What is Artfire? An Artist's Point-of-View

A few months ago, I'd never even heard of Artfire, but had already been a vested user of Etsy since 2008. Now after plenty of fiddling over at Artfire, I feel confident enough to talk about its usefulness for artists.

What is Artfire?

Like Etsy, Artfire is a community marketplace for handmade and vintage items who offers community forums, item collections, and groups to join. The main difference in philosophy being that Artfire allows you to plug external websites much more in your own listings and pages, unlike Etsy, which discourages such practices. The other difference is of course the fact Etsy is far more entrenched with greater press coverage.

Artfire is catching up, though! If their constant marketing campaigns, helpful articles, and numerous twitter accounts is any indication of how much they're putting into making their site known. They also offer their members discounts at CHA (Craft and Hobby Association) and VIP discount cards at Joanns Fabrics (10% off regular and sale price items)!

Selling on Artfire

Much like Etsy, artists can post listings of items, sort them into browsing categories, and find buyers for their handicrafts. Where Artfire differs in this respect is that listings have no expiration date. A user must 'check in' at Artfire to keep their listings higher up in the search results, which weeds out the people who post listings and leave them there without maintaining them.

- Prints and Fabricated Art Items
Another quirk of AF I've found is that if you're selling art prints, cards, or any other pre-printed open edition item utilizing your art, they have to be a run of 500 or less while Etsy hasn't set a number, to my knowledge. This isn't much of a problem for me, however, as I'd be happy to even reach that amount of sales per item!  With the number of open edition prints listed on AF, however, I suspect this policy isn't heavily enforced.

- Seller Invoice System
AF boasts a pretty full featured invoicing system for sellers, including itemized invoices where you can check off each stage of payment, packing, and shipping as it happens with a field to enter an item's tracking number. This number is automatically emailed to your customer when you enter it, making these invoices pretty handy for taking care of your customer all in one place!

- Feedback and Non-Member Buyers
One big difference between Etsy and AF's way of handling transactions is the fact that AF also encourages you to do what you need to do to make a sell, meaning customers don't need to have an AF account to buy! They can simply use AF's shopping cart feature. This means you don't get feedback or karma from the transaction, but that doesn't seem terribly important on this site, despite the fact users can still leave detailed feedback on your shipping, quickness, item quality, etc. Because there's no final value fee taken out when a sale is made, it's easy enough to cancel the order and relist with no loss of money, should you have trouble with a non-paying buyer.

- Promotional Coupons

Another extremely useful feature of AF is the ability to create promotional codes. While you can do this on Etsy, Etsy restricts your coupon codes to only a certain percentage off or free shipping. AF's coupon code functionality is more robust with the ability to tailor your coupons to a percentage off and free shipping, but also allows you to apply coupons to seller-defined studio groups and price ranges, the order total, or even specific items. Coupon codes are also another premium member feature.

- Other Useful Features
If you're a user of Etsy, AF makes it easy to download your CSV file from Etsy and import all of your items with only a few tweaks required! This is a premium member feature, however.  You can also batch edit your listings, move them en masse to new categories, and take advantage of a detailed vacation mode that allows you to leave your items up, but auto-responds with your 'away' message. Unlike Etsy, which simply hides your items completely from listings until you disable it.  There's also a 'sales mode' that allows you to discount everything in your shop at once.  Sales mode and vacation mode are both non-premium features!

Crunching Numbers

Another major difference between Artfire and Etsy is the fee structure. Artfire charges a flat monthly fee (I pay $5.95 thanks to a beta deal I got, but standard pro rate is $9.95 as of this entry) while Etsy charges 20 cents per listing for 3 months and takes 3.5% of your final sale's value. If you're hosting a large amount of items, AF can be really useful for keeping costs down each month.

As for sales numbers, I've noticed a greater number of handmade craft items and cards selling here rather than my prints and original art, but it's still great to get the exposure on my artwork along with everything else. I have a feeling that as I grow my shop and become more entrenched in this community, these sales proportions will change!

Customization

One thing I absolutely love about AF is the ability to customize the color theme and style of our shop pages! I've included a screenshot of mine below. Most of the customization is, again, a premium member feature.

See my Artfire shop in action!

