Adding Item Specific Shipping Prices

I need to have the facility to add item specific shipping costs,

i.e. like you would on an eBay shop for example... but I can't work out how to do it at all. Can someonebody explain the process in some detail? I'm quite new to Zen Cart so I would really appreciate some advice!

I also will need to work out a discount system, so multiple buys get discounted shipping costs, obviously because they'd go in the same package, not seperately.

Also, why can't I just put the item price on each addition, along with a postage price?? Surely that would be easier than doing it by weight/zone etc, seems over complicated to me?

There's no way I know to do product-specific shipping rates, other than using weight or the table rate.

A little more information about why the built-in shipping options don't work for you might help us suggest something.

I am looking for something like this too.
The shop i am building for already has an ebay store (looking to move this to the zen cart store over time) and they have different shipping costs for different items (for example free shipping on lighters, £2.00 shipping for mugs & bags and £4.00 shipping for trousers/dresses etc).

Is there a way to do this and to work out some sort of discount method if a customer bought a mug and a pair of trousers, instead of £6 the shipping could come to say £5?

I know this may be quite complicated and i am fairly new to php so cannot think of how to do this myself but i dont mind helping where possible.

The Per Unit perweightunit might help here ...

This shipping module uses the Product Weight to set the shipping charge ...

All of the weight of the order is then multiplied by the Shipping Cost per Unit ...

Then, you could customize this shipping module further to factor in your discounts, but you would need to determine the rules for the discount so it can be coded for ...