Etsy vs. Ebay-what are the advantages?

"Above the Sangre de Christo", Oil on Panel, 6x6 Inches

Jerry Lebo 2007

I have been working on two landscape commissions over the last week, so I have a lot of reference material from Santa Fe sitting around the studio. I was thinking back to the first time I went to Santa Fe in 1994, and I remember it was the sky that really drew my attention--and it has compelled me as an artist ever since.

One of the natural phenomenons that occurs in Santa Fe—that I rarely see anywhere else—is the way the clouds seem to explode over the top of the Sangre De Christo Mountains above the city. The first time I saw this, my first thought was that if you were to do a painting of it—no one would ever believe it actually looks like that. I have done several paintings of it over the years-and people seem to understand. I regularly get emails from people who have lived in New Mexico and and fondly recall the skies. Back in July I did a painting titled “Above Tesuque”, which was the first painting I sold on Ebay--to a former NM resident who is now living on the east coast. So I took the opportunity of having all my cloud photos around the studio to do the above small painting.

So, as you may have seen from my widget (bottom right of my blog), I have started posting some of my work to Etsy, rather than Ebay. Here is a link if you are interested in taking a look at my new Etsy store—where you can also see the above painting.

So why did I move over to Etsy? Well, I remember getting a comment from someone back in July on my blog about Etsy (recommending it) and I have been curious ever since. But the real impetus came when I did a review of my sales over the past few months and realized that I am losing about 3-4 percent of my sales price to the listing fees at Ebay. Since I often listed items more than once before they sold—and some never sold—this means I have been losing about 10% of my overall revenue to Ebay listing fees. Thus, for small $100 paintings, I am not sure Ebay is the best approach. In fact, those PAD painters who seem to be successful on Ebay are getting multiple bids which raise the price of their paintings. For me, I has usually get only a single bid, so Ebay is not really much of an advantage from the point of view of raising the selling price. So, I am going to try Etsy for a while—although I may still use Ebay now and again. I have kept with my fixed price approach (which I posted about the other day) of $3 per square inch for paintings, and $1.25 per square inch for works on paper.

So what are the advantages of Ebay over Etsy. First, Ebay is great for getting access to a lot of people. There are millions of eyes over at Ebay looking for all sorts of stuff. So new people may see your work each day, as the result of browsing listings related to yours--or just looking to buy art from new artists. On the other hand, with 20,000 paintings for sale—it is pretty much luck or clever marketing if they find it. I saw one artist using an interesting—but in my mind not entirely ethical approach. He had purchased a Duane Keiser painting—and relisted it for $1000 as part of his Ebay store. So if somebody types Duane Keiser as an Ebay search, this guy's Ebay store comes up (in bold) at the bottom of the search results—offering a painting at more than triple the price of the paintings Duane is actually selling. I am sure that people click to see this very expensive Keiser painting—then get hit in the face with lots of thumbnails of this guy's work. Pretty clever—and I am sure it sells a lot of paintings as a result--but I am not sure if I could sleep at night knowing I was using another artist's reputation to sell my paintings. But, then again, he is not the first or last artist to take such an approach. I am sure that if you get into the gallery where there is an established well-selling artist--your sales will go up too--especially if you paint in the same manner. But is this the same as buying one of his paintings and selling it in your own gallery to attact attention? Anyway, I just checked on Ebay before posting this, and he is still doing it.

On Etsy, the first thing I noticed is that I am actually getting more “views” of my paintings than I was on Ebay—although I have not sold anything yet. On Ebay, most of my paintings were sold at the reserve price in any case—after a single bid—and I think most purchasers were coming through my blog. For $.20 per listing (much lower than Ebay)—and about the same selling fees—your listings stays on Etsy for four months with no additional fee. So, if you are selling mainly through word of mouth (or your blog), Etsy may make more sense for you. In terms of advertisement, however, it may also be good to have a few paintings over at Ebay every now and again. However, until you are generating multiple bids for your paintings, Ebay’s only advantage is the sheer numbers of possible buyers—note, I say possible, since you will still need to find a way to drive traffic to your work. Generally speaking, I noticed that I was selling one painting for every 100-150 views of my work. Don’t take that as a scientific number—it is just a rough rule of thumb I came up with from observation. However, in my case, it has mainly been my blog—and not Ebay—that has driven traffic and interest in my work—so I am looking to cut my costs a bit over at Etsy.

Okay, well, that is it for now. I am working on my next posting already, which will be about how to make a low-cost frame for your paintings—an issue that several of my readers have sent me emails about requesting more information. I just received an order to build 12 frames for one of my collectors, so it is a good time to do the post on the subject. Stay tuned.

All the best, sixtyminuteartist.