Label Printing and Printers?

campdave

This isn't really a specific ebay question, but I figured this may be a good place to ask as there may be others using label printers who can help me out.

I currently write my addresses directly onto my envelopes for several reasons - don't want to be tied to a PC, not convinced it takes any longer than printing them out etc

Have been looking into label printers (Dymo 450 specifically), and have worked out if I can select the address from the paypal confirmation email and print that selection of text from my browser (I use chrome), that will probably save some time (and look a bit more professional!).

After quite a lot of googling I THINK this set up should work, but I'm not 100% convinced - do other sellers use label printers, and how do they go about printing their labels?

I don't want to start copying and pasting the address into the software the label maker comes with, nor do I want to print shipping labels from selling manager and then match them up to the order as I'm not convinced these methods would save any time - I think in reality they would be slower than writing addresses out by hand.

Thanks for the advice

ballisticbrian

Looking at pence per label, you are much better off buying A4 sheets of labels, 16 or 24 up. If you are not printing that many per day, you can still put the sheet through the printer the other way round.

Selling manager Pro costs £5 per month and will give you access to all the addresses on one page.

zerog

campdave wrote: »

...if I can select the address from the paypal confirmation email and print that selection of text from my browser (I use chrome), that will probably save some time (and look a bit more professional!).

...

I don't want to start copying and pasting the address into the software the label maker comes with,

Won't you want to edit the buyer's address if it's all in lowercase and badly formatted?

This_Year

zerog wrote: »

Won't you want to edit the buyer's address if it's all in lowercase and badly formatted?

or missing crucial info like the house number or postal town...

campdave

Thanks for the info.

I do ebay alongside my full time job - I spend about 40 mins before work, 90 mins after work and about 45 mins in the evening before I go to bed. So whilst 5 mins here or there might not seem like much, it actually makes quite a difference, especially first thing in the morning.

I also should have said I have started a website in addition to selling on ebay, so was looking at this label printer rather than having an exclusively ebay-based solution.

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Looking at pence per label, you are much better off buying A4 sheets of labels, 16 or 24 up. If you are not printing that many per day, you can still put the sheet through the printer the other way round.

Selling manager Pro costs £5 per month and will give you access to all the addresses on one page.

I'm doing about 50 orders per day (and process them in three sessions, as above), so this would be an option.

Perhaps I'm being simple, but once you have the addresses, how do you reconcile them to the orders? Again, I'm thinking that matching the address to the order may take longer than just writing the address out to start with.

zerog wrote: »

Won't you want to edit the buyer's address if it's all in lowercase and badly formatted?

A fair point - it's rare I get anything bad enough that I'd consider it unreadable as provided, and I'm assuming as their ebay address is set to whatever jumbled mess they have provided, what they buymust get there or they would do something about it. Anything that's too mangled I could just write out as I have already been doing.

paddyrg

Dymo printers are great - they print nicely and quickly onto neat labels.
Dymo printers are expensive - they don't use any old sticker, they use very specific thermal printer stickers with registration marks on the reverse. This is why the printers are cheap - because the stickers are not.

As above, if you're doing the volume then maybe look at printing a pageful at a time on a desktop printer using regular printer stickers?

Also, have you thought about ebay/paypal postage? You pay for the postage and print out a very tidy looking sticker with the postage already on it, and it's quite slick using a normal printer

Obviously_the_best

Just use the templates built into word for 'Avery Berkel' label sheets. You can buy cheap imitation Avery sticker sheets for very little one eBay, and they work just as well in a normal printer.

marie-20

Have you thought about getting a packing software package like Packing Partner?

It costs us £70 a year and we pull through all of our sales from Amazon, eBay and Paypal in minutes (well we would if it was 50 sales a day) and it prints out a packing list and your labels for you. When we were doing around 50 sales a day it used to take me over an hour just to do labels until someone on here suggested Packing Partner or similar and then it took me 10 mins a day which was a god send.

campdave

paddyrg wrote: »

Dymo printers are great - they print nicely and quickly onto neat labels.
Dymo printers are expensive - they don't use any old sticker, they use very specific thermal printer stickers with registration marks on the reverse. This is why the printers are cheap - because the stickers are not.

As above, if you're doing the volume then maybe look at printing a pageful at a time on a desktop printer using regular printer stickers?

Also, have you thought about ebay/paypal postage? You pay for the postage and print out a very tidy looking sticker with the postage already on it, and it's quite slick using a normal printer

Thanks - I've looked at the price of labels, and they work out at less than a penny a label with compatibles, which I'm happy to pay.

I buy stamps from a dealer and get a nice discount on face value, so it would actually cost me more to to start using the paypal/royal mail road.

I could print out packing slips from selling manager, but it just seems so wasteful in terms of paper and toner as the vast majority of people don't need to know what they bought.

PS I realise I'm being fussy! The advice and help is appreciated, it's interesting to see what other people do.

ballisticbrian

I'm doing about 50 orders per day (and process them in three sessions, as
above), so this would be an option.

Perhaps I'm being simple, but once
you have the addresses, how do you reconcile them to the orders? Again, I'm
thinking that matching the address to the order may take longer than just
writing the address out to start with.

Everyone has their own routine, mine has changed over the years, but it's something like, print the addresses all at once in selling manager pro, stick them straight on products that are already packed, or sometimes I stick the label on a box and write the product codes on the box (or just scribble what it is on the box).
Sometimes double check against the address when marking as dispatched if you want a secondary check.