What Are You Thinking?

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eBay has changed loads recently. I tried to sell some really heavy books - the recorded postage would have been about £7 and it would only let me put in a maximum postage cost of £2.75! If the books sell I'd be making a loss! I eventually selected courier and said the courier was royal mail and it would cost £7 - just to get around it. (i got so annoyed i nearly cancelled it, but id taken so long taking nice photos) I really don't like the way eBay is going!
 
That's why, after failing at selling a few things in the past, I tend to stick soley to buying from ebay. I'll find other ways of selling my goods. Or better still I take quite a few things, like clothes, to the charity shop.
 
Speaking of charity shops. We put some bags out for Marie curie to pick up and it turns out some scum bags went along the street really early in the morning and stole all the bags that people in the neighbourhood had put out for charity!!! I'm furious that some of my stuff that I thought was helping a charity is now making some awful criminals profit somewhere. :(
 
At the moment I wish there was a better alternative to selling my art on eBay but I do make an income from it, and I need it.

@Eb: They capped books too? That's insane. Everyone knows a book is a heavy item usually and heavy is the main cost of shipping when you mail something. Ebay knows they'll get a larger cut of the profits if they either charge on postage or else force the sellers to add the postage cost onto the cost of the item, but every seller out there knows driving the cost up isn't going to be a better incentive for people to buy. I sat and listened to an interview from some slimy eBay exec on this and he says "Our research shows buyers love free shipping!" Except that there is no such thing as free shipping, someone has to pay the cost. Sure, Amazon is a company so huge they can buy millions of units of items for a very low price and make a high profit and benefit from their own franking system. Can small sellers like me or you do that without having to charge more overall on the item? Nope.

They make me so angry, or rather the corporate a*shole business model does. Milk people to death. You know it makes sense.
 
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That's why I give directly to the charity shop. At least I know then that they have my goods and not taking a chance when putting it out on my doorstep. It's a shame it happens but it happens.

@Lexy: Is there a way that you could rent some space in a gallery or shop or something and sell your stuff that way?
 
@Lexy - yeah people want a bargain on eBay, so this postage thing makes no sense. Like I said I'd be giving the winner of the auction my books at a loss to me in the end - lol! How stupid! >_<

@Osaka - yeah I normally would take them into a shop, but it was heavy books (can you tell I'm having a clear out of books! :D) I'm never leaving things on the doorstep again!
 
Ebony said:
@Osaka - yeah I normally would take them into a shop, but it was heavy books (can you tell I'm having a clear out of books! :D) I'm never leaving things on the doorstep again!
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How much are these books worth then?
You got a car or someone with spare time with a car that you could use to sell stuff at a car boot sale, maybe? I dunno. :P
 
Osaka said:
@Lexy: Is there a way that you could rent some space in a gallery or shop or something and sell your stuff that way?
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Not really at this point. The shops here are mostly tacky tourist junk shops and don't want me because I don't fit into a neat 200% profit margin. There's no way I could rent space, and the local galleries are pretty much booked out. There are a couple of places left I could ask in but I'm put off by the response so far. Which has been disinterest because there seem to be a lot of people here trying to sell art, some of which is truly horrible. I don't like to judge but honestly, is the word "Tintagel" written in marker pen and shaped like a fish worth £30 on a piece of card? =/ That's the sort of stuff one guy here has in his gallery. And another local one is full of pink canvases with fake butterflies and glitter glued to them... the whole roomful of them probably took half an hour to make.
 
Lexy said:
Not really at this point. The shops here are mostly tacky tourist junk shops and don't want me because I don't fit into a neat 200% profit margin. There's no way I could rent space, and the local galleries are pretty much booked out. There are a couple of places left I could ask in but I'm put off by the response so far. Which has been disinterest because there seem to be a lot of people here trying to sell art, some of which is truly horrible. I don't like to judge but honestly, is the word "Tintagel" written in marker pen and shaped like a fish worth £30 on a piece of card? =/ That's the sort of stuff one guy here has in his gallery. And another local one is full of pink canvases with fake butterflies and glitter glued to them... the whole roomful of them probably took half an hour to make.
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Your doing it wrong; You obviously need to start making fishy cards with glittery butterflies on them. :P
But £30 for a card? Really? If someone does buy it then you really know your in trouble.
 
