Internet DNA Podcast
The new season, we discuss the pro's and con's of selling on the different marketing platforms, Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, Facebook market place. Not to be too much of a spoiler, but as an artist it's hard! Learn what we learned, and find out a little about the Vikings while you're there.
Transcription
(this transcription is written by robots… so don’t be surprised!)
SHOULD I SELL ON AMAZON OR OTHER PLATFORMS AS AN ARTIST
Hello, and welcome to our new series of internet DNA. It's been a while and thank you, loyal listeners for hanging in there. It's good to be back this week. We are going to talk about selling on the big marketplace platforms. So Amazon Etsy, eBay, maybe even touching on Google shopping, who knows. I'm going to try and be positive about this.
So I much to the annoyance of my husband, I have loved buying on Amazon for many years because I just hate shopping. And I know that it's not good with all the vans and things, but I think if I've got to drive half an hour to go shopping, then it's no different from a van coming to me. But I know, I know, but I've always thought that it's been really easy.
It wasn't until I decided to sell on the platform that I started to realize a few things that I guess I'd sort of brushed under the carpet anyway, unless you want to jump in. Well, what were you trying to sell? So I wanted to sell art, which was an unusual thing to sell on Amazon, but I have always sold out through exhibition.
And it was a lockdown. So I thought, well, I know I knew that these platforms, you had to be much cheaper. If I changed my printing processes and I do more posters than fine art prints, I can get my cost down and sell on these. And I was drawn in by the fact that Amazon has something called Amazon handmade.
You ever heard of it?
Yeah I have heard of it, but not actually been involved with it because they go so amazing. So they're handmade. It's basically trying to take on Etsy but then they don't advertise it. No one that I, in my small focus group that I asked if they'd ever heard, they're like, What? No? So it doesn't come up in the searches very much.
Anyway, first of all, when you want to sell on these platforms, these days, you have to jump through the most incredible verification hoops. And that took a few different email addresses and a few being different people to finally get myself on there. They kept turning me down for, I don't know, I hadn't put my bank statement quite straight, or I had redacted the wrong something or other.
It was really, really tough. It took me months and they didn't really want to help. And it was quite confusing. So I've went through quite a long time getting on it.
And you're quite computer literate for people who are making handmade stuff. I would put you in the more computer literate part of that group.
And I found it really, really difficult.
And I had to do a lot of webinars and things just to understand how to sign up. And most of these onboarding experiences are click click. Done. So that was really tough. That would have put off a few people. And then admittedly putting your work onto the handmade side, wasn't that difficult? It's a horrible, clunky interface, but it wasn't so difficult.
So put it on there, but then nobody saw it at all. So then I thought, well, I will push it onto the main Amazon, because there seems to be art on the main Amazon. And it is really. Really difficult. It takes days and hours and you have to become basically an Amazon seller master the amount of hours I spent on this, the way that you have to put things on and the variants and then how they okay.
It and things is complicated. Unlike Etsy, which is beautiful and easy and quick, boom, boom. Done
So I'm going to ask a question.. why? Why Amazon? Etsy's already a well-known place for this sort of stuff. And eBay for all its failings. And I can go through plenty of those would seem like a more natural place than Amazon to try and sell hand crafted artwork.
I don't know. I just thought that other people were doing it and making lots of money. So why didn't I. What I didn't realize it was quite how low I'd have to go on costs. It's very degrading actually of your creative talent. And what I didn't know as well was it's quite expensive. If you're on handmade, you see, you don't have to pay a monthly fee, but if you're on the other one, you do.
But unless you do quite a lot of advertising, Amazon advertising, then you weren't show up on anything at all. So then you have to pay for the advertising. Which is another whole massive learning curve. And I ended up on webinars and things like that. So finally, I got it all up and running and I was exhausted and I thought Ta da! It's all going to work and it didn't, uh, I sold a few things.
Did you cover your costs?
No, I didn't spend huge amounts. I probably spent £150 £200 pounds in the end, but still as well, you have to be , unlike Etsy, which I will move on to. You are a slave to their rules. So you have to get things done in a certain time, in a certain way, and you have to accept things back free of charge, and you have to do this and you have to do that.
And it's very difficult actually to get reviews as well. The reason I carried on with it is because I was slightly like a terrier. Once I get going, I can't stop. I'm like, I've got to do this. It must work. It can see it's working for everyone else. Everyone else has got thousands and thousands of sales.
And I would love to hear from artists and other people who it's, you know, they are making vast amounts of money because there's obviously something I did wrong. And I agree Amazon probably isn't the place for art, but there are people selling a lot on Amazon. So what was it that I did wrong?
but what kind of art were they selling? Like I can understand jewellers or potters or enamellist that kind of thing.
I can understand that selling, but art prints in themselves, just Amazon wouldn't even enter my head as a place to go and buy art from.
I think the things that sell are quote posters, um, yeah. And very, very cheap. I don't know. Some people said, ah, so then I didn't give up. I realized that if you trademark your company, and this is how obsessed I got, this was lockdown.
If you trademark your company, then you could have a whole advertising area that no one else. And that's your trademark. You can't have being artists that aren't many trademark people. So there was one art company that was just there, bang at the top, like really in your face. So I have paid to trademark my company, my, my brand, which is quite exciting, actually.
I think with the add-ons it was about £220 pounds.
Do you get a little TM now.
Yeah, I do. I'm still waiting on that. So I stopped my advertising on Amazon, at which point everything drops. The wheezes that not only are you paying to be on Amazon, but you have to pay quite a lot for advertising. Otherwise you disappear.
So I am going to try one more time. With my great big trademark advertising and I will keep you posted and hopefully I'll come back with a glowing, ah, bingo. Got it.
