Why does an online store also charge for shipping?

[Dog]

Can anyone explain the shipping concept , via a virtual store?

Sorry all, but a I need someone to explain to me the basics of how shipping works, I am very slow and don’t get it.

‘Scenario; I have a Shopify store ( which is virtual, it’s not bricks and mortar ). In this store ,I sell Tshirts. I sinc this store with a print provider; printify.

A customer, orders a shirt from the store.

the shirt gets “shipped”from printify to the customer.

Printify gets payed for shipping.

‘Why does Shopify also get paid for shipping?.........does the product go from A (printer) to B (customer)?

[Julie]

Hi, @Dog!

Julie here from Shopify Support.

When it comes to dropshipping and print-on-demand, knowing how shipping works is incredibly important and I'm glad that you're putting in the work to fully understand it.

Even though dropshipping and print-on-demand businesses don't ship products themselves, they are usually still charged shipping fees from their suppliers. In this case, you'll be responsible for paying Printify's shipping costs since they will be shipping your products to customers. 

To cover this cost, you can choose to charge your customers shipping through your own online store by setting up shipping rates. Better yet, you could also consider offering your customers free shipping and increasing the price of your products to offset the shipping costs. Free shipping is an excellent incentive for customers and is a pretty popular strategy for dropshipping and print-on-demand business. We also have some more shipping strategies for dropshippers that you can consider.

Many suppliers will offer advice on how you can handle shipping. In fact, Printify has two options for setting up shipping on your Shopify store, which you can access here. There, you'll notice that you can choose to have calculated rates (only available to merchants on an annual billing cycle or Advanced plan), or you can choose to set up flat rates (available to all merchants). To keep things simple, I suggest using flat rates; Printify has some instructions on how to set this up this here.

I also want to offer some clarity around where Shopify comes into play in terms of shipping. To clarify, you won't be paying Shopify for any shipping costs unless you are shipping products yourself and using Shopify Shipping to purchase and print shipping labels. However, this isn't relevant to dropshippers and print-on-demand businesses, so there's no need to worry about that. 

I hope I've cleared things up, but please let me know if you have any further questions!