Printing postage for your shipment.

It's easy if you know how!

This guide will explain how to easily print postage for your shipment

First, some things you will need.

1. An account at paypal
2. Some money in your account at paypal
3. A printer from the list of printers that can be used for printing postage.
4. Some "label tape," for the printer.

Getting an account at paypal is easy, just go to their website and go through their procedures. It takes a few days, but it's simple. Getting the account will also help you sell at ebay as you can use it to accept payments from buyers and you can use it to pay for stuff you buy.

Getting some money in the account is as easy as selling something at ebay and accepting payment through paypal, or transferring some money from your bank account to paypal.

Getting a printer is easy for most people, you probably have one sitting on your desk. I recommend that if you are going to be selling through ebay that you have a "label" printer. I use the Brother QL-500 label printer. They cost less than $100.00 if you look around for a low price. Otherwise, for now, assume that your printer will be acceptable. This printer has a manual lever to cut off the label. If you want the printer to cut the tape "electrically" just purchase the QL-550 printer.

Getting some "label tape" for your printer is also easy. If you use my recommendation of the Brother QL-500 label printer you can buy some Brother DK-2205 Continuous Length Paper Tape. It is on a roll and designed to be used with the Brother Ql-500 or QL-550 printer. This is the tape that is recommended for printing postage. If you use another printer you need to find a "label" that fits your printer and makes the post office happy.

The paypal multi-order shipping tool

When you log in at paypal look for the paypal multi-order shipping tool.

This program is the program used to print postage for your shipment.

You must have internet access during this process, so make sure your system is online during this process.

You need to have "java" installed on your computer for this program to work. Don't worry, there are links in the program for you to download a free copy of java for your computer.

You can not use this multi-order shipping tool if you are shipping international or to APO/FPO addresses. (They need customs forms)

When you open this program you need to do a short setup which is basically telling the program what your ship from address is. Near the bottom of that setup page is a prompt that asks for the zip code of the post office where you are mailing the shipment. If you are going to mail from a post office different from the one where you live, you need to ask the post office what their zip code is. If in doubt, in the beginning, just leave the prompt blank and the system will use your return shipping address zip code.

If you sold through ebay, just choose import from ebay and your order will pop into the program. The same applies if you used paypal, just choose import from paypal and your order will pop into the program.

If you have an order that did not come from ebay or paypal, you can still use this tool. Just choose create new orders and you can fill in the required information.

When creating a new order just go to the ship to tab and fill in the fields with name, address, etc. At the time of printing the system will check the address and sometimes make small changes to make the address match the "official" address that the post office likes to see on your shipment.

Then choose the shipping details tab. The important things here are service type (this is where you say you want your package to go priority mail, media mail, parcel post, etc.) This is also where you fill in the weight of the package. Different types of service will then give you different choices in this field so make sure you choose the service type first.

Then just choose save and close and you have a shipment ready for printing postage.

Verify that the shipment has a green rectangle on the left side of the screen, this means that the shipment is ready for printing.

When ready to print the postage. choose the print icon just below the file menu.

Then you will see another link appear just above the table showing shipments ready to be printed. This link says pay and print.

Make sure your printer is online with label tape installed. Choose the pay and print link. At this time the system goes out and takes the cost of the postage out of your paypal account and opens a java window with the postage showing. Don't worry if this takes a second because your computer is talking to paypal and the post office website at this time.

When you have the java window open with the postage showing you may see a couple of windows pop up asking you if it is ok to print say yes this does not print anything it just allows you to print later. Also you may see a window asking you which printer to use just choose the one where you have your label tape ready for printing.

Now comes the actual printing of postage. Just choose print in the java window and your postage should be printed.

Don't worry too much if you have problems. when you are printing a window pops up that asks if the postage printed ok. If the postage printed ok just say that it is ok. If you have problems you can choose the other button and it gives you a chance to print again.

If your printer was not on when you tried to print you will not be able to print, you need to turn on the printer, clear the print queue, and then follow the instructions in the next paragraph.

If you discover that you need to print that same postage again because the postage was destroyed for some reason just go to the history tab in the program and find the shipment and choose reprint.

If you find that you are not going to use this postage find the shipment in the history tab then click on the line showing that shipment and then choose void. After about two weeks the post office will refund your money to your paypal account.

Don't even think about printing the postage several times and using it on several packages. Each postage label printed has a unique barcode and they will come and get you if you send the same label more than once.