Here are the BEST FREE tools, websites, resources, apps recommended by Randy Dreammaker of SellerThink.
1 to 5 Star recommendation scale with (1 = It will do) and (5 = This Rocks!)
Update 6/21/2022
Small Business Resources
These are links to resources and assistance to help you open a business or sell legally online.
- * Sales Tax Calculator
- * Selling from and to California on Marketplace Facilitator websites like Mercari, Ebay, Poshmark, Bonanza, Etsy and others.
- * Intuit Free IRS Tax Filing for Mercari and Ebay Sellers
- * Every USA States Seller's Information Websites (Last updated 2020)
- * IRS (Internal Revenue Service Publications for Small Business)
- * SCORES (A Free Business Advice and Mentoring Service to help you start a business)
- * Small Business Association (SBA) A federal non-profit that helps you start a business
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Calculators for Sellers
★★★ Amazon Fee CalculatorCalculates Amazon fees and helps you determine profit from the sale
★★★ Bonanza Fee Calculator
Calculates your fees for Bonanza.com sales and offers several different factors for things like advanced advertising fee upgrade like Google Shopping Cart.
★★★★★ Percentage Calculator
Find a percentage or work out the percentage given numbers and percent values. Use percent formulas to figure out percentages and unknowns in equations.
★★★★ Shippo
Shippo is a shipping service that integrates easily with PayPal, Stripe, Etsy, Ebay, Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon and other marketplaces for Discounted Shipping Labels. You might save a little on small first class packages or priority Mail, but PayPal or Pirate Ship may give you a better price if you ship heavier First Class packages. Shippo used to have the best prices for online sellers, but that changed with its new system in 2018. On of the advantages of Shippo, is you can also add your own FedEx, UPS accounts, and it offer a few other accounts like DHL. But for heavier first class or Media Mail you should try PayPal Multi-Ship or -Pirate Shipping.
★★ Schedule A US Post Office Shipping Pickup
If you ship US Priority Mail, you can receive free US Priority Mail Pick-up - saving your a trip to the post office. This is especially helpful during the holidays, when you have a lot of product being sold and need to focus on processing your sales. Finding this page on the USPS website always seems to take quite a lot of time, so I have found it helpful to simply have a link readily available for easy access.
★★★★★ US Priority Mail Free Boxes
Get free US Priority Mail boxes directly from the US Post Office website. The great thing about using the US Priority Mail is that you can get free boxes, since you are already paying more money to get your product to your customer faster anyway, why not take advantage of their free boxes, it will save you money from having to buy most boxes and they have so many different sizes available including my favorite Flat Rate Bubble Envelopes. Most addresses in the USA can also have these free boxes delivered to your business or residency for free too, saving you both money, gas and time.
★★★★ZIP MAP - Zip Code Lookup Database
ZipMap is an easy to use Zip Code Lookup Database. Simply choose the USA State you want to find a Zip Code for and then click the map on the city you need a Zip Code for. Fast and easy to use, great for those times when you need to quickly look up a Zip Code to get a shipping estimate together for a product you are listing for sale
Research Tools for Sellers
★★★★★ FotoFuze
FotoFuze is perhaps one of the best relatively known tool available to online sellers who want to make the backgrounds of the product photos white. While it features built-in integration for Etsy sellers, its also in invaluable tool for Mercari and eBay Sellers too.
★★★★ How To Watermark Your Photos On EBAY
Watermarking your photos with your store or brand name can be very useful if done correctly, it can also be very distracting if its done poorly. This information is from eBay's website about how to properly watermark your photos, at the bottom of the page are also, two online photo watermarking tools that work for eBay and anywhere else you sell online.
★★★ Every Place That I Sell One of my favorite tools as an online seller is Every Place That I Sell. This website lets you create a listing for your business were you can have all the places you sell online in a single location directory, This also creates an extra Google Search listing for your Store or Business Name.
Calculates your fees for Bonanza.com sales and offers several different factors for things like advanced advertising fee upgrade like Google Shopping Cart.
★★★★★ eBay Shipping Calculator
eBay Shipping Calculator can be used before or while you are creating your eBay listing to determine how much that "Free Shipping" is actually going to cost you as a seller. SellerThink recommends that you use the farthest distance within the main USA from your ship from location, to get an idea. Often times, sellers on the opposite side of the USA will buy your product and shipping can be much higher, depending on the kind of shipping option you decide to use.
