first time I listed it as a fixed price auction. I relisted it a second time for $10 more than the first listing but put FREE S&H in the title. It sold within 3 days. And the shipping cost ended up being just $12. So by adding this phrase AND raising the price, the price reduction to sell this lot turned out to be only $2. Without this method, I would have relisted the item at a lower price and maybe had to relist it more than once to eventually make a sale. Or it might have never sold.