Shipping is an essential part of any retail company running a virtual online store. The advantage of having an online store is that you do not need to maintain a brick and mortar store, however, the disadvantages is that you have to personally send every item that your customers order. However, this is not too big an issue since the various shipping options available these days have made shipping a breeze.

There are various vendors out there that offer various types of deals with regards to shipping. The question that you need to be asking yourself is how fast do I want to ship my item, where do I want to ship this item and how big is this item ? Answering these questions allows you to better determine the best shipping option. Generally, the best option to ship small letters would be the post office (USPS). However, when it comes to shipping packages, there are various vendors with different offerings. Many of these vendors offer international shipments as well as three-day, two-day, and next day shipments.

Benefits for small and medium businesses include:

-          Being able to send your items to your customers so you do not have to maintain a brick and mortar store. This means that you can cut down on your expenses making your business more competitive.

-          Being able to send your shipments to customers all over the globe which means that your market becomes global.

-          Shipping vendors offer next day shipment, and since many customers demand their items faster these days, you would still be able to offer that to them.

Some of the well known shipping vendors offer:

-          Various shipping options such as weekly ground shipment, two day shipments and next day air shipments.

-          International shipping

-          Shipping of large and very large containers locally as well as internationally (usually by sea for very large or heavy items).

To give you an idea of what it might cost to ship items, it costs $ 6 to ship a book from an address in Virginia to Indiana. And it costs $14 dollars to ship a 10 LBS laptop from Texas to Virginia.

Some vendors also offer to ship items as big as a car which usually costs around $ 1000 (ballpark) for trucking it within the US.