Auction or Buy Now. Which do you prefer and Why?

The Business of Selling Art Other Business Stuff
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I joined DPW in January and so far have only used ‘Buy it Now’ (@carolmarine clarification: with PayPal links - not with an auction). Does anyone have hints and tips for the ‘Auction’ process please?

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I sell with both, the auction slightly less $ than I want, and the buy now at a bit higher $. I almost always have auction sales.

DPW has an ‘Auctions’ tab right at the top of the front page, buyers can click that and see current auctions scrolling through, auctions just added and auctions ending soon. (That’s close anyway.)

So you get more exposure than you otherwise would when you also use auctions. If you use only buy it now, you have to have new art daily to be on the front page and the daily email. Unless someone puts in a search term or artist name and you come up that way. So…a lot of blah blah blah to say that auctions=more exposure. :smile:

Have you read through the help articles on DPW? I highly recommend! I’m sure I can learn more too.

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Thank you Sunny. I do post a new painting on DPW every day but I may well ‘have a go’ at the auction then and see what happens. I did read the help articles when I joined but have now re-read to refresh my memory.

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I don’t really have any special tips, just what I’m seeing from my experience. Most of the times I list a new work in an auction first and set up “Buy It Now.” Every one of my sales here so far were with Buy It Now, I guess my customers don’t have much patience :slight_smile: I agree with Sunny, Auction does get you a bit more exposure, but I also have an Etsy store for my art and keeping my work tied up in an auction here for 3 weeks with occasional views does not seem like a very good idea, so I started making shorter auctions and then add the paintings to my Etsy store and point to them from DPW. Etsy does seem to get some views from seach every day, so I don’t want to miss that. Overall, the best thing is just listing as often as you can, that does bring some people to the gallery and then they might like the earlier work.

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Thank you Lana. Good to know what other people experience.

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Most of my small, unframed work is auctioned. Not framed pieces because the opening bid would be too high and discourage sales. I work in watercolor so framing (archival mats, glass, backing, shipping) is considerably more than a single frame for oils/acrylics. I do get email questions on prices but have never sold one here.

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