It costs HOW much to ship???

So I head home after work today and made sure Jamie helped me pick up some envelopes so I could mail my first card order out. I've got 2 options to choose from.
1. A rigid mailer. Pretty much an envelope made from harder cardboard.
2. A bubble cushion mailer. Your typical bubble wrap lined envelope.

So I go to the post office and I'm picking the poor girl's brain for like 15 minutes. I want to figure out what would be my shipping options and what would be the most cost effective but yet will be the safest way to ship my cards.

This is what I've come away with:
- Regular mail costs $0.52 to ship in Canada, $0.96 to the States and $1.60 international.
- Regular letters must fit through this tiny slot and it MUST slide through without someone having to come push it down.
- If your letter is anything out of the standard mail, the price automatically jumps up by around $1.00. So both of those little shipping envelope options would be at LEAST an extra $1 something to ship.
- If your "letter" is anything out of standard, it has to weigh less than 60 g. 60 GRAMS!!!
- If your "letter" is heavier than 60 GRAMS, then the price goes up to $3.75.
- If you want your "letter" or "parcel" tracked to provide your buyer with a tracking #, internationally speaking, the price STARTS at $40!!!!
- Quotes for these "letters" that I did on UPS and Purolator to send to crazy international destinations were over $150!!
- When shipping international, Canada Post can't guarantee anything when you don't purchase the extra guarantees at a big cost. They can't guarantee the letter won't be bent, won't be opened or even if it'll make it there!!
- Shipping by non-air (by boat) can take up to 3 MONTHS!!
- Shipping by air, my "letter" should arrive between 7-14 business days.

I think that's about all I've learnt. So in a nutshell I've learned that I've GOT to find a cheaper way to ship, I charged too little shipping for my first card order, shipping international is a crapshoot, I've made about -$1.00 and that doesn't even include the cost of all the materials for the card itself or the time or the money to post it onto Etsy. Lesson learned though, gotta find a better way to ship. Because in the end, guess how much it cost me to send my first card purchase to LITHUANIA? $3.94 Totally blows.

So lets break it down... Card sold for $4 USD including shipping. Paypal takes $0.50 for transaction fee. Etsy cost $0.20 USD to list and takes a 3.25% cut. Rigid envelope cost $0.60 CAD. Clear envelope I put the card in to ship cost $0.10 CAD. Shipping cost $3.94 CAD. I'm not interested in doing the actual math but all I know is in my paypal account I've got $4.09 CAD and JUST shipping cost $3.94. So..... yeah......