Who gets what from an example $35 order, every week. Not written by Etsy or USPS.
Etsy’s published US rates, 6.5% + 3% + 45¢, on a $35 total, before sales tax and ads. Labels vary by ZIP, weight and platform. Work out your own.
A free email every Friday. Nobody at Etsy or USPS has a hand in it.
An issue is about 700 words, and a quiet week is about 200. The sections are the same every time, so you know where to look.
How many changes this week, what they add up to on the example $35 order where they’re Etsy’s, and the first date that matters. On a quiet week it opens with what we checked, then says plainly that we found no change.
One to 3 items. Each has a headline that states what happened, what it means for a shop like yours (our reading, marked as ours), what it costs on the example $35 order with the formula in the line, the date to act by, and one short quote from the page it came from, linked. A change to search or ads counts as an item when it moves your views or your costs.
In every issue. USPS’s published list price for a Ground Advantage label under a pound to zone 5, named as list, with who pays list and what sellers report paying. The week’s reading from Etsy’s postage calculator, the same two lanes, named and dated. What moved on the list, as a range by zone. The next date. If USPS published no numbers, the line says so, and it never guesses a price for a date USPS hasn’t filed.
One tip, in our words, that you can check: from a named educator or from Etsy’s own channels, with the show, the date and the link, and the Etsy page that confirms it. Never from a paid course or a private group.
A bare list of every date coming up, new entries marked, each one linked, weekday checked.
Some weeks also carry The Decoder (an Etsy sentence that’s fog, what it means, and where the real answer came from) or The Pending Pile (a claim going around seller groups that no official page confirms yet, and when we last checked).
Written as the pattern for the letter, not sent. Figures from that week.
We read Etsy’s 347 Help Center articles; 12 changed this week. Two matter: Visits in Stats are now sessions, and a shop can now continue after its owner dies. Etsy’s fees on the example $35 order stay $3.78. Nearest date: Wed Nov 11, post offices closed.
If the AI clause matters to you, read the Terms by Tue Dec 15. From Wed Dec 16, using Etsy counts as accepting them.
Etsy’s postage calculator, Thu Nov 5, one 8 oz parcel, 9 x 6 x 2 in, USPS Ground Advantage, both ZIPs zone 5. FedEx Ground Economy $6.69 to both. Etsy says its rates are for reference only and may change.
USPS’s published commercial price for a Ground Advantage label under a pound to zone 5 is $8.24, the holiday price until Sun Jan 17 (USPS Aug 25 release). On Etsy the rural ZIP is quoted that list price to the cent, the Dallas ZIP $2.12 less. Weight and the buyer’s ZIP move your price, so check your own parcel there (Etsy postage calculator).
Our rule for the sign is that a figure goes on it only if it’s true for nearly every reader, or it says whose it is.
Etsy’s rates pass. They are the same for every US seller on Etsy Payments: 6.5% of the order total, 3% plus 25¢ for payment processing, 20¢ to list. On a $35 total that comes to $3.78 before sales tax and ads, and it’s $3.78 whether you charge shipping or build it into the price, because the fees follow the total. So the sign prints it.
The label fails. The only label price USPS publishes is its list, and most sellers don’t pay list: Etsy, eBay and the shipping apps buy on negotiated rates below it, and rural ZIPs pay about list. Etsy publishes no table of its own, though its postage calculator prices one parcel at a time: on Thu Nov 5 the same 8 oz parcel from Columbus, OH was $6.12 to Dallas, TX and $8.24 to a rural Oklahoma ZIP, both zone 5, and $8.24 is USPS’s list to the cent. Two lanes, one day. A board that said LABEL $8.24 would be wrong for most of the people reading it, and a board that said $6.12 would be wrong for the rest, so the board says LABEL VARIES, the letter names USPS’s figure as list every week, and the page on USPS label cost keeps the whole year’s history and the lane readings.
The last row says YOU THE REST because what’s left after the label, materials and packaging is your number, not ours to guess. The calculator does that sum on your own order: you type the total and what your label cost, and it shows Etsy’s fees line by line and what’s left before materials. It also asks one question, if you’ll answer it, about what your last label cost. Once enough readers have, the sign can carry a readers’ median, labelled as the readers’, which is a figure nobody publishes today.
