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eBay shipping labels Australia: guide for new sellers

New to eBay shipping in Australia? Learn how to set up MyPost Business, print 4x6 labels, and avoid the mistakes that trip up most sellers.

·8 minutes reading
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You sold your first item on eBay. Now you need to ship it, and the label printing process is surprisingly confusing for something that should be simple.

Do you print from eBay or from MyPost Business? What size label do you need? Why does the PDF look wrong on your thermal printer? This guide answers all of that, in plain language, without assuming you already know how Australia Post works.

Australian seller packing parcels ready to ship with eBay shipping labels

In this article:

How eBay shipping works in Australia

eBay Australia uses Australia Post as its default carrier. When a buyer pays, eBay gives you the option to purchase postage directly through the listing flow. The label goes to your email or downloads folder as a PDF.

You have two paths from there:

  1. Print on any printer using A4 paper, then stick the label to the parcel
  2. Print on a thermal printer using 4x6 (100x150mm) label rolls

Both work. Thermal is faster once you're set up. A4 is fine when you're just starting out and shipping a handful of items a week.

What Australia Post products are available on eBay?

eBay offers several Australia Post services for domestic parcels:

  • Parcel Post (3-6 business days) — standard, cheapest tracked option
  • Express Post (1-3 business days) — faster delivery, premium price
  • Parcel Post + Signature — adds a signature requirement on delivery

Pricing depends on parcel weight and dimensions. eBay calculates it at checkout if you've set up your item with dimensions and weight.

Setting up MyPost Business for eBay

You can print eBay labels without a MyPost Business account, but linking one gets you discounted postage rates and more control over your shipping workflow.

MyPost Business account dashboard showing eBay integration settings

Here's how to set it up:

  1. Go to auspost.com.au/mypostbusiness and create a free account
  2. Log in and go to Settings > eCommerce Integrations
  3. Select eBay, then click Connect
  4. Sign into eBay when prompted and authorise the connection
  5. Your eBay orders will start appearing in MyPost Business automatically

Once connected, you can print labels from inside MyPost Business instead of eBay's interface. This gives you access to MyPost Business's savings bands, which let you save up to 40% on shipping costs once your volume is high enough.

Do you need MyPost Business right away?

Not necessarily. If you're selling a few items a month, printing from eBay's built-in flow is fine. As your volume grows and you start thinking about thermal printers and batch printing, MyPost Business becomes worth the setup time.

Two ways to print your eBay shipping label

Once you've purchased postage, you have two ways to get the label out.

Option 1: Print directly from eBay

After paying for postage in your eBay Seller Hub:

  1. Go to Orders > Awaiting shipment
  2. Click the order, then Print postage label
  3. A PDF downloads to your computer
  4. Print it on A4 (or 4x6 if your printer supports it)

This is the simplest path. No separate account needed. The PDF comes out as an A4 page with the label in the top half or centre.

Option 2: Print through MyPost Business

Once you've linked eBay to MyPost Business:

  1. Log into MyPost Business
  2. Go to Orders — your eBay sales appear there
  3. Select the order(s) you want to ship
  4. Click Create Shipment, choose your service and weight
  5. Click Create & Print Labels

MyPost Business lets you batch-print multiple labels at once, which saves time when you're shipping 10+ orders a day.

What printer do you need?

You don't need a thermal printer to get started. An ordinary home inkjet or laser printer works fine for A4 labels. Print, fold, and stick.

But if you're shipping more than a few parcels a week, a thermal printer will save you time and money on ink.

Thermal label printer set up in a home office for eBay shipping

A4 inkjet or laser (for beginners)

  • Print on plain A4 paper
  • Cut or fold to cover the label area
  • Use a self-adhesive pocket or sticky tape to attach
  • Good for under 5 parcels per week

Thermal printer (for regular sellers)

Thermal printers use heat instead of ink, so you don't pay for cartridges. They print 4x6 (100x150mm) labels on rolls, which stick directly to your parcel.