See my Etsy shop in action!

Final Thoughts

Rather than choose one community over the other, it's easy enough for me to maintain both my Etsy AND Artfire shops with AF's import feature!  The amount of sales I've made via both communities have made them well worth investing my time in and will only continue to increase their usefulness as another means of income the longer I use them.

Interested in joining up as a premium member at Artfire? Use my referral link! We'll both get a free month plus be entered into a drawing for a free DSLR camera for both of us!♥

Become an ArtFire Pro with this link and get your 3rd month free!

I'm also a member of the Artfire Fantasy Guild, so drop on in and say hello!  I'd love to see some familiar faces there.:)

eBay vs Etsy - Which better serves the Artist?

So you've finally got enough artwork to want to try and sell some to others, you've finally braved that dangerous copyright void that is the net, and you've finally decided it's time to try out the e-market. It's almost a given that in trying to find a place to sell your work online, you've run into the names eBay and Etsy.

For those who haven't heard of them, here's a quick rundown of what they are:

eBay, The World Marketplace - eBay is the most popular auction style marketplace on the web. It offers you the ability to put up just about any kind of item you can think of for auction for a small listing fee. eBay serves international audiences as well, with several sister sites dedicated to specific countries.

Etsy - The Homemade Marketplace - Etsy is newer than eBay, but has grown in popularity recently due to the latest reports of success of its members. Unlike eBay, however, this online marketplace is dedicated to all things handmade (or suppliers of things to aid in the process of crafting things) and is not auction driven, but utilizes fixed price listings. As long as you have a credit card, you can sell on Etsy, no matter your country of origin. By handcrafted, I mean jewelry, artwork, sculpture, etc which are made by hand.

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The Pros & Cons of Ebay

Personally, I only occasionally use eBay to auction off random original art, ACEO's (which are something of a fad on eBay right now), and ladder style commission auctions. I do not recommend the eBay Shop feature unless you are sure you can offload a high volume of art (see my eBay Shop review).

eBay has changed a lot since its inception. Nowadays, it's far easier to sell artwork than it used to be thanks to their new policies. Here are some things to think about if you're considering selling your art on eBay.

Pros

Cheap Listings & Image Features - The latest selling policies at eBay allow a seller to post five free listings a month. You only pay the final value fee IF your item sells. Also, you can add free gallery images to your listings in the art categories as well.

High Volume of Visitors - Being the world's largest online marketplace means you are naturally bound to get views on your auctions. You never know who's looking when. However, this is a double-edged sword (see Cons)

Cons

Payment Scams - Within the first few weeks of using eBay recently, I had an issue with people trying to scam others on eBay using my name and email (via the eBay messaging system) (these problems were solved, but still annoying). There's also a high amount of payment fraud going around involving checks and money orders, which eBay no longer allows as a payment method for the Art categories. You must have Paypal, Propay, or other payment methods set up in order to accept payment on Ebay.

Getting Lost in the Crowd - It's easy to get lost in the crowd unless you have exceptionally stand out work. Again, you never know who's looking, despite the high amount of competition. Someone might see your work and connect with it regardless of others which are up for sale.

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The Pros & Cons of Etsy

I have become a more avid user of Etsy, of late, due to its cheap listing fees and heartfelt community. When you buy something on Etsy, there's a warm fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing that each item was lovingly hand-crafted by an artist such as yourself. There's a great artist-to-artist atmosphere with an administration that really seems to care about what we think as users.

Etsy has filled the void that I had when I closed my eBay Shop. I can post here without worrying about the next subscription fee that may or may not be covered by my sales. They're a relatively new site with a bright future ahead of them.

Pros

Cheap Listings & Advertisement - You don't get free listings like you do with eBay, but at 20 cents for a 3 month listing, the investment risk is minimal. I can maintain my entire shop's worth of necklaces and art for $10 or less every 3 months. Also, if I want added publicity, I only need to pay $7 for a Showcase that features my art at the front page browsing for the specific category I choose to showcase.

Fun Widgets - Etsy allows you to link from your websites and blogs with widgets that display thumbnails of your items in a nifty little bar. This doesn't seem like much to some, but the ability to cross-link is powerful! Especially when it's done in such an attractive way.

