Another good question. This is something that will be let up to your own judgement. I will mention some of the pro's and con's here and allow you to decide.
The most obvious advantage to selling overseas is an increase in your potential buyer base. Ideally you'll want to have the greatest number of buyers as possible who have the potential to buy your items. And with paypal, someone in Turkey can buy your shirt, someone in Bangkok can buy your vintage Mickey Mouse watch and someone in Argentina can buy your set of mermaid earrings.
It will not matter where the buyer lives, or what currency he uses. Paypal will convert his currency into dollars (if you are a seller living in the US). If you live in the UK and your buyer lives in Chile, your buyer will pay in Chilean pesos, and you will get paid in British pounds. Whatever the exchange rate is between the two currencies on the date of the transaction will be the standard used to make the conversion.
So, if you are a US seller, you will be paid in US dollars, regardless of what currency the buyer uses, or where he or she lives.
Expanding your customer base is about the only advantage to selling internationally.
The flip side- there is always a flip side- is that selling internationally opens up a whole new can of worms for sellers, and that can of worms is called delivery confirmation.
When I ship something from Cincinnati to any other destination in the US, I can opt for delivery confirmation (sometimes referred to as tracking) on the item. In doing so, I will know, usually within 24 hours of the delivery time, of when the parcel was delivered. And knowing this is as good as gold. A buyer cannot email me and say he never received the item, as long as delivery confirmation (DC) says that it was delivered. Oh, he can claim that he hasn't received his item, but as long as DC says he did, it's as good as your buyer having received the item. Period. There is no disputing DC.
Your US buyer can tell you he didn't receive the item, tell ebay and paypal he didn't receive your item, and plaster it on a billboard for everyone to see, but as far as ebay and paypal are concerned, if DC says it was delivered, it was delivered. Case closed.
Now, here is where it gets a little tricky. You can sell to any buyer on the planet, and ship it to your buyer anywhere on the planet that has a delivery system. Proving that the item was delivered is another story. You see, DC is pretty much only available for buyers living in Canada, the UK and in the US. I say "pretty much", because, for practically all intents and purposes, DC is pretty much impossible outside of the US, UK and Canada.
So, if you sell something to someone in Bulgaria, Bangladesh or Kenya, and ship it, how would you ever know if it was delivered?
You wouldn't.
All your buyer would have to do is email ebay and/ or paypal and say "I bought this item for $44.99 and I never received it." Ebay and paypal would contact you to see if you have DC, proving its' delivery. In most cases, you will not be able to provide this because in most cases, DC simply isn't possible. Other countries have mail service, to be sure, but do those mail carriers in all those other countries carry those little hand-held scanning devices to read the bar code DC label?
It's doubtful.
So, you are taking a big risk with selling to anyone who lives anywhere outside the US, UK and Canada.
Sure, you do have some options that will CYA. You can always add shipping insurance on parcels shipped overseas. Insurance is always an added cost, and one which you'll undoubtedly pass on to your buyers.
I always like to think that people overseas are just as honest as I am, but who's to say that your buyer over in Poland receives your item that you shipped AND then tells you that he didn't receive it? Without DC, you would have absolutely no way to know. If you shipped your item, and if your buyer received it, and you can't prove that he received it, and then files an "item not received" case with ebay, you will most certainly lose, since you can't prove otherwise, and you will be force to refund the buyers' ENTIRE purchase price.
Sure, you can try not to, but ebay will find out, and will then literally force you to refund the payment.
So, your buyer in Poland files an "item not received" case, and you have to issue a complete refund. Since you couldn't verify delivery one way or the other, if you had placed insurance on the item prior to shipment, you could try your hand at filing an insurance claim with USPS.
Insurance would pretty much be your only recourse if you have an international buyer who claims to not have received your item.
There is one other option, and it's hardly fool-proof at that. There is an obscenely-expensive form of international mail that does provide DC, and that is Global Express Mail. I'll abbreviate it a GEM. GEM is extremely expensive, quite fast, and offers DC, but again, will the delivery guy over in Poland actually scan your GEM package to indicate it was delivered?
Who knows. GEM mail has a tracking/ DC number, so, in theory, DC should be possible, but it's always a gamble.
And since GEM is so extremely expensive, you're going to have very few international buyers who will even want it. GEM is to international mailing what overnight delivery is to US parcels: it's extremely expensive, yet fast. Heck, even few US buyers will ever want something overnighted. I've only had a couple cases myself, and they were pretty much last-minute items that my buyer needed overnighted to try to beat a December 25th delivery deadline.
So, that pretty much sums up selling overseas. If you have to ship to anywhere besides Canada and the UK, you'd better include some form of insurance, because that will likely be your only recourse if the item isn't delivered (or even if it is delivered, and your buyer claims it wasn't!).
Something about the idea of someone over in Poland, Germany, Albania, Paraguay or Mongolia having received my item, then falsely claiming not to have done so, then filing a claim through ebay to get a paypal refund really rubs me the wrong way, so much so, that I pretty much refuse to ship to any address outside the US, UK or Canada. Period.
Other sellers don't care. I do. It's a matter of principle. I simply do not want to set myself up to get scammed, because it's simply going to happen. I hate to sound so negative, but I simply don't want to place myself in such situations.
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