Different people have different ways of approaching selling art I guess. Mine has been mostly internet based and I get the feeling it's better because if you sell in someone else's gallery you can expect to have to give up 40-60% of the sale price to the gallery owner, and shops take 30-40% commission often as well. Whereas at least eBay, Etsy, eCrater, eBid etc. only take around 10-14% of the sale price off you. The ideal is for clients to come directly to me and not have to pay anyone anything except what I owe Paypal or the government for it. Which is beginning to happen more and more lately and I hope will eventually be how I make most or all of my living.

If I won the lottery I'd set my own place up and charge myself nothing. But that's prettty much a pipe dream right now.

Btw, I'm not sure if that guy actually managed to sell his fish-shaped Tintagel cards. The butterflies too. I'm pretty sure the butterflies sat in the window of the new 'gallery' (it was created by the owners of a big hotel here who are notorious for their bad artwork all over their hotel, some reviews from guests talk about how bad it is lol) which seems to be a side project for selling the same kind of artwork and I swear I haven't seen a single painting change in the window since they built it last year. These folks need to evaluate why people part with money for a piece of art. Usually because they think it's beautiful, well-made, and because it has some emotional connection of some kind to the buyer himself or herself. I doubt fish-writing and glitter butterflies connect deeply with anyone except as a bit of a naff souvenir, and nobody wants to pay a lot for a naff souvenir...

But hey, as long as they're making me look good. ;) It's a dog-eat-dog world out there!
 
That reminds me of an art shop up town, posh looking an' stuff but I don't think it's there anymore if I recall correctly, which had a "panting" in it's window. I'm loosely calling it a "painting" since it was just a few splashes of paint making up something that a 3 year would paint. I think I remember seeing the price tag of £100's or something and just being gobsmacked and thinking that I was in the wrong profession.
 
Haha, yep, there's usually some of that in high-end galleries. There was one up in Birmingham I went to have a look in, although most of the art in that gallery was £15,000 or more, it was actually decent stuff - like, stuff I thought to myself, "yeah, that would actually look good on the wall." There was this one... I think it was a picture of the Eiffel tower, which I remember and I like it - it was made of nothing but scribbly lines of paint, but there was something about it, the way it was done maybe, that looked classy as opposed to someone just dropped all their paints on the canvas accidentally and tried to sell it. I guess it's a fine line to pull that kind of art off. Most of the time it looks like no effort or skill went in at all, and I think it's a major deal to people that art looks like it wasn't an accident but that whoever made it has some ability behind them.

I mean, read this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-work-Damien-Hirst-Tracy-Emin-5-seconds.html (I apologise it's from the Daily Fail, but it gets across what I'm thinking). People visiting only took photos of Damien Hirst's stuff once they learned who made it, and they looked for the longest at the traditional paintings rather than the modern art. I guess it sums up what people in general think about art - they want to see a work with skill and meaning and beauty, not a bunch of dots or a pickled sheep.
 
Lexy said:
Haha, yep, there's usually some of that in high-end galleries. There was one up in Birmingham I went to have a look in, although most of the art in that gallery was £15,000 or more, it was actually decent stuff - like, stuff I thought to myself, "yeah, that would actually look good on the wall."
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Oh yeah, do you remember where that place was? Wasn't by Snow Hill station, in the Great weston arcade? That's the one I was thinking about with that painting.

I mean, read this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...d-work-Damien-Hirst-Tracy-Emin-5-seconds.html (I apologise it's from the Daily Fail, but it gets across what I'm thinking). People visiting only took photos of Damien Hirst's stuff once they learned who made it, and they looked for the longest at the traditional paintings rather than the modern art. I guess it sums up what people in general think about art - they want to see a work with skill and meaning and beauty, not a bunch of dots or a pickled sheep.
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The only time I wish to look at a pickled sheep is if I'm having it for dinner. Pickled animals and messy beds are not things that interest me if I go and see some art. I mean what's arty about this Shibboleth piece?
It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth_(artwork)#cite_note-alberge-1
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Come again?
And then there was the Weather Project. Ok, each to their own and whatever floats your boat, but I just don't "get it". Maybe I'm not supposed too?
 
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