Shipping outside of the US, or Canada, or your homeland, part 1.

Unless you really want to limit your potential markets, at some point you will wish to ship internationally. A very useful website and your best bud will be your country's postal website. In the United States this is www.usps.com. In the UK, the Royal Mail lurks at www.royalmail.com and in Canada Canada Post may be found at www.canadapost.ca


1. First step is of course to learn how to properly package your items and address the shipping labels. Shipping internationally involves borders and customs officers. Not all packaging materials may be allowed. For example, mosses and fresh plant material may cradle more than your handcrafted items.

Addressing standards include postal codes and countries. It amazes me how many folks forget to put the recipient's country! For example in my case:

• full name
• street address
• postal box number
• town, city, etc...plus province, state, district AND postal code or zip code
• country

In some countries such as the UK, the post code is written on a separate line. In Canada and the US, it precedes the country and is usually after the two-letter state or province abbreviation.

• special note to American (US) buyers....if you want your parcel even faster, use your complete zip code when registering your address with Paypal or Etsy. You would be amazed at how much faster we can ship to you. after your 5 number codes is a -XXXX Use it!

more to follow....