hi merch sellers on etsy who are based in the the U.S. and ship out from the U.S. i have a question please i beg if someone has managed to figure this out:

i’m trying to finesse a very specific option as far as shipping goes and looking to figure out if there’s Any Way to get the thing i want. etsy support is just giving me blatant bot responses and not being helpful.

basically: here’s what i’m trying to do. i sell sticker sheets, postcards, and acrylic charms. sticker sheets and postcards are all considered flat items, and i’ve learned that etsy has a feature where you can do tracked letters and the shipping for them only costs 74c domestically in the u.s. as long as they are completely flat items inside the letter.

which. ok this sounds awesome, i can ship my sticker sheets for like 74c. that would be sick. usually i HAVE to sell my sticker sheets at the cost domestically of a bubble mailer which is always around $5. wouldn’t it be cool to only pay like a dollar for a sticker sheet order shipment? Yes.

however, it’s obviously a letter which, isn’t the most protected thing in the world. i want to offer customers the ability to choose between either the cheap tracked letter, OR the protective bubble mailer. so at least if it gets bent in shipping or has issues, the customer opted into the less protective option.

that all being said, i need this to ONLY apply to domestic customers and not give the option to international customers, because i would worry even more about a simple flat letter going across international transit. so international orders would then need to only have the option for the usual bubble mailer. i also DON’T want to offer this option to anyone who orders a sticker sheet and then Also an acrylic charm. because those will Always have to go into a bubble mailer because it’s not flat.

etsy has shipping profiles but:

a) the “upgrade” options in the shipping profiles are pre-made to offer faster speeds rather than different types of packaging which is what i want to do.

and b) you can manually input shipping prices and make more options, but when automatically calculating international shipping, etsy gives an option of “global postal shipping”? that is around $20 (give or take depending on where it’s going) but if you try to input shipping costs yourself manually, this isn’t an option in the drop-down? and instead it’ll show you thinks like USPS first class mail which for international orders is closer to like $54 dollars? and i’m worried it’d start charging international customers for that amount when that’s Not what i want for them.

i’m scratching my head bc i know it’d be really awesome if i could ship out my sticker sheets for only 74c. but i cant figure out how to realistically give them that option without fucking everything else up.

does anyone have insight on this/have done this exact thing before and know what to do? if anyone knows please DM me or send me an ask <3

(also tried to see if i could set this up on bigcartel but pirateship, which i use to buy labels for bc orders doesn’t even offer this option like etsy does. it seems like this specific type of tracked letters are ONLY offered by etsy’s shipping services and also for some reason ebay ??? at least based on what i read online. which kind of blows. ig in theory i could do it manually with stamps on bigcartel, and just still provide the option BUT etsy actually offers TRACKING while if i just do standard stamped letters i don’t think i’d be able to get any sort of tracking. which some people would probably be fine with to save them 4 dollars but it might end up being more of a hassle than it’s worth.)

hi ya’ll! I have a wonderful new in stars and time sticker sheet up now on big cartel and etsy!

on big cartel, you can use code “STARDUST” for 20% off your all in stars and time items if you grab 2 or more <3 this includes ISAT acrylic charms and the new sticker sheets!