For just about every physical product that is involved in a crowdfunding campaign, lots of calculations have to be done to make sure that your goal is enough to benefit both you and your backers. This includes any rewards that come in physical form like T-shirts and other collectors’ items. All of these things cost money to produce and should be included in your accounting. But there are some crowdfunding campaigns that still fail to deliver even they raised far more money than targeted. Underestimating the shipping costs is one common reason behind this occurrence.
One of the problems of dealing with shipping is that you don’t have control over most things. This is why you need to dedicate some time factoring in the shipping costs. This should be finalized before your crowdfunding campaign goes live because backers will reasonably complain about sudden changes, delays and/or failed commitments due to lack of funding. Shipping is mainly out of your control because there is no telling what hidden fees the shipping company has or possible taxes depending on the destination. International shipping adds another layer of complexity as well since it involves customs fees. Use online tools like DutyCalculator to get a rough estimate.
The safest way to address the shipping costs issue is to overestimate. Do a lot of research on shipping services and make a list of all the prices. Take the highest price into account and add a little bit of extra to handle any hidden fees.
Unpredictable things can happen throughout the campaign and imperfections are normal but careful planning with the shipping aspects can help prevent those unfortunate incidents where you raised too much but don’t have enough to continue.