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| HotForWords |
Thus far she's successfully sold her second listed painting, Golden Eye, for a very respectable price of US$660.00 to a very satisfied buyer (based on Marina's Ebay feedback).
What prompted me to write this article is that, as a new artist selling her work on Ebay, she does just about everything new artists shouldn't do when selling their art on Ebay. Thus making her a great example of why she can get away with it where as you and I can't.
Background
Presently her YouTube channel has 458,819 subscribers and has received more than 24,476,630 views. Her fame has enabled her to branch out and make regular appearances on TV shows and be written about (and photographed) in print media (as well as online). She's even written a book based on her Youtube show and has a comprehensive website that is regularly updated.
Although playing on her model looks for all it's worth, she's also a very good self promoter and has never lost sight of the educational and entertainment side of her show with her catch phrase 'Intelligence is Sexy'. She includes a lot of humor in her work and, whilst you might think her audience is mostly males, I suspect a good percentage of her audience is females, who are inspired by her success, and find her entertaining as well.
Marina's Vs You on Ebay
Unless you have a solid base of fans, subscribers or collectors that you've built up in another area of your career this is the key difference between you selling your art on Ebay and Marina. Marina introduced her subscribers to her art by filming videos of her making her art. Her first video is embeded below.
With 458,819 subscribers there's bound to be a few that would love to own an original piece of art created by their favorite teacher. There's also bound to be a few that would recognize Marina's art has some investment value due to her celebrity status.
So how many people do you think bid on her first artwork, Immortal Geisha? 1000? 500? 250? Would you be surprised to know it was just 13 bidders? (less than 0.003% of HotForWords subscribers).
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| Immortal Geisha - Ebay Bid History |
Her second artwork, Golden Eye, listed on Ebay attracted 9 bidders.
That number of bidders on both auctions is pretty impressive for an artist who has never sold their art on Ebay before but, without a big subscriber base to draw upon, where is your 0.003% of bidders going to come from?
Apart from your own promotion of your auctions the answer is Ebay search.
Marina's First Auction on Ebay
Whilst Marina is probably always going to be relatively successful selling her art on Ebay because of her subscriber base and celebrity there's at least two things she could have done to improve her first auction listing that may have attracted more bidders through Ebay search.
There's also one risky choice she made that you're likely to regret if you did the same on your auction listings.
Below is a screen shot of Marina's original listing:
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| Immortal Geisha original auction listing screenshot. Click to enlarge then continue reading. |
An Ebay search is largely done by searching for keywords in auction titles. Hence your auction title is how visitors using search first discover your art. So you need to fill your title with keywords people are likely to be using for your auction to show up in their results.
Marina gave her auction the title - "Immortal Geisha" painting by Marina Orlova
It seems like a logical title but imagine you're searching ebay. How many of the words in her title are ones you'd imagine people would be searching for? Geisha and Painting are both good keywords but how many people would be searching for Immortal Geisha?
Marina's name is good for people looking for her art on Ebay - if they know her real name - but what about those that only know her as HotForWords?
The artwork its self is quite abstract in style. It could be useful having the word abstract in the title to catch people who like abstract paintings.
A better title for Marina's auction might be - Abstract Geisha painting by Marina Orlova, HotForWords
Descriptions with Keywords and Detail
Secondary to titles people can also extend their Ebay searches to include descriptions. Notice on Marina's auction the whole bottom section - where you can completely describe what you're selling with as much detail, images and even video as you want - is virtually blank, except for the auction title being duplicated in larger print.
When writing a description for your art this is where you can include the artworks actual title but you should also try to include more keywords that describe the subject of your art in greater detail.
The description is also where you capture the heart and mind of your potential buyers. If your painting has an interesting back story you might include it as part of your description. If you've uploaded a video of the painting being created to YouTube you can actually embed the video into your description.
In Marina's case she has a great video of this artwork being made (as you may have watched above) that could have been embeded into her listing. Along with it she could have written a few words about her artwork and why she painted it and included some points about what viewing experience the art might give potential buyers.
