Hey Andrew,

I was wondering how do maintain your eBay listings and other businesses when you go out for vacation?

Thanks,
Leo

Hi Leo,

Personally I have employees I can rely on so for me it’s not a big problem really. Still – I bring my laptop on any trip longer than 3-4 days as I want to make sure at all times that everything is running smoothly. (Yeah, I know – it’s not perfect for family life but what can I do – I’m an Entrepreneur in Heart – I work 24h a day. Everyone accepts that).
But if you’re a One Man Band kind of operation, working alone, this is a serious problem. My advice – just don’t take any vacations for now! At least that’s what I did back when I was building my business

You can’t work all the time, so I was compensating 1- 2 week vacations by taking regular, 3 day (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) breaks. It worked great for me – these quick breaks gave me much needed “restart” while allowed working on the business. (Tip: Why not plan these breaks during public holidays? This way you can stretch them even to 4 or 5 days).

If there’s no way around it and you really need to leave your business for a week or two, you have only one option left – hire someone who can take care of order processing & packaging while you’re away. Make sure it’s a reliable person, person you can trust (a relative, close friend?). It shouldn’t be too difficult to teach order processing stuff to a PC literate person.

Finally – whatever you do – DO NOT Close your online shop only because you have to take a vacation. That would ruin everything – it would look so un-professional. You would run a risk of bad word spreading across the net – you don’t want that!

If you have to go and can’t find a person who can handle order processing, put a message on your shop saying that all orders placed “from – to” will be processed on “date when you return”. Maybe even make up a legit excuse – for example – you’re moving warehouse or upgrading inventory system etc.

All this would apply ONLY if you have an online shop to run. If you sell solely on eBay, I wouldn’t worry that much about leaving it for a week. If you have an eBay Shop, use eBay Holiday settings. If not, simply plan your listings ahead and end all auctions/BINs before your vacation.

Exception to this would be if you run a really big eBay Shop with loads of repeat sales on a daily basis. You wouldn’t want to ruin relationships with your customers, so again – get a person who can process orders during your vacation.

Thanks,
Andrew