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December 2003 - Issue #15 In This Issue eBay Your Raku: What Other Artist Do - Part II In part II of Ebay your Raku I will share what the survey revealed about prices, reserves, listing options, auction length, and closing times. In continuing with analyzing the eBay questionnaire results, I wanted to know what price ranges these Raku artists listed. The entire gambit of prices from $10 to $400 was reported, but an emphasis was on the lower end of spectrum, which was $20 to $40. One thought is the lower priced items sell easier with the idea it could lead bidders to the artist's websites to purchase larger items. With any auction listing there has to be a starting price. How these starting prices are determined vary by artist. Some start with their wholesale price, some the cost of production, and some start with the minimum they are willing to accept. All of these methods have merit and you should keep in mind that the starting bid could end up being the closing price unless you use a reserve price. A reserve price is a price the listing must reach before you are obligated to sell the item to the highest bidder. The bidders do not know the reserve price, so some bidders will not bid on a "reserve" auction. Most of the survey participants indicated they rarely if ever list reserve auctions. On eBay, there are several additional services that can be purchased and included in your listing such as Bold, Gallery, Featured, etc. The one service that was almost universally purchased is the Gallery option which means a thumbnail of your listing picture is included in any search result screens so the potential bidder can see the item without having to actually open the listing. At .25 seems like a good investment. A listing can be set to run for 3, 5, 7, or 10 days. Most of the artists list their art for 7 days, with 5 days being the second most popular. Even thought most bidding activity happens on the first and last day of a listing, having an item listed for 7 days give the bidders more exposure and the opportunity to drive more traffic to your website from your eBay listing. When an auction ends, can be very important as well. Most indicated they do not focus on ending an auction on any particular day of the week, but most schedule their auctions to end in the evening when the most bidders are online. One last type for eBaying your art is to make sure you have quality photos of your pieces in your listing. This is the only way a bidder has to interact with the piece, so the more photos the better and the photos need to accurately reflect the piece (not too dark, light, or off color). Hopefully this has peaked your interested into using eBay to market
your Raku. If you do not already have an account, you can easily open a
free one by clicking the link http://www.qksrv.net/click-411938-2202641 Once again I would like to thank the participants of the survey. Please visit their sites below: Zion Canyon Raku, Norman & Janet Prentice William K. Turner Warewolf (James) Orchard Pots Pauline Van Drent Shelley Cignoli Rod Sanata ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ . |
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Gary R. Ferguson - Raku Artist (c) Copyright 2006, Gary R. Ferguson |
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