Common models used by Australian eBay sellers:

  • Dymo LabelWriter 4XL or 5XL — popular, USB, good software support
  • Zebra ZD421 or ZD220 — reliable, widely used in warehouse settings
  • Brother QL-1100 — good for mixed use, supports different label sizes
  • MUNBYN thermal printers — budget-friendly, sold widely on Amazon AU

All of these print 100x150mm labels and work with MyPost Business labels once you configure the PDF size correctly. More on that below.

Printing your label: step by step

If you're printing on A4

  1. Download the label PDF from eBay or MyPost Business
  2. Open the PDF in your browser (Chrome, Edge) or Preview on Mac
  3. Print at 100% scale (not "fit to page" — this distorts the barcode)
  4. Cut around the label
  5. Tape or use a self-adhesive document pocket to attach to the parcel

Keep the barcode clean and unobscured. Australia Post scans it at every facility.

If you're printing on a thermal printer

This is where most new sellers run into trouble. Here's why: MyPost Business defaults to exporting labels as A4 PDFs, even if you're printing on a thermal printer. Your 4x6 printer doesn't know what to do with an A4 file.

The fix is in your MyPost Business settings:

  1. Log into MyPost Business
  2. Go to Settings > Carriers > MyPost Business > Print Settings
  3. Change the label size from A4 (2 per page) to A6 (1 per page)
  4. Save, then re-download your labels

With A6 selected, the PDFs come out as proper 4x6 files your thermal printer can handle directly.

When printing:

  • Set your paper size to 100x150mm or 4x6
  • Set scale to 100% or Actual size (never "Shrink to fit")
  • Select your thermal printer from the dropdown

If the label still comes out off-centre or wrong size, check that the paper size in your OS printer settings matches the paper size in the print dialog. If you only have an A4 PDF and need a quick one-off fix, use the free A4 to 4x6 shipping label converter before sending the file to your thermal printer.

Common mistakes (and how to fix them)

Mistake 1: Printing at the wrong scale

Barcodes printed at the wrong scale won't scan. Always print at 100% and never let the PDF viewer rescale to fit the page.

Mistake 2: Not switching to A6 in MyPost Business

The default A4 format only works with standard printers. If you have a thermal printer and labels are coming out blank, cut off, or tiny, change the label format to A6 in your MyPost Business Print Settings.

Mistake 3: Entering wrong parcel dimensions

If the weight or dimensions you entered at listing don't match the actual parcel, the label price will be wrong. Australia Post can charge you extra at lodgement if the parcel is heavier than declared. Weigh and measure before printing.

Mistake 4: Not tracking the lodgement

Once you drop the parcel at an Australia Post outlet or red street box, the tracking number becomes active. Share it with your buyer via eBay's order messaging. It builds trust and reduces "where's my parcel?" messages.

Mistake 5: Using the wrong label size in MyPost Business with a thermal printer

Even after switching to A6, some sellers find labels still come out wrong because they're printing through Acrobat with scaling on. Use your browser's built-in PDF viewer for simpler, more reliable results.

If you're hitting the A4-to-thermal wall repeatedly and want to skip the PDF fiddling entirely, LabelChop is a desktop app that watches your Downloads folder, detects MyPost Business A4 labels, crops them to 4x6 automatically, and fires them to your thermal printer. Worth looking at once you're shipping more than 10 parcels a week.

If you're building out your eBay shipping setup, these posts cover adjacent ground:

Getting started

eBay shipping in Australia is more straightforward than it looks once you understand the two paths: print from eBay, or link MyPost Business and print from there.

For most new sellers, printing on A4 is fine. Once you're shipping regularly, a thermal printer pays for itself quickly in time saved per label.

The one thing that catches nearly every seller is the A4-to-4x6 label size problem. Change your MyPost Business Print Settings to A6, print at 100%, and that issue goes away.

If you want to go a step further and automate the whole process, check out LabelChop — you can try it free for 14 days, no credit card needed. It's built for exactly this problem.