| Should you sell the products you make on eBay? This type of business is not for every manufacturer or artist, that's true. Read on to learn the pros and cons. Pros for Manufacturers There are some significant potential benefits for manufacturers selling their products direct to consumers via eBay. These include It's a newnot a replacementsales channel. The bit about eBay supplementing your existing sales also applies if you're a manufacturer. eBay sales should augment your traditional sales channels, not replace them. You're already in the business of selling your products. If you're a manufacturer, you already sell your stuff. True, you probably due it with a force of salespeople, but still. Who knows better than you the benefits of the products you selland who better to sell them? It's a way to move merchandise you might not sell otherwise. Manufacturers love eBay as a way to move overstocked, closeout, returned, and damaged merchandise. Think of eBay as the ultimate online outlet store. It's better than throwing all that old merchandise away!
In short, the biggest plus for any manufacturer selling on eBay is that it's an addition to your current businessif you do it right. Cons for Manufacturers That said, product manufacturers should think twice before establishing eBay as a new sales channel. In particular, consider the following: Your products might not be conducive to online consumer sales. Some products sell well online, direct to consumers; some don't. What you produce might not be a good fit with the eBay marketplace. Your business might not be set up for direct-to-consumer sales. If you currently ship large orders to a few accounts, you may not be equipped to handle small orders from a lot of accounts. Do you have the staff on hand to process all these onesie and twosie orders? Is your warehouse equipped to ship small boxes? Do you have arrangements with shipping companies to ship items to residential addresses? Don't take any of these operations for granted; if you haven't done it before, it won't be easy. You may generate channel conflict. Retailers don't want to compete with their suppliers. If you start selling the same products direct to consumers that you formerly sold via two- or three-step distribution, you're not going to win a lot of friends. You may end up losing more business from your established distribution/retailer partners than you gain from selling direct via eBay.
You have to realize that selling direct to consumers is a much different process than selling to consumers via distributors and retailers. The extra revenue may be enticing, but the costs involvedmonetary and otherwisemay be too steep. And don't minimize the issue of channel conflict; you don't want to damage your existing business by opening a new sales channel on eBay. Make sure you think this one completely through before you take the leap. Pros for Artists and Craftspeople If you create your own artwork or crafts, what benefits do you get by selling your work on eBay? Here are a few of the things that artists like about this particular type of business: You get to sell what you know and love. If you're an artist, what's better than getting paid to do what you love? You create your work, you sell it; not a lot of research involved. It's a nice way to make a living. It's not truly competitive. Unlike most other types of eBay businesses, when you're selling original artwork and crafts, you're selling unique itemsso unique that buyers can't price-shop between you and another artist. Your work is one-of-a-kind, so there's no direct competition with other artists. It increases your exposureand potential future sales. When an artist lists her work on eBay, she's showing it to millions of potential buyers all across the country. Even if these folks don't buy anything today, they may buy something tomorrowincluding higher-priced commission work. It's an adjunct to the traditional ways of selling. If you're already a successful artist, selling on eBay is gravy. It's a year-round business that sits on top of your existing sales.
In short, if you've never sold your products or artwork on eBay, what's the harm in trying? Cons for Artists and Craftspeople Then again, selling your own artwork and crafts on eBay isn't all milk and honey. Let's take a quick look at the challenges involved: You may be disappointed in the selling prices. Know that artwork doesn't always command high prices at auction. Original art goes for higher prices than prints, but it's still a buyer's market. eBay tends to be more for bargain hunters than art lovers, so reaching a sufficient volume of work will be important. eBay is a mass marketnot an art gallery. eBay is not for hoi polloi. Highly stylized, "arty" work doesn't always sell that well; paintings of cute cats and dogs do. Depending on your style and sensibility, this may not be the best venue for you. You may not create enough work to feed your business. If you're an artist, don't count on a lot of five-figure sales on eBay. Most eBay artists sell a lot of lower-priced works. If you're not that fast a worker, you may not be able to create enough pieces to feed a full-time eBay business. Packing and shipping artwork is a pain. I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Large paintings and heavy crafts pieces do not ship all that easily or cheaply. You may need to get creative on your packing, and make sure you charge enough to cover what could be expensive shipping charges.
For artists and craftspeople, there are some realities you have to face up to. Selling a piece at a local arts fair, where the buyer walks away with it in his hands, is one thing; packing and shipping that same item clear across the country is another. And when you're selling on eBay, you have to deal with the packing and shipping. If you can't handle the hassle, it's not for you. Selling on eBay also isn't for you if you think you're going to get rich quick. While you could (anything is possible...), you are more likely to end up selling a lot of lower-priced items. That isn't necessarily bad, as long as you didn't have your expectations set otherwise. Seller Spotlight: artchick48 Lee Smith is a 53-year-old self-taught artist who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. After 23 years of working for large corporations, she quit the corporate world in 1995 to focus on her painting. Since 2001, one of the primary outlets for her paintings is eBay. Lee offers both original paintings and prints on eBay, via normal auctions (using the ID artchick48) and through her eBay Store (stores.ebay.com/Lee-Smith-Art), shown in Figure 12.5. When she's able to work without interruption, she can produce up to 10 original paintings in as many days; realism takes more time, she says, so she may be able to paint two or three realistic works over the same 10-day period. To date she's sold almost 300 original paintings through eBay, with close to 100% sell-through. Her monthly sales range from $300 (when she's busy with other projects) to $1,000. Her highest-priced eBay sale was a painting that went for $460. Figure 12.5. Lee Smith's eBay Store. 
On eBay, one sale can often lead to multiple sales. Lee recalls one lady who won a small cat painting for $39 and then turned around and purchased another painting from her store for $250. Another customer, a gentleman in assisted living, won a small work for $31, and then shortly after ordered a commission oil portrait of his granddaughter. Another collector of her cat paintings went on to commission a total of eight paintings, one of each of her cats. eBay isn't the only venue for Lee's paintings. She has her own website (www.LeeSmithArt.com) and also participates in several local gallery exhibits and weekend shows each year. She has a long-term contract with a North Carolina gallery for designer and corporate works and a consignment contract with a South Carolina gallery that represents her folk art at various art festivals in the Atlanta and Charlotte areas. Lee notes that artist sellers are unique because they create the items they sell; time to produce ample inventory is the number one challenge. "Life gets in the way, sometimes," she notes. And one can't ignore the many hours of photography, marketing, packing, and shipping necessary to complete the auction process. She offers the following advice to other artists on eBay: "Research eBay to see if there's a market for your style of work. Have reasonable expectations according to your circumstances: family obligations, style, medium, and preferred method of working. Some artists may use 'formula' or assembly-line methods to produce high volume, or paint 16 hours a day to list 10 to 25 originals per week. Others who have just a few hours a day to create or spend weeks on one work may want to offer prints. As your sales increase, hire out the tedious tasks, the paperwork, accounting, photos, listings, packing, and shipping. The main thing is to be flexible, have patience, and most of all, continue to market your work in other venues." |
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