I only made one sale in September and that was at the very end of the month. It “sold” for a lousy 30 bucks and it turned out to be a non-paying bidder. I marked other paintings as sold but they didn’t sell from DPW. Hard to believe the only sale in a month, and it’s “sold” to a deadbeat bidder. No communication…no payment.
Well I guess I"m the only unfortunate schmuck that gets them.
No Bob, you’re not the only one. It has happened to me and I’m sure to a lot of others. I’ve had it happen a couple of times, though not last month and never on DPW. What can I say? Stuff happens. We just have to roll with it and move on.
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What gets me is when I have a commission completed and ready to go and the person either never shows up or shows up months and months later. I feel like charging them for storage. But it burns me when it’s a commission. Stuff I post up on DPW is work I’ve done all for myself. If it sells, great. Otherwise I’m happy to keep it hanging on my own wall or in my portfolio…
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I do believe that you can “Mark” the non-payer on the page where your work is managed (Edit, mark as sold, etc.) This stops them from bidding again until they pay you. Also, have you tried contacting Dave? I believe when you first receive the email notification that your painting has sold, on it is a way to let Dave know of the non-payment.
About the $ 30. sale price…that is why I really don’t have anymore auctions. I’m limiting what work of mine is on etsy in hopes of working with my collector email list and my own website. - Brande
Have you not noticed that attempting to sell art is a dubious enterprise. The last item someone might purchase will be art, it is below the bottom of the necessity list. Many “visitors” to the DPW site may very well be other artists and of those others, potential buyers who do visit very few, two or three people in one hundred might purchase an item and often at as low a price as they can find. Art is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, the rest is fantasy.
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Brande, I would like to do that too. The only thing is, when I raise my prices, I never again see another bid or buy. The choices I have are either selling cheaper than I want or to keep brushing off the cobwebs off my paintings.
I’m learning more about marketing though, but it’s very complicated and time consuming.
Peter, You hit the nail on the head. I’m starting to realize more and more though that you have to get your own buyers to your auctions or sales. I’m working on that now, learning more about instagram, facebook and other social media. The question we have to answer for ourselves though is do you want to make sales on your own site or use an art selling site. There are different options, one being that you can use different art selling sites for a marketing tool or sell directly on it.
I never had an luck with Etsy. i hvae an account there but it’s rare that anything sells there. A question just occurred to me. I wonder if on DPW, that you can point your art to your own blog or website from here or are the options just "buy through email’ , Ebay or Etsy. Anyone know the answer to that?
Sure, you can point the DPW page for a piece of art to your own page. Just paste the URL you want people to go into the Buy URL field in your Art Tracking grid. I have some URLs pointing to eBay, some to Etsy, some to Vangoart and some to other places.