Market Slow Down?

I sold another one since raising prices I guess I will stick it out. :+1:

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Thank you for this feature! I like to see percentages of types of work sold.

what other sites are you on

My own website www.sonjasandell.com for my mixed media ā€œFunked Up Artā€ ā€¦I have an Etsy shop for my craft Hickety Pickety pattern business.

Further to my own thoughts on studying the monthly sales statsā€¦I am beginning to see where I am wasting my time. Much as I love pastels, they form a tiny portion of the overall sales here. Oils are running at over 60%, followed by acrylics (looking at the January stats)ā€¦in other words, the ā€œbrushā€ approach. Most other media seem to be struggling. A different game-plan is probably needed but thatā€™ll take time.

@microdaisy

Maybe, maybe not. Beware of Survivorship Bias.

From the article:
ā€œYou must remind yourself that when you start to pick apart winners and losers, successes and failures, the living and dead, that by paying attention to one side of that equation you are always neglecting the other. If you are thinking about opening a restaurant because there are so many successful restaurants in your hometown, you are ignoring the fact that only successful restaurants survive to become examples. Maybe on average 90 percent of restaurants in your city fail in the first year. You canā€™t see all those failures because when they fail they also disappear from view. As Nassim Taleb writes in his book The Black Swan, ā€œThe cemetery of failed restaurants is very silent.ā€ Of course the few that donā€™t fail in that deadly of an environment are wildly successful because only the very best and the very lucky can survive. All you are left with are super successes, and looking at them day after day you might think itā€™s a great business to get into when you are actually seeing evidence that you should avoid it.ā€

Oils are probably the most popular HOWEVER the stats on sales of media would only be 100% accurate as to preference if all media were represented equally. If there were the same number of pieces in each media for sale then you could see which sold more. There are more oils for sale than any other media so naturally there will be more sales of oils. So do what you love, do it very well, and stay happy.

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Wow! I have never looked at it that way!

FWIW, hereā€™s a little more perspective on the stats. These numbers are based on the current inventory and Nov-Dec sales:

Oil ā€“ 57% of inventory, 57.5-62.4% of sales
Acrylic ā€“ 18% of inventory, 24.7- 25.1% of sales
Pastel ā€“ 4% of inventory, 2.7-3% of sales

So things sell more or less proportionately to whatā€™s offered, with pastel sales only slightly lower.
Hereā€™s a sadder one: currently only 1.4% of auctions have bids, and in any given month, 1% or less of the total inventory sells.

Did DPW auctions at one time receive a higher percentage of bids than they do now? Iā€™ve only been a member for a little over a month. And didnā€™t even know about DPW until I joined.

Before joining DPW I searched quite extensively trying to find a place that offers flat artwork onlyā€¦ DPW was the best site I personally found. Iā€™m still in doubt that my funky style of art is a good fitā€¦because obviously DPW is geared more towards fine artā€¦ which mine definitely is the extreme opposite of that.

I was hoping with the artist membership being really quite large on DPW and with everyone hopefully marketing their DPW gallery that there would be a larger customer base. I would think that 1% of all auctions getting bids would be quite lowā€¦???

Looking forward to knowing what others think that have been on here longer than myself.

Sonja/Funked Up Art

My guess is that online art sales are down across the board. Different sites may have different markets; for most of whatā€™s here, I donā€™t know that anywhere else would be better than DPW. I doubt anyone else posts their stats the way David has.

I was quite surprised by the numbers you came up with and thank you for sharing them! And I agree with everything you said here.

I see the same thing happening that you do. I am also a senior and wondering if I should keep paying a monthly fee when sales and visits to this site are almost non existent. I also have started putting some work on Art Finder but no sales there. Maybe I will try Ebay. I have noticed that some of the artists selling more often on Art Finder are selling inthe about $40.00 range and small paintings. Also seems like many everywhere are almost giving their paintings away.

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What I cannot understand is I am getting an incredible amount of viewsā€¦the last one was a graphite of a Clydesdale and it drew over 100 views in one 24 hour period. One would think a bid would come out of thatā€¦but no. Iā€™m back on Ebay and only using DPW to advertise my Ebay auctions. All my recent sales are almost all from Ebay. Kind of a sad state. Something has happened and something has changed and it started mid-2016 to present. I wish David would look into what it possibly could be.

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I suspect DPW is viewed by artists more so than buyers of art

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Pat, is eBay working for you? Iā€™ve had some sales, albeit very low $$ sales, on Ebay in the past. Tried recently & nothing. Just curious what your experience is over there.

I used to have a good following on ebay then it all changed around 2007 and I left there after awhile. Iā€™m just getting back now and sold a large group of Christmas ACEOs but for very little money. This morning i made a nice sale there on a set of wooden nesting dolls I paint and auction off. Ebay does not charge you to list. You can list 50 to sometimes 100 auctions without paying an insertion fee. You will, however, pay a final value fee on sales. I like to put my Ebay items on DPW and also on sites like Twitter - it all helps. On Facebook I belong to several artist groups and thatā€™s another place where I can promote my artwork.

You definitely have to lower your prices on Ebay and promote as much as you can but sales there are paying my DPW bill lately! So I canā€™t complain.

I have been considering small paintings at $10.00 a pop to create a following. How where your sales at 10 for a painting?

Thank you for sharing this. I am trying to supplement my retirement too.

How much are you charging to mail them?