Global E-commerce Beginners Must See! Complete Shipping Process Guide—Query Fees Chapter

Why Look at the Complete Shipping Process? Why Learn to Query Freight Costs in Advance?

Newcomers to cross-border e-commerce are really gaining from reading this.

First, it shows you the complete shipping process for independent sites in advance, giving you a general idea of the entire shipping procedure. Because beginners worry about shipping issues before getting orders—after all, they've never done it before, and it's cross-border, causing anxiety (like Lvsao himself). And online demonstrations and guides are scarce.

Second, it helps you master one of the important product selection techniques! By querying international freight costs for products, you can understand product costs, profitability, and ultimately get one of the important product selection evaluation dimensions!

How to Query Freight Costs?

First find your intended platform, contact a sales rep and register for an account. (Various platforms like YunTu, YanWen, etc.—no specific recommendations to avoid advertising suspicion.)

Then there are two ways to query prices:

1. Query through the price list given by the sales rep

But newcomers will be confused when first seeing complex tables! So there's an alternative that can give you some reference;

2. Query through your chosen platform's tools

Such as price calculators, freight trial calculations, etc. (different platforms call them differently), usually available on official websites or WeChat official accounts.

What to Pay Attention To?

Packaging Specifications!

For products you select, be sure to ask the supplier about packaging specifications, not product dimensions. Many products may have packaging specifications far lower than product dimensions through compression, etc. At this point, you need to calculate shipping prices based on packaging specifications.

Volumetric Weight!

Understand the concept of volumetric weight—it refers to when an item has large volume but light weight, courier companies will choose volumetric weight as the weight unit.

How to calculate volumetric weight?

Different courier channels usually have a calculation formula, but the general method is the same, just with different final coefficients.

For example, a product's volumetric weight calculation formula:

Volumetric Weight = Length x Width x Height (cm) / 8000 = X kg

Where 8000 is a calculation coefficient, X kg is your final volumetric weight.

Example:

If your product packaging specifications are: 40cm length, 40cm width, 40cm height, 1KG weight.

Then its volumetric weight = 40 x 40 x 40 / 8000 = 8 kg

At this point, your actual shipping cost calculation will be based on 8KG, not 1KG.

Pay Attention to Various Logistics Channel Requirements

Such as prohibited items, maximum dimensions, maximum weight, packaging requirements, etc. Be sure to check clearly in the platform's official documentation and confirm with the sales rep.

Ultimate Tips! Select Optimal Products Through Reverse Thinking, Optimizing Packaging, and Finding Suitable Logistics Channels!

Are you still being "brainwashed" by other cross-border knowledge blogger product selection tips?

They say "must choose high-priced items! Small volume! Light weight!"

It's 2024, everyone—does this still count as a tip? 10 years ago you told me this and I might say wow, that makes sense! But now, you're afraid anyone you catch on the street knows this common product selection rule, right?

So this means this tip is almost useless and meaningless—because things everyone knows can't become a "secret." You want to find such products, so does he, beginners want to, veterans want to, you do it, veterans do it even more, veterans are stronger than you, they'll outcompete you. Understand?

Such "secrets," "information gaps" are zero.

Reverse Thinking

But you can think in reverse—can I find products that look large in volume? People might laugh at you as a genius. But hear me out on two reasons:

First, when I select products in reverse, at this point I've already left behind many peers still screening products with conventional thinking, left behind many still struggling to find high-priced, small-volume, light-weight competitive products. Right?

Second, next step, can I optimize packaging in some way to reduce volume? Or even find low-weight products to play price differences?

If you can see this far, you've probably understood the essence of so-called cross-border e-commerce product selection, operations, and even all business:

"Information gaps," "guides," "tips" you can see in any public channel are not really "information gaps"—they're just "information" known to everyone (including this article! This sounds a bit convoluted and weird, but think about it—if this article gets 1M+ views, everyone will follow this reverse thinking to select, but what if only 100 people see it?).

When you truly think independently about strategic directions and develop solutions for these strategic directions, you've found an "information gap" belonging to yourself or a minority.

I've heard too many group friends, netizens asking in various comments, groups, guides: "Please teach me!" "Boss! Please ask how to select products!"

I think you might as well directly ask, "How to pick up money?"