INTERNET BUSINESS

If you’ve been following my articles on how to set up a Word Press blog, you’ll now be ready to adjust a few settings, make your permalinks ‘pretty’ and have a general clean up. The Word Press dashboard can appear a little bit daunting when you first look inside, but you’ll soon get the hang of it.

The first thing you need to do is to log into Word Press and go to your Dashboard. We’re now going to tidy up your ‘general settings’ so scroll down the list on your left until you come to the word ‘settings’ and click on it – this opens you’re ‘general settings’ page.

Here you need to enter your blog title, i.e. the name of your blog (mine is just ‘Louise Marsden’) and a tag line (what your blog is about), replace the default email with your current email address, fill in the rest as you require and click ‘save changes’.

Go back to the ‘settings’ section left hand side bar and this time you need to scroll down a little look for the heading ‘permalinks’.

[Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual blog posts, as well as categories and other lists of blog postings. A permalink is what another people will use to link to your article, or how you might send a link to your post in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change - hence permalink.]

For exact measurements of all the flat rate boxes available visit the USPS website for information about USPS priority mail flat rate boxes. There are three different rates and sizes, small medium and large, medium has two different shapes and so there are a total of four different boxes. The very first criterion is if your product fits into the box.

The flat rate can be the greatest thing that ever happened to your company. Some products are going to fit into this niche better than others. Some companies shipping habits will also make a more ideal fit than others. USPS priority flat rate boxes allow you to ship anything you can fit in them under 70 lbs for one flat rate to anywhere in the country.

Directional boring drill bits or heads are solid, very dense, and very heavy. If you need to send multiple in one box or can only fit one in a box you will have a significant savings. Take advantage of your heavy products by using the USPS priority mail flat rate boxes. Any hardware bolts, nuts, or screws can really add up. Other companies will ship ball bearings, liquids and even sports drinks. An ideal product for this type of shipping is drilling supplies.

Try to fit as much weight into the box as possible because the price will be the same. If you can fit 20 lbs into the box try to compare the price you are paying with USPS discounts to what your price will be with UPS or with FedEx. Compare the prices in zone one or two first then compare the prices in the highest zone you ship to. The great thing about the USPS priority mail flat rate boxes is that your price will not change from zone to zone. Your price to zone 8 with FedEx or UPS will probably be higher. Your price to Hawaii or Alaska will be laughable by comparison to the flat rate. If your product fits into the boxes the next step is to figure out how much it weighs.

If you ship to residential customers the USPS Priority mail gives you a huge advantage. The post office does not have a residential delivery fee. That is an automatic two dollar savings per shipment. The post office has fewer additional charges than all of the competitors. Your customers may also dictate which shipping methods are ideal for your company.