Selling on eBay

I won't lie to you, I found that selling my first drawing at the Beach Festival was addictive. With no events coming up where the group could exhibit/sell any pictures in the foreseeable future, I decided to have a go at selling on eBay.

I've sold a few different items on eBay in the past, so listing a picture seemed relatively straightforward. Choosing which to sell was a little more tricky. At first, I wasn't confident enough to try to sell a painting, so I listed another of my old faithful charcoal drawings.

Basically, I really like old fashioned methods of transport - steam engines, trams, buses, and I thought that it would be worth seeing if there was any interest. I listed it, and .  .  . it didn't sell. The thing about eBay, though, is that it will automatically re-list an item that doesn't sell, and in the second week, this one was bought. 

Now, selling your art on eBay does have some drawbacks, it seems to me. In no particular order: -

* There is a LOT of competition. If you list a piece of artwork, it takes a few minutes for the listing to go live. Once the listing goes live, it only takes a couple of minute for enough new items to be listed to force yours right down the page. So it can be very difficult to get your work noticed by people who might conceivably want to buy it.

* I wouldn't exactly call eBay an electronic car boot sale, but like a car boot sale, a large number of people are looking for bargains. It's worth having a good look at the prices other pieces of artwork are going for. Put in simple terms, you're not going to get rich by selling your art on eBay. 

But that was okay, since I was more interested in seeing if people liked my artwork enough to buy it, rather than to make stacks of cash from it. Emboldened by this success, and mindful of the fact that the first drawing I sold was a locomotive, I listed this sketch of the Southern Railway Merchant Navy Class locomotive "Clan Line"

In all fairness it is probably not quite as well executed as the 9F, but whatever the reason it didn't sell.  This was a bit of a shame since by this time I'd sketched a few other pictures which I might well have tried to sell: -

Southern Railway - Lord Nelson

B Type Bus

British Railways Tank Engine

Actually, if you look at these three pictures they do illustrate a point about equipment and materials. The first one, the Lord Nelson picture, was carried out on a page from a cheap sketchbook. The paper is coarser yet thinner, and as a result, when I blended the charcoal the effect was to make it all grainy and murky. Now, this actually worked well for a couple of other sketches, but was, in my opinion, totally wrong for this. The other drwings on this page were made using the same charcoal pencils, but on premium quality paper. 

Well, that's not quite the end of the story as regards selling on eBay. By mid December 2015 I found the number of paintings I'd made was really starting to proliferate. So, as much to clear the decks as anything, and bearing in mind it was a tram I'd managed to sell previously, I listed this painting of a Blackpool tram: -

I listed this with a starting price at which I didn't mind selling, but also with a Buy It Now price. It received one offer. The buyer, a lovely chap from Liverpool, was most apologetic, saying that he never expected to win it with his first offer, and that he'd been prepared to pay more. Well, there you go, that's the way the cookie crumbles. At least it gave me a tiny bit more space, and a little cash to buy a few more supplies, and that's how I suggest you look upon selling on eBay - a way of decluttering and making a bit of pin money in the process.