Self-shipping was a little too complicated for some
Selling items on eBay is a great way to make a little extra cash. It’s pretty easy to take a picture of your object, post it on eBay, and wait for it to sell. Oh, yeah, then you have to box it up and ship it. This probably requires more effort than you want to take, but there’s a solution for people who just can’t find the time or inclination to handle this aspect of the sale.
Shyp takes care of shipping
Shyp, a startup that we wrote about recently, is an economy gig business. A courier is dispatched to your home and picks up the items which need packaging and shipped. It gives buyers more control over the auction process than the valet service offers (with eBay valets, inexperienced shippers send their stuff to sellers to handle the entire process.) What’s interesting with Shyp is that it seems to be based on the “Uber of” model, except it made the couriers employees on the payroll rather than independent contractors.
How it works
The Shyp app integrates with the eBay selling app, but it’s currently only available in four cities nationwide: New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It does add an additional $5 fee to the seller, but the courier picks up the item and packs it. Currently, Ebay says that about 50 percent of those using the service are new sellers. If you don’t have time to manage the backend of shipping your product after selling it on eBay, Shyp might be the next best thing.
Hopefully, as Shyp gets more publicity and the company works out the kinks in their own system that are inevitable with any startup, they’ll roll out the service nationwide in major metropolitan areas. More importantly, maybe they can change the Uber model to payrolled employees, who get full benefits from a company instead of having to work as an independent contractor.
