Shipping, made simple

Shipping is where handmade sellers most often bleed money — undercharging by a dollar here, an oversized box there. MakerMade’s setup is designed so you decide the policy once, attach it everywhere, and buy labels without leaving your dashboard.

Your ship-from address

Set it first, in Seller Studio under Shipping. Every rate quote and every label starts from this address, and it needs to be complete — street, city, state, ZIP. (It’s also one of the three required setup steps.)

Shipping profiles: decide once, reuse everywhere

A shipping profile is a reusable shipping plan you attach to listings. Two modes:

• Flat rate. You set the price — “$6.50, ships in 3 days.” Predictable for buyers, simple for you. Best when your items are similar in size and weight. Build the average real cost into the flat price, and remember you can fold part of the shipping cost into the item price for a lower sticker.
• Calculated. The buyer sees a live carrier rate at checkout based on your ship-from, their address, and the package weight you set. Best for heavy or varied work where flat rates would force you to guess high.

Calculated profiles need a weight. A listing on a calculated profile with no package weight can’t be quoted at checkout — the setup checklist will flag this state until you add the weight or switch the listing to a flat profile.

If you imported from Etsy, the import review screen can pull each listing’s Etsy shipping and build matching profiles for you.

Buying labels

When an order comes in, you can buy the label right from the order: MakerMade shops live carrier rates (via Shippo) and buys the cheapest one for your parcel. Buying the label also marks the order shipped and emails the buyer their tracking number automatically — no copy-pasting tracking codes into messages.

You can adjust the parcel dimensions and weight per order before buying, so an unusually large piece doesn’t get the default box’s rate.

Packing handmade work

The unboxing is part of the product, and the box is your last quality signal:

• Double-wall boxes for ceramics and glass, with two inches of cushion on every side. One breakage refund erases the savings of ten thin boxes.
• Rigid mailers for prints and patterns — never tubes for anything that was ever flat.
• A note beats a flyer. Two handwritten sentences outperform any printed insert. This buyer chose a person over a factory; be the person.

When something breaks in transit

It happens to everyone. Refund promptly (full or partial), ask for a photo for your own carrier claim, and fix the packing for next time. The maker who handles a breakage gracefully usually gains a repeat customer.