Episode 190 | STOP Using Vacation Mode on Etsy (Tips for $15,000/Mo on Etsy from the Beach)

I’ve never put my shop on Vacation Mode on Etsy… and neither should you!

In this episode, I break down my exact strategy for making online money with Etsy – even when you’re away from your shop! 

In this week’s episode we discuss:

[00:43] Step #1: Update Your Production Time

[03:39] Step #2: Update Announcements

[04:08] Step #3: Update Auto Responses

[04:28] Step #4: Pause Your USPS Pickups

[04:48] Step #5: Pre-Set Social Posts

[05:51] Step #6: Batch Orders

[06:35] An Alternative: Add Product Categories

Step #1: Update Your Production Time

The first step when it comes to avoiding vacation mode on Etsy is updating your production time. You will want to deactivate any rush order fees in your shop so that people are unable to order via that method. Next, we are going to extend processing times to give ourselves a wide buffer, maybe 2-6 weeks more than you usually do when you’re not taking time away from your business. 

For example, maybe you are having a baby and want to start working again after 4 weeks. If your current processing times are 3 to 10 business days, then you would adjust that to be 1 to 3 weeks. During this time, you will also want to raise your prices by 10 percent minimum. During this time, I would recommend only staying one day ahead so that it slows down orders enough so that you are able to keep up with shipping the next day. For me, I could produce about 20 orders a day so I kept my open order count at 20 orders or less per day. 

If you are planning to travel and take a month off, you’ll extend your shipping timeframe to six weeks to give yourself a two week buffer after you come back. You may be asking why would I put 1-5 weeks shipping time? It’s all about perception. It looks much better to the customer to have a wider shipping window. You’re likely going to ship sooner than the longest timeframe. 

The week before you are back, you can go back to your original shipping timeframe of 3 to 10 business days. The biggest dip in your sales happens right away and then every week, as you’re shortening your production timeframe, you are going to get more and more sales. By the time you’re ready to go back to work, your momentum is going to be right back where it was as if you didn’t take any time off. 

Step #2: Update Announcements

 You have got to keep that announcement updated, even when you’re on vacation mode because if someone sees a long ship window and an announcement that is like six months old, they might question, is this business even active? You can update the announcement every week with your updated shipping timeframe. You can also state that rush orders are unavailable until after this specific date. 

 Step #3: Update Auto Responses

This is not the time to overshare and get too personal. You can simply state something along the lines of “we are currently out of the office, but we will be responding to your messages over the next 72 hours. Thank you for your patience.” 

Step #4: Pause Your USPS Pickups

Don’t forget to put a pause on your USPS pickups if you are a physical product business. Also, don’t forget to hold your mail during this time if you’re going to be out of town. You don’t want to risk anything getting lost or stolen when you’re not home. 

Step #5: Pre-Set Social Posts

Of course, it’s alright to take a step back from Etsy, but you don’t want to crush your brand. I recommend still posting once a day on social media, or once every 3 days at minimum. An active social media account indicates an active business to your customers. 

If you don’t want to physically be posting, that’s totally fine. You can schedule your posts with scheduling apps like Later or Cloud Campaign. If you don’t want to pay for a scheduling tool, you can set up some drafts in advance in Instagram and push them live. 

Step #6: Batch Orders

You don’t want to complete your orders one at a time from oldest to newest. I recommend sorting by ship date, and take a look at the next seven days of things you need to ship and group together like orders. 

An Alternative: Add Product Categories

If you are anticipating having a huge trip in the summer that has you gone for multiple weeks, then I recommend adding in digital products or print on demand items to your shop. 

Another alternative is integrating a supply category product. Now you can easily outsource that to someone who does your fulfillment for you.

There’s very little training involved when it’s simply pulling and packaging. And for me, now that I have a full time Etsy shop manager, I don’t actually do any fulfillment myself. I do, however, print the shipping labels just to keep an eye on things. 

In the long term, you can absolutely build a team around your shop and really only have to work 10 or so minutes a day on it.

Links Mentioned:

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