Shipping custom stickers worldwide 

Effective today, we're shipping [custom stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers) worldwide via USPS.  If you're an international customer, just enter your address during checkout and we'll provide you with an option to use USPS as your shipping provider.

Happy we finally added support for international shipments? Thoughts on how we can better handle international orders? Leave a comment or tweet [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule).  As always, your feedback is appreciated. ;-) 


We just updated the site and we're happily supporting customers worldwide.  All international orders for custom stickers ship via USPS. 

Choose your delivery date 

It's now possible to pick a delivery date during checkout.  If you ever bought flowers online you might be familiar with how this works.  Online flower companies are intimately familiar with the importance of hitting your desired delivery date.   Rather than ask what shipping method you want, they simply ask when you need the flowers to arrive.  In the background, they pick the optimal ship method for you and, if necessary, hit you with a rush charge.

In our opinion, your [custom stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers) should be on equal footing with flowers for that special someone.  So, starting today, you can pick a delivery date during checkout and there's a rush option too.  In the background, we pick the ship method for you and if you want rush production we charge an extra $50.00. Here's a quick example:

Say you're planning an event for Wednesday, December 22nd and you want 500 custom stickers to hand out to attendees.  If you order today, you'll see four delivery options:

**December 23** (Thursday)
+$0.00 for 10 day production & UPS Ground

**December 20** (Monday)
+$16.60 for 10 day production & UPS Second Day Air

**December 17** (Friday)
+$25.82 for 10 day production & UPS Next Day Air

**December 13** (Monday)
+$75.82 for 5 day production & UPS Next Day Air

While our free shipping option might not meet your date, for an extra $16.60 you can have them delivered by Monday, December 20th. ;-)

We're super excited about this improvement to our ordering experience, but this is only our first attempt to tackle a difficult problem.   Your thoughts and feedback are much appreciated. Leave a comment or tweet [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule).


Curious when your custom stickers will arrive? It's now possible to pick your delivery date during checkout and a rush option is available too. 

How to print high quality custom stickers 

There's no reason why every custom sticker can't be awesome. The cost difference between printing the best possible sticker versus something average is minimal. That's why we only use the highest quality material and printing methods.

Here's a quick overview of what Sticker Mule means by "high quality" stickers:

## High resolution printing

We print stickers at 1440 dpi. That means we can easily match every color and print even the most complex designs. Even highly detailed images always come out awesome. You can even send us your low-res artwork as is and we will redraw it from scratch to ensure optimal print quality. 

## Extra thick vinyl

We called a list of material vendors, including some large paper companies, and asked them a simple question: what's the best quality vinyl material we could use for custom stickers? Inevitably, we decided on an extra thick 6 mil vinyl. It provides a great look and feel and lays down nice. Combined with a sturdy paper backing and protective laminate, our stickers are made from the best materials you'll find. 

![Extra thick vinyl for high quality stickers](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/ad7d83a5d111a26cf6c3ef44763b6453ef7ebe85)

## Sturdy paper backing

We use a sturdy paper backing to boost the overall strength of the stickers so that they keep their quality when stored in your backpack or pocket. It also helps make them easier to peel whether your sticker is [die cut](https://www.stickermule.com/products/die-cut-stickers), [kiss cut](https://www.stickermule.com/products/kiss-cut-stickers) or another [style of sticker](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers).

![Sturdy paper backing for high quality vinyl stickers](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/ef24eac7748df0cd34bf49380bdf38076789c820)

## Strong adhesive

We know that a sticker is only as good as its adhesive. Like the vinyl we use, we set out to find the best quality adhesive. All of our stickers have a very strong adhesive that still keeps the surface intact if it needs to be removed. 

We use a permanent adhesive for [die cut stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/die-cut-stickers) and [transfer stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/transfer-stickers). While [bumper stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/products/bumper-stickers) and [wall graphics](https://www.stickermule.com/products/wall-graphics) use a special removable adhesive. 

## Weatherproof

We make our stickers to withstand exposure to wind, rain and sunlight. In addition to premium vinyl, the stickers are coated with a high quality protective UV laminate that makes them super durable and resistant to fading, scratching, tearing, and water. Our stickers are fade resistant for 3 to 5 years, even in the toughest conditions. They can also be safely run through a dishwasher repeatedly. 

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## Final thoughts...

Our philosophy is simple: only sell products that we are ridiculously proud of making. The steps above are how we know with certainty that we always turn out the highest quality stickers possible.

<ButtonCta text="Try the best stickers for $1" href="https://www.stickermule.com/samples?ref=blog" />

We only use the highest quality material and printing methods. Here's why. 

Making Sticker Mule simpler 

Just pushed some changes to make life simpler.  Among them:

## 20% less header

![Comparison of the old and new Sticker Mule logos](https://cl.ly/2G2c2I0H3v2w/new-sticker-mule-logo.png)

We shaved 20 pixels off the header and we're sporting a new logo.  Logo design isn't exactly our expertise, but we felt the original logo had too much flair so we toned it down a bit.