★★★ Etsy Fee Calculator
Calculates your fees for Etsy.com sales and includes several different fee options for PayPal.
★★ Dimensional Weight Calculator
In 2015, most shipping carriers, including the US Postal Service, Federal Express and UPS, began charging a dimensional weight. This weight is really not a weight at all, but a different way to calculate prices for items based on weight and size.
eBay Shipping Calculator can be used before or while you are creating your eBay listing to determine how much that "Free Shipping" is actually going to cost you as a seller. SellerThink recommends that you use the farthest distance within the main USA from your ship from location, to get an idea. Often times, sellers on the opposite side of the USA will buy your product and shipping can be much higher, depending on the kind of shipping option you decide to use.
★★★ Etsy Fee Calculator
Calculates your fees for Etsy.com sales and includes several different fee options for PayPal.
★★ Dimensional Weight Calculator
In 2015, most shipping carriers, including the US Postal Service, Federal Express and UPS, began charging a dimensional weight. This weight is really not a weight at all, but a different way to calculate prices for items based on weight and size.
★★★★★ Percentage Calculator
Find a percentage or work out the percentage given numbers and percent values. Use percent formulas to figure out percentages and unknowns in equations.
Custom Screen Printing For Resellers
★★★★★ Inspiration Print
Inspiration Print is a screen printing service available to resellers who want real screen printed products and handle their own inventory. Perfect for marketplaces like Mercari, Ebay, Poshmark, etc. (This is NOT a drop shipping service with those inferior digital prints that you see on Amazon.)
Inspiration Print is a screen printing service available to resellers who want real screen printed products and handle their own inventory. Perfect for marketplaces like Mercari, Ebay, Poshmark, etc. (This is NOT a drop shipping service with those inferior digital prints that you see on Amazon.)
They have provided t-shirts for fire departments, church groups, the ACLU, Coke company, but can also work with small business resellers. The quality is obvious high, considering several major companies and non-profit organizations have used them for their T-Shirts and other goods.
I (Randy Dreammaker) have seen some of the products they have printed for the ACLU, Coke and another non-profit group and the quality is what you really expect if you intend to have your own branded goods for sale or for long lasting wear. I have also personally inspected their production area and observed first hand how they work. They are able to mix and match sizes so you can sell more than one size. They have multi-color screen printing available, as well as single color or two color. (I haven't listed the full range of services available.)
Shipping Labels and Tools
★★★★★ UPS Marketplace Shipping
UPS has a little known section of its website exclusively built for marketplaces and online sellers. It offers up to a 30% discount on UPS shipped packages. It is the same UPS discounted features that eBay previously had built-in, except you can create labels for any marketplace and set-up your own account.
★★★★★ Pirate Ship
Pirate Ship offers First Class Shipping rates that are better than Shippo, and US Priority Cubic Prices. Prices are similar to PayPal Multi-shipping and eBay Shipping prices. Currently use need a credit card or debit card to pay for the shipping, which is a disadvantage compared to PayPal Multi-Shipping and Shippo where you can use your PayPal account to ship.
Unlike Shippo, Pirate Ship offers Media Mail, but is limited to only US Postal Shipping Methods.
★★★★★ Ship Saver Ship Saver offers Media Mail, First Class and US Priority Discounted Shipping Labels. It also features its own Shipping Insurance. It can import automatically from eBay, Shopify and several other marketplaces.
UPS has a little known section of its website exclusively built for marketplaces and online sellers. It offers up to a 30% discount on UPS shipped packages. It is the same UPS discounted features that eBay previously had built-in, except you can create labels for any marketplace and set-up your own account.
★★★★★ Pirate Ship
Pirate Ship offers First Class Shipping rates that are better than Shippo, and US Priority Cubic Prices. Prices are similar to PayPal Multi-shipping and eBay Shipping prices. Currently use need a credit card or debit card to pay for the shipping, which is a disadvantage compared to PayPal Multi-Shipping and Shippo where you can use your PayPal account to ship.
Unlike Shippo, Pirate Ship offers Media Mail, but is limited to only US Postal Shipping Methods.
