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 | Pricing Strategies for Selling Art
| Earning top dollar for your art -- that's the goal. Use these pricing strategies to make that goal a reality.
#1 Market Intelligence: Use eBay's Completed Items feature in Advanced Search to create your own market-pricing guide. Save up to 15 Competed Item searches to your my eBay page to track prices realized for your property daily. Receive email alerts as new completed items appear.
#2 Competitive Advantage: Leverage eBay's powerful set of my eBay search tools to track competing sellers and stores. Take a daily inventory of what competing sellers are listing, using the Favorites tab. Distinguish yourself by listingwhat they're not. Learn more.
#3 Proper Positioning: Before listing,evaluate what type of item you are selling. Is it a truly exceptional, market-proven work of art, a mid-range estate item, or lower-priced print? Then, select the most appropriate listing format for your item. For example:
- List high-end items as auctions. If eBay prices are strong, list without a reserve and include "NR" in your listing title. Also, quote the appraised value and reference favorable completed auctions in your description.
- List mid-range pieces as auctions with a Buy It Now price but no reserve. Open at a median price to protect your investment. Earn a higher margin with the Buy It Now. The goal: quick turnover at an acceptable price. Include "NR" in your listing title.
- Liquidate lower-end objects or sell consignor inventory with the Fixed Price format. Include the appraised value in your listing title. Quote the appraised price in your description. Create a "Liquidation" category in your Store. Example: Art4Sale.com.
#4 Cost Analysis: Assess what your costs would be if you had a retail shop or gallery. Compare them to your online expenses to determine how much you should be investing in promotion and product discounts to drive increased sales.
Higher antique sales—they're easier than you think.
Have a suggestion for a future Art article -- let us know!
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Art Liquidation Tip
When is the best time to liquidate? This is a question business owners deal with frequently. If you are sitting on inventory that has been taking up important storage space, consider liquidating these slow movers to make room for new merchandise.
Consider the benefits:
- Reclaim Space: Make room in your warehouse or store for summer and fall inventory.
- Increase Capital: Boost cash flow for investment in holiday product.
- Generate Customers: Broaden your customer base with value-oriented shoppers.
- Enhance Brand: Reduce dated inventory that tarnishes your brand image.
- Improve Process: Introduce reliable seasonal sales and marketing strategies.
Use these eBay strategies to liquidate inventory quickly and economically:
- Open Low, No Reserve: Increase bids, turnover. Open at $1 without a reserve price.
- Buy It Now: Reduce overstock fast; get paid sooner. Let customers buy immediately.
- Fixed Price: Lower sales costs. Offer multiples of an item in a single listing at one price.
- Good 'Til Cancelled: Avoid relisting. List overstock in your Store as GTC items.
- Store Merchandising: Create a "Liquidation" category in your Store.
- Sale Titles: Build interest. Include "Special," "Blowout," "50% Off," in listing titles.
- Liquidation Listing: Protect new product. Create an off-price listing template. Compare the original value to your rebate price.
You bought it, but you're not stuck with it. Liquidate to move the old and make room for the new!
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Increase Your Art Sales with Item Specifics
Get noticed! Use Item Specifics in the Sell Your Item form to help prospective art buyers find your items more quickly and easily. Your business will directly benefit from Item Specifics -- eBay research indicates Item Specifics increases conversion rates and closing prices by more than 10%*.
Item Specifics are standard attributes that art sellers use to describe their items. By utilizing this feature, sellers make it easier for buyers to find the exact piece of art they want.
Here's how Item Specifics works:
- Complete the Item Specifics fields in the Art category SYI form. You set the following attributes:
- Type: Drawing, Mixed Media, Painting, Poster, Print...
- Age: Pre-1900, 1900-1959, 1950-Now...
- Subject: Abstract, Figures, Landscapes, Nudes, Still lifes...
- Dominant Color: Blue/Purple, Grey/Black, Neutral/Earthtones, Red/Pink...
- Largest Dimension: Less than 6", 6-12", 12-24", 24-40"...
- Region: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America...
- When buyers search using the Art category's Product Finder, your listings are included in the search results. You have successfully increased your item's exposure.
- The item specifics you defined also are included in your View Item page, allowing buyers to quickly learn about your item.
Best of all, Item Specifics is free. There's nothing to lose!
To learn about the most popular buyer attribute searches, click here.
* This represents an average based on data from June 2002 transactions. No representation is made that the final price or conversion rate of a specific item will increase by the average percentages noted above.
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 | artantiques (193), ArtAntiques
Using a Traditional Auction Approach
| Fine art PowerSeller Graham Harvey has embraced online selling, but he still likes to create a traditional auction experience with each of his eBay listings.
"We know how an auction should be run as we are constantly at auction houses around the world," reports Graham Harvey, technical director at artantiques, which sells a variety of paintings from its extensive collection as well as from the private collections of its clients and various estates.
Bringing a live-auction ambiance to eBay certainly makes artantiques' listings stand out. For starters, there's an abundance of high-quality images, including close-ups of the work, its frame, and the artist's signature, allowing would-be buyers to truly evaluate the painting's value and authenticity, as if they were reviewing a glossy auction catalog. "The more pictures that you can provide the more likely you'll sell the artwork," notes Harvey.
Harvey also gives his listings that traditional flavor by referencing "prices realized" for the artist's work from previous sales at high-profile auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's. His eBay buyers can then compare these hammer prices to the work's appraised price, provided by Harvey's in-house appraiser. (It's important to note that Harvey's reserves are always lower than his appraised price to provide collectors with a low wholesale price.) And like auction house catalogs, artantiques' listings detail each painting's provenance and mention any scholarship on the artist, further validating its appraised price.
But what's perhaps most notable about artantiques' eBay presence is its use of a professional appraiser, Anthony Capodilupo, who is also Harvey's partner. Each auction invites buyers to review artantiques' About Me page, which features a comprehensive overview of Capodilupo's credentials and experience. Moreover, winning bidders receive a certified appraisal with their purchase.
According to Harvey and Capodilupo, the addition of the service has helped spur sales and instills confidence in potential customers.
"If the seller is qualified to prepare an appraisal, it should be provided with the value supported by market data," adds Capodilupo. "Long term relationships between art buyers and sellers can only occur when a customer can depend upon a seller's integrity and good service."
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Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