Cons

Low Capacity on Advertisement Slots - Nearly every time I've tried to buy a jewelry Showcase, the slots have been filled. It seems near impossible to buy a slot in some categories due to the low capacity of slots available.

Relatively Low Traffic - Compared to eBay, you're pandering to a much smaller niche audience of lower numbers. Most of the customers I've had on Etsy so far bought items because they already knew me from DeviantART, or randomly found me whilst searching Etsy for a gift or Halloween accessory. The amount of visitors here is lower, but again, you never know who is out there looking on the net! I am still building my presence on Etsy, as well.

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Which One is Better?

It all depends on what you want to sell. eBay has more viewers, but art (fantasy art in particular) does not sell well there currently unless you are selling it for less than $100. In some cases, art can sell for more, particularly for those who have already built up a following outside of eBay and believe their art is investment-grade (generally of the fine art genre).

Etsy is a better solution for the artists who sell in smaller volumes and who want an audience who understands that their items are handcrafted and therefore aren't meant to be given away for a cheap price. Etsy is also more cost-effective for a storefront type of setting.

In the end, why not use both? I plan to start utilizing my 5 free auctions a month to auction off original art just for the free publicity while still maintaining my Etsy and personal web shop as my main outlets.

The key to art marketing and e-commerce is to combine your efforts to create the most effective results. I highly recommend trying both sites to see how they can work together for your art!

eBay Shop Review

Back in 2001 or so, I got wind of eBay shops, tried it for a little while, and then gave up when it didn't seem like I was getting many bites at all. At that stage in my development, I chocked it up to not having enough quality inventory nor much presence on the internet in general. The fees proved too much and I was simply not selling enough to cover the $15 a month bill.

8 years later I decided to try eBay shops again in December of last year. I had built up a decent inventory of art since my first try and had several communities and websites to my name to promote the shop at. eBay shops had improved much in my absence, such as a greater ability to organize your inventory, greater search engine compatibility, cross promotion capabilities, and the integration of Store search results with eBay's main search page (which was one of its main failings previously). Another handy feature is the ability to export sales reports and integrate the eBay shop with organizational software. There are definitely a few more bells and whistles than it had during its infancy.

In the three months I've used it, I've gotten a few inquiries on items, but never sales. I tried customizing my options with the Bold higlighting as well as the international listing option which allows my items to be seen by eBayers in the UK. I got plenty of views, but still no bites even with proper cross-promotion from my other websites. Meanwhile, the wracked up fees from listing my inventory and auctions plus the $15 for maintaining the shop produced a $30 drain per month rather than merely a $15. Add onto that the 12% commission eBay would take out of my final sales and you have a store that eats profits rather than creates them.

The Bottom Line: eBay shops seems best suited for those of you who may be able to move items faster (ie. if you sell collectible items, cosplay, or other in-demand things), therefore making the monthly drain not so detrimental. The interface is customizable with lots of features, but the majority of your pageviews come from active Auctions and not standing inventory (at least in my experience with Shops).

From my time with eBay Shops, it seems to me that to make a shop work successfully, you must keep both a regiment of active auctions and an in-demand inventory, something which is hard to do if your inventory is in less of a demand and you are not producing work for auction monthly. It is a good alternative if you can move items quickly and don't want to deal with the headache of programming inventory pages yourself, but not recommended for those with slower high priced luxury inventory like fine art unless your name just has that much demand behind it and you have the budget to support the shop.

For now, I've decided to focus on revamping my website store with the free shopping cart Mal-E, which integrates Paypal, Google Checkout, and other useful payment methods so that my website becomes the one stop shop for personalized items rather than eBay. (EDIT 1-21-2015: I have since moved my site onto a Wordpress CMS and am using the WooCommerce plugin, which has been a great free e-commerce solution thus far!)

 I still plan to post eBay auctions at random per month to give people a chance at acquiring originals and commissions for less and to draw traffic to my website store, but my shop on eBay is closing indefinitely this time unless their fees decrease and their benefits increase.

I welcome any comments from those of you who have eBay shops that are actually operating at a profit. Please share your stories and advice!

Till next time, keep your creative spirit strong!