Mercari's Fedex Smart Post Shipping Labels
★★★★ Shippo
Shippo is a shipping service that integrates easily with PayPal, Stripe, Etsy, Ebay, Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon and other marketplaces for Discounted Shipping Labels. You might save a little on small first class packages or priority Mail, but PayPal or Pirate Ship may give you a better price if you ship heavier First Class packages. Shippo used to have the best prices for online sellers, but that changed with its new system in 2018. On of the advantages of Shippo, is you can also add your own FedEx, UPS accounts, and it offer a few other accounts like DHL. But for heavier first class or Media Mail you should try PayPal Multi-Ship or -Pirate Shipping.
★★ Schedule A US Post Office Shipping Pickup
If you ship US Priority Mail, you can receive free US Priority Mail Pick-up - saving your a trip to the post office. This is especially helpful during the holidays, when you have a lot of product being sold and need to focus on processing your sales. Finding this page on the USPS website always seems to take quite a lot of time, so I have found it helpful to simply have a link readily available for easy access.
★★★★★ US Priority Mail Free Boxes
Get free US Priority Mail boxes directly from the US Post Office website. The great thing about using the US Priority Mail is that you can get free boxes, since you are already paying more money to get your product to your customer faster anyway, why not take advantage of their free boxes, it will save you money from having to buy most boxes and they have so many different sizes available including my favorite Flat Rate Bubble Envelopes. Most addresses in the USA can also have these free boxes delivered to your business or residency for free too, saving you both money, gas and time.
★★★★ZIP MAP - Zip Code Lookup Database
ZipMap is an easy to use Zip Code Lookup Database. Simply choose the USA State you want to find a Zip Code for and then click the map on the city you need a Zip Code for. Fast and easy to use, great for those times when you need to quickly look up a Zip Code to get a shipping estimate together for a product you are listing for sale
Mercari shipping from the time you sell it, until the time you receive payment.
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Research Tools for Sellers
★★★★★ Google Trends Google Trends is perhaps one of the most valuable free to use tools available to online sellers who need to know what keywords to use in their sales to help their products get picked up on Google Search. Use it to search trending products, keywords, look at the history of those keywords by date and set-up e-mail notifications to inform you when certain products are trending in the search results so you know which products to make a priority in your listing creations. Marketplaces that use keywords as part of their Google Attributes include, eBay, eBlueJay, Bonanza and a few others. If you sell on Mercari, its useful for the creation of your product titles, since Mercari uses the title for its primary keywords.
★★★★Mattel and Fisher Price Instruction Manuals
Perfect if you sell previously own products and need to include instructions in your package or to provide the link to your customer.
★★★★★ Vintage Video Game Consoles Manuals Archive
If you sell video game consoles or own one and need an owners instruction manual, SkyThrusters has the most complete Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, Atari and Sony game consoles owner and instruction free manual archives on the internet.
★★★★Mattel and Fisher Price Instruction Manuals
Perfect if you sell previously own products and need to include instructions in your package or to provide the link to your customer.
★★★★★ Vintage Video Game Consoles Manuals Archive
If you sell video game consoles or own one and need an owners instruction manual, SkyThrusters has the most complete Nintendo, Sega, Microsoft, Atari and Sony game consoles owner and instruction free manual archives on the internet.
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Clothing Tools
★★★★★ Sizely is an online clothing measurement tool that makes it possible for sellers to create a graphic template of the size clothing they are selling based on actual dimensions. Especially helpful for clothing that the tags have been removed from. There is a free option and a paid option.
★★★ Spring is an online custom T-shirt, clothing, stickers that allows people to design and sell single or multiple items. Spring is unique in that it integrates with social media, specifically YouTube, making it easy for your social media followers to purchase logo and custom made products you designed. Spring pays out commissions when you want them. The only downside of Spring, is in their terms of service is a statement saying that they claim full copyright ownership on any products you design, create or sell via their custom products service. It also states that you can't use products you design using there service on a competitors custom product service, so if you were to decide to use a different service and remove your product from Spring; Spring is suggesting that you'd be in violation of their copyright. Legally, it's unlikely that this statement in Spring's terms of service would be legal in the USA, considering copyright is owned by the creator and designer, despite the tool used, except for when paid by a company to design it. In the case of Spring, you are not being paid by Spring to create for them, you are being provided a commission for using their service to deliver your designs to customers using their website who purchase their clothing and products. For this reason, I have given Spring only three stars. Use it at your own risk, there are other similar t-shirt companies, so if you do not need to integrate your custom products into a specific supported social media service, then try a different one, or consult an attorney to validate whether Spring can legally claim copyright of your design, art work and logos, merely for using their designing tool and loaning them your design to sell their products.
