My etsy shop is back open now, although I only have PDFs stocked for the time being. I'm in the process of getting my house ready for sale and I won't be shipping anything while I'm doing that. However, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I'll be selling shippable items again even after I've finished. Apparently the post office misplaced an entire carton of my mail and a lot of people didn't get their orders for Christmas -- even though I mailed them with plenty of time to spare. The tracking showed the packages were just sitting in New Jersey from December 17th through January 1st! This isn't the only problem I had with the postal service this Christmas. Some of my packages arrived damaged -- one was ripped open and found blocks away from the delivery address!
When a package doesn't arrive on time, I face the blame, not the post office. Since ultimately I am held accountable for the post office's mistakes, I need to take a step back and re-evaluate my shipping strategies. But I'm facing a bit of a conundrum. Do I go PDF-only and rest assured that I'll never have to deal with lost, stolen or damaged packages again? I could make all orders ship Priority Mail, so that there's tracking AND insurance on every single package, but I doubt that anyone paying $5 for a print would want to pay $4.95 for shipping.
So, I'm not really sure about the direction I'll be taking. Regardless, the shop will be PDF only while I get my house ready, but afterwards I'm really not sure yet.