Generally, buyers of art like to know as much about the art they are buying as possible. Especially if they are not able to see the actual physical work but are only looking at a photo.
A Big Risk
Marina's starting price on both of her auctions so far has been US$0.99 cents.
Such a starting price for a first time artist selling on Ebay is an incredible risk. What if she had only got one bid? I'm not sure if the US Ebay site still allows people to set reserve prices but on the Australian Ebay site you can't, unless you're selling a big item like a car or house.
I can tell you first hand how demoralizing selling one of your own original artworks for a ridiculously low price actually is. I've done the experiment and listed an original artwork with a start price of just AU$5.00.
The theory is, that a low start price will encourage more buyers to actually bid because your item is the 'bargain' they're looking for. I got one bid on my painting which cost the buyer more in postage than they paid for the actual artwork.
On top of that I received an irate email from another of my collectors, angry that I'd sold one of my artworks for such a bargain price.
Marina can get away with it because she has a large subscriber base. If you don't then your opening bid should be set to the lowest price you'll actually part with your artwork for - if it only receives one bid.
In Conclusion
There is actually a lot more Marina could do to make her auctions more professional and possibly increase the number of collectors of her art. Through Ebay she may even develop a fan base that knows her first for her art and is drawn to her YouTube channel as a result.
However the points raised above are the ones I felt any new artist listing their work on Ebay should take particular note of because you want people, likely to be interested in your work, finding your auctions but you don't want them buying at a price that's going to put you off selling your art on Ebay for good.
A better title for Marina's auction might be - Abstract Geisha painting by Marina Orlova, HotForWords
Secondary to titles people can also extend their Ebay searches to include descriptions. Notice on Marina's auction the whole bottom section - where you can completely describe what you're selling with as much detail, images and even video as you want - is virtually blank, except for the auction title being duplicated in larger print.
When writing a description for your art this is where you can include the artworks actual title but you should also try to include more keywords that describe the subject of your art in greater detail.
The description is also where you capture the heart and mind of your potential buyers. If your painting has an interesting back story you might include it as part of your description. If you've uploaded a video of the painting being created to YouTube you can actually embed the video into your description.
In Marina's case she has a great video of this artwork being made (as you may have watched above) that could have been embeded into her listing. Along with it she could have written a few words about her artwork and why she painted it and included some points about what viewing experience the art might give potential buyers.
Generally, buyers of art like to know as much about the art they are buying as possible. Especially if they are not able to see the actual physical work but are only looking at a photo.
A Big Risk
Marina's starting price on both of her auctions so far has been US$0.99 cents.
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| Marina's Start price of US$0.99 on Immortal Geisha. (click to enlarge) |
I can tell you first hand how demoralizing selling one of your own original artworks for a ridiculously low price actually is. I've done the experiment and listed an original artwork with a start price of just AU$5.00.
The theory is, that a low start price will encourage more buyers to actually bid because your item is the 'bargain' they're looking for. I got one bid on my painting which cost the buyer more in postage than they paid for the actual artwork.
On top of that I received an irate email from another of my collectors, angry that I'd sold one of my artworks for such a bargain price.
Marina can get away with it because she has a large subscriber base. If you don't then your opening bid should be set to the lowest price you'll actually part with your artwork for - if it only receives one bid.
In Conclusion
There is actually a lot more Marina could do to make her auctions more professional and possibly increase the number of collectors of her art. Through Ebay she may even develop a fan base that knows her first for her art and is drawn to her YouTube channel as a result.
However the points raised above are the ones I felt any new artist listing their work on Ebay should take particular note of because you want people, likely to be interested in your work, finding your auctions but you don't want them buying at a price that's going to put you off selling your art on Ebay for good.
I am South Australian artist, writer and online video producer, David Arandle, working under the pseudonym, 'The Extraordinary Tourist' or 'TET' for short. I have been working as a freelance artist/designer and selling my own artwork since 1995. Over the course of my career I've found myself offering a lot of Art Business advice based on my own experiences - hence this blog is a collection of articles, videos and more that I have created over the years. I hope you find what I've learned useful.
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