★★★★ RedBubble is an online custom T-shirt, clothing, stickers that allows people to design and sell single or multiple items. Unlike Zazzle who keeps your commission if you haven't been able to log in to your account for over 15 months, or have simply been locked down at home during a pandemic with more important things to worry about. RedBubble actually gives you the commissions you earn for selling any products as a designer without a big threshold to meet. Unlike Spring, I didn't see any mention in RedBubble's terms of service suggesting they own your copyrights just because you used their online tool to design a product you want to sell through their service. RedBubble has a really good reputation for quality products and overall customer and designer satisfaction. Read RedBubble's terms of service to see if there are any concerns you may have, before selling on or through it. RebBubble is recommended over Zazzle and Spring.
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Photo Tools
★★★★★ FotoFuzeFotoFuze is perhaps one of the best relatively known tool available to online sellers who want to make the backgrounds of the product photos white. While it features built-in integration for Etsy sellers, its also in invaluable tool for Mercari and eBay Sellers too.
★★★★ How To Watermark Your Photos On EBAY
Watermarking your photos with your store or brand name can be very useful if done correctly, it can also be very distracting if its done poorly. This information is from eBay's website about how to properly watermark your photos, at the bottom of the page are also, two online photo watermarking tools that work for eBay and anywhere else you sell online.
★★★★ Mercari Shopping Directory MercariShopping.com is an independent shopping directory of verified Mercari stores that have a history of providing above average customer service, reliable follow through, timely shipping and quality goods.
★★★★ Auction Nudge Auction Nudge is one of my absolutely favorite tools as an eBay seller. It allows me to create an off-ebay listing of my products for sale, similar to what you might see on one of the those websites you accidently stumble upon that have lots of eBay products listed. I use Auction Nudge to advertise my products easily on my business website and I also use it for testimonials for my Storenvy.com custom store. It has several different features available - the two main ones are showing your products with description, photo and price (When someone clicks it, they are taken to the product for sale on eBay. When the item sells, it is no longer shown on your auction nudge widget.) The second shows multiple clickable products you have listed on eBay for sale. There is also a Feedback Tool (That I use on Storenvy.com) which imports your feedback from eBay. If you have a lot of positive feedbacks left on Ebay, but not on another marketplace where you have had less sales, this is a great way to help increase your credibility on that other marketplace (if it allows you to add html)
Selling and Pricing Tools
★★★★★ Camel Camel Camel
Camel Camel Camel is one of those very valuable tools for online sellers, but you keep forgetting its name. I forget the name of it's website all the time for some reason. Good thing there is a link on this page. Its a tool primarily for Amazon Sellers for checking a products rank against similar products. This assists many sellers in deciding whether or not to buy or source an item to resell on Amazon.
Camel Camel Camel is one of those very valuable tools for online sellers, but you keep forgetting its name. I forget the name of it's website all the time for some reason. Good thing there is a link on this page. Its a tool primarily for Amazon Sellers for checking a products rank against similar products. This assists many sellers in deciding whether or not to buy or source an item to resell on Amazon.
★★ Price Charting (For video games)
This website tool, will assist you in determining current video game prices for most consoles selling on eBay. While it is helpful, make sure to check the "sold" prices search option on eBay manually for the product you are selling, as an extra step for determining current prices.
This website tool, will assist you in determining current video game prices for most consoles selling on eBay. While it is helpful, make sure to check the "sold" prices search option on eBay manually for the product you are selling, as an extra step for determining current prices.
★★★ Price Pirates
Compare current selling prices on Amazon, Ebay and Shopping.com at the same time. Very helpful tool when trying to determine the best place to buy or sell a product. Works for both USA and UK.
★★★★ UPC Lookup Database
Recommended for finding UPC Codes and product information quickly. With over 60 million unique UPC numbers, UPCitemdb.com is the largest UPC lookup database where you can search a broad range of upc numbers to find related product information, images, barcodes, online shopping guide and more.
★★★★ DISCOGS
Use Discogs when you are selling Music CD's, EP Albums to locate relevant band, composer, Label, Release Date, Album Covers, Catalog number and country release information.
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