You might be wondering, how do online boutiques and stores offer free shipping and still making a profit?

It can be so challenging as a small boutique business to keep up with larger retailers and be able to compete with them in the online space. But customers WANT free shipping!

So, how do we as small business owners give them what they want and still be a profitable business?!

Continue reading to learn my top 4 ways I have been able to offer free shipping to my customers in my own online boutique businesses.

1) Offer free shipping over a certain order value.

Choose an order value in which your customer would receive free shipping. Most common order values are $50, $75, or $100.

Say for example you offer free shipping over $75. This will encourage customers to spend more money to hit the $75 and get free shipping. This will help you absorb the cost of shipping because you’ll be making more profit on those higher orders. And anything under the $75 the customer will be paying for shipping so you don’t have to absorb the cost on lower dollar amounts where you’re not making as much profit.

2) Run a free shipping promotion.

This is a really good tip if you are charging for shipping, but want to run a promotion. You could plan out a free shipping promotion every month alternating with your other sales promotions.

For example, you could run a 3-day free shipping promotion one week and the next week run a 20% off sale. But don’t run a sale AND free shipping at the same time. You’ll want to just offer one or the other. That way the free shipping is essentially giving them a discount or a sale, just in a different way.

You’re also appealing to more customers because some people will respond more to free shipping and others to a sale. Like for me, I’m the type of customer that loves free shipping. I hate paying shipping costs.

3) Calculate an average shipping cost into your retail price.

This is a good way to offer free shipping all the time. You can calculate shipping costs into your retail price.  I will usually add an average shipping cost to the wholesale cost of my items and then calculate the retail price.

The average amount will become clearer once you’ve made a few months worth of sales in your online boutique. What I do is take my orders for the month and then how much I spent on shipping and divide up the cost of shipping per piece and tack that onto my wholesale price and then calculate my retail price. I’m not just adding the amount on top of my retail price.

4) Dropship for free from China.

I used to be so anti-dropshipping, even up until a few years ago and then I started to experiment with it and saw how successful it can be and what a great option it can be for people who want more flexibility and don’t want to risk thousands of dollars in inventory.

In order to get really low cost or free shipping from your drop shipping vendor, you’ll need to source vendors that are in China. China and many other countries, including the U.S. currently have an agreement that China can ship packages for free or at a very low cost. So, you can easily pass this savings on to your customers and also offer them FREE shipping.

Whether you’re just getting started in the boutique business or you’re looking for ways to increase your sales, make sure to subscribe to my Youtube channel for more important boutique business tips and watch my most recent video where I talk all about free shipping!