I think that there are two scenarios where people often use vacation mode, one of which I don’t think is a bad thing and the other which I think you should avoid. By extending out the processing time rather than going on official “vacation mode,” I have found my normal level of sales rebounds much faster, but still allows me those “catch my breath” moments that we all need every once in a while. As I’ve become more reliant on the income from my Etsy shop and it has become a part of our household income rather than just “extra date night money,” it has also become more important to me to have reliable sales and I don’t want to suffer several months of lower sales from a simple 1-2 week vacation using vacation mode. Now when I need a break, or I get behind, or my orders are dramatically affected by shipping issues, I just extend out my processing time and allow the orders to slow down naturally as most people choose not to buy from someone with a 3+ week turnaround time. However I also want to say that I was on maternity leave for over 6 months, so it’s not the same as just taking a week-long vacation or taking a weekend off and not taking orders.īecause of the dramatic drop in sales that I’ve seen in the past when I’ve used it, I haven’t used vacation mode since this time period (2015-2016) though I have gone on numerous vacations. It took about 5 months after reopening to get back to where I was before I took time off. I want to show you a graph of my business prior to going on maternity leave, and then the results of vacation mode after I came back.Īs you can see from these graphs, my sales were impacted in a real and big way. I have not used vacation mode since early 2016 when I last went on maternity leave with my youngest child and you’re about to see why. So it’s not necessarily that your shop goes down it’s that other shops go up and therefore yours is lower in comparison.įrom my own experience with a shop that gets steady and consistent sales, vacation mode had a long-lasting and dramatic impact on the number of sales that I had, though it did eventually recover. Ultimately, this can actually have a big impact on your shop because other shops in your niche that sell similar things are gaining a sales history and increasing their quality score. If you’re only leaving for a few days or a week for vacation, it’s different than taking a year off of your business and having massive changes take place on the platform during your time away.įormally Etsy has said that vacation mode does not impact your shop or the way that your shop is ranked, however, in the time that you are on Etsy vacation mode, your shop is not gaining traction in its relevance and quality score. How long you go on vacation mode and what the scenario is surrounding it can have an impact on your results after you come back from vacation mode. I think that either one of these scenarios can be true when you use vacation mode, and a lot of it depends on where you are in the process of building your shop and how consistent your sales are before you go on vacation mode, and then also what you consider to be “good” or consistent sales.