## Clutter-free artwork uploads

![Screenshot of our new artwork upload screen](https://cl.ly/0V1r130R3U3k/simple-artwork-upload-screen.png)

A ton of pointless junk was removed from this screen.  All that's left is a large "select file" button and a new progress tracker.  A side benefit of the change is the page looks even better. :-)

## Send artwork later

There's a new experimental option to send your artwork after ordering.  We had a bit of a debate about this idea, but eventually decided to release it and see what people think.  If you want to buy and don't have your artwork handy,  you can email it to us at a more convenient time.

![Screencast of our send artwork later feature](https://cl.ly/2R3W2f2M3s23/Screen%2520Recording%25202016-05-31%2520at%252009.55%2520PM.gif)

## Checkout gets a facelift

![Screenshot of our new checkout screen](https://cl.ly/2p431J3g0n1j/new-checkout-screen.png)

Our checkout screens are prettier and simpler. It's not fun filling in forms; hopefully a little extra style and clarity make it more bearable.  You can checkout without creating an account now too.

## What's next

We're having a lot of fun building Sticker Mule.  The good news is, we're far from done.  As long as it's possible to make [sticker printing](https://www.stickermule.com/custom-stickers "Sticker Printing") simpler, faster and more fun we'll keep pushing updates.

Hopefully you like what we've done so far. Leave a comment or tweet [@stickermule](http://twitter.com/stickermule) with your thoughts.

A few design changes make Sticker Mule even simpler and more enjoyable. 

41 custom sticker design templates 

Custom sticker design templates in PDF, EPS and PSD formats are available for download.  They're simple and quick to use if you know your way around Photoshop or Illustrator.

Use of our [custom sticker templates](https://www.stickermule.com/templates) is optional. If you'd rather just send us a simple image file that works too.  We accept all file formats so send us anything and we'll make it work.

Custom sticker templates are available for the most popular sizes and styles.

6 lessons we learned from freebie sites 

Yesterday, we announced our [sticker sample kits](https://www.stickermule.com/samples) were ready to ship. Little did we know of the Internet freebie world.    Within 2 hours of posting the 1st [freebie site](http://www.ilovefreethings.com/) caught us and at 2am the requests came pouring in.  I thought maybe they'd stop around the 100 - 200 mark and we'd be safe.  24 hours later and we're at 1,000+ requests.

This was a frustrating experience, but the best thing about being under pressure is it forces you to learn.  Here's what we learned from our encounter with the world of freebies.

## Lesson #1: Be careful with the word “free”

Marketers love the word “free”.  It attracts attention. What they neglect to realize is that it attracts attention from people that don't want to pay for your product. In retrospect, we could have just said "sticker sample kits are available" and omitted the f-word.

## Lesson #2: Automate creating sample kits

Up until today I was hand-packing sample kits at night.  That process was scrapped.  Instead we took 10 of our coolest stickers, fit them on 1 sheet of material and printed 1000 sheets in a row.  As we're cutting the 1000 sheets we're packing the kits; it's a much better  process.  The downside is, we're no longer able to browse Google Reader while the cutter is running.

## Lesson #3: Bulk mail

Shipping 1000 sample kits 1 at a time isn't going to be fun.  Luckily we can bulk mail and get them out fast and at a lower cost.  This wasn't high on our list of priorities, but this experience forced us to learn how to do that fast.  It was something we needed to learn anyway so it's good to have it down.

## Lesson #4: Wufoo is amazing.

[Wufoo](http://wufoo.com/) was a lifesaver throughout this process.  I was continually tweaking the sample request form and eventually added a $1.00 fee.  Without Wufoo this would have been a nightmare.  They made it effortless to integrate PayPal and all of our data is nicely formatted so we can easily download it.  We already started work on a sample management app that integrates with Wufoo too.

## Lesson #5: Charge, even if it's a small amount

After request 1,397 we finally decided to charge [$1.00 for a sample kit](https://www.stickermule.com/samples) and instantly people started actually paying us. The volume of requests went down and quality went up.  By the way, our samples are awesome too. Many of our customers spend $500+ on stickers. $1.00 isn't much in the scheme of things.

## Lesson #6: Look for the upside in everything

At first we were frustrated that 1000+ freebie requests might be drowning out our customers.  We wanted to let our genuine customers to know that they could ask for samples, but the volume of requests was overwhelming. It's just not feasible for us to ship 1000 samples every day; not to mention it's expensive.

There was a temptation to just delete any mention of sample packs from our web site, but we didn't want to cave.  Instead we used the chaos to learn. We're faster, more efficient and showed 1000+ people that we're decent people too.

In a sense, "look for the good in everything" is becoming the modus operandi for Sticker Mule. It's worked well so far and we don't plan to break that formula.

1000+ requests for free sample packs in 24 hrs. 6 lessons we learned from freebie sites.

Posts by Tom