I'm going to suggest to you that art, as in the sort of stuff that I see you do on your website is not necessarily the sort of stuff that would sell, but when you used to run that t-shirt business, you used to do a lot more.
Slogany or funny, and that stuff might sell better. Is it a case of it's the wrong product on the wrong place?
I think you're probably right. And I should have thought about this before I wasted lockdown, but what I found really interesting is I realized it's quantity over quality, obviously, and everyone is totally and utterly squeezed down on price, on delivery, on everything they have to do. You really do conform to the machine.. And for some people it's really working obviously, and that's fantastic and I'm really pleased. And, um, I do feel a little Pang of guilt. Now, as I buy on Amazon, I now try and go and buy on other websites because I feel that they might be getting more money from it.
It was quite interesting to understand how the machine worked and how clunky and what they've made you go through and how badly designed the UI of the admin is. It's shocking, but there you go. I didn't mean to start this new with a rant about how nobody likes my art, but there you go on a slightly happier note.
Etsy was fantastically, easy to put on. I get a lot of likes, interestingly as well. When I advertised, I've got some. But the moment I stopped advertising, I didn't get a sale. So, so that is an interesting one. And it made me think of a new avenue of art that I've gone into, which is quote posters. I haven't always, never quite liked them, but I've really enjoyed doing these.
I'm using gold foil block and they're quite fun. And I might go into cards and things. So it, it has
Have you done a disappointed a few people one yet?
No I haven't. There's one with a beautiful butterfly saying don't stress. Your time will come. So I've quite enjoyed what came out of the pain of doing this, which if I had had this conversation with you, prior to starting maybe I wouldn't have done it or maybe I would've done. Anyway.
The thing to take from it is you've learned a huge amount has given you a new way of looking at what you're producing for that market.
And actually, I always say to my children you don't learn anything from success. You learn from your failures, and that's a really important lesson you've learned about. what commercial art in that sense of Amazon actually requires.
I suppose what it's doing is it's reducing it to a product, a commodity isn't it, as opposed to a piece of art.
So interesting. And I didn't do eBay and I'm not going to do eBay, but have you sold on eBay? Is that a similar thing.
I buy and sell a lot on eBay. I mean, the thing that's really. Amazing about eBay is the difference of the experience as a buyer. Where you're fully protected. You send it back. If you don't like it, or you just don't like it and you get your money back.
The other side of that as a seller is a nightmare where you spend your whole life, either thinking I'm getting defrauded. And I sell a lot of computer components. My first couple were a disaster, where people would send me back a different CPU that was broken. So then you have to record the serial numbers and you realize that there are so many people out there just scamming all the time on eBay.
That's what they do. And so my first couple of sales on eBay, and then I stopped because I just saw, oh, this is ridiculous. I'm just getting scammed all the time.
And similar things. What you said to me, you're pretty tech savvy. I mean a lot of people, my goodness. Okay. So that's another angle, which I didn't get actually, but mainly because I hardly did any sales.
So you started again?
Then I started again, but I've learned, but you take a photograph of the serial number of the thing and you don't publish it as a public photo so that when E-bay go, oh, and you go, no, no, no, no. This is a different serial number because eBay by default just give the money back. The actual going through the dispute process is a complete nightmare because you're basically as a seller, it's assumed you are at fault.
It's really, really difficult. Now I got just hit early on. I think people realized I was a new seller and when you're a new seller, people target you more. That must be now I've got a lot of sales. The scammer people are probably going, okay, there's no point going for him because he's done it enough now where he'll have fallen for all of this stuff before.
And then it's the fees and the, you pay to list, then you pay to sell, then you're, you know, and you're going well, wait a minute, lost half my money just to E-bay
it's quite similar in Amazon. You have to be very, very careful the fees cause they really notch up and then there's delivery and then they just say, they're transparent. but the fees are quite high. But I agree buying on all these things is so wonderfully simple and nice and easy. And that's why everyone does it. So what positives have we got to say? Would you suggest to someone who was selling trinkets that you put on your wine glass? So, you know, it's yours. Would you say to them start up a website or would you say go on Amazon or eBay or Etsy?
I think it was one of the things I've really learned with eBay.
And it's really difficult to do is start the bid at 99p and don't put a reserve on it. It's one of the things that's really difficult, you know, you know that it's. 150 quid, you know, it's worth 200 quid and you're styling that bit at 99p and you're going, oh my God. You know, but actually what happens is people start betting on it and they then get invested in that product.
You know, I had a whole bunch of CPUs, all exactly the same. I put some on at 99p some on a hundred pounds. They're all worth £180, roughly. So a £100 is still cheap. I put some on where it was just buy it now for £180 the buy it now's sold when they sold the a hundred quid one actually only sold for £160.
And the one to two, I started at 99p sold for over 200 pounds. And that was amazing learning lesson, which. Actually, you have to get people invested in the product. There's that thing about bidding, where you get into this competitive desire for something, because you're now invested. You've gone back for five days and you've been a bit more and you've been a bit more, which is literally the worst way to bid on eBay.
The best thing to do is choose your price and bid in the last 10 seconds. And if you don't win it, you don't. And that's fine, but what actually happens is people bid and bid and bid, and you can watch them going up.
So actually probably you make more money on eBay than you do an Amazon.
Yeah. If you do it correctly, eBay you've got to learn how people bid, how people search, how to get your listing, looking really good compared to other peoples how to make it not look dodgy.
Yeah my listings look beautiful. Because I could use code. Well, I got the feeling now is that Amazon is for businesses, whereas eBay and Etsy and Depop and everything else is for the likes of you and me.
Well, I've got an acquaintance who sells, rucksack covers, and he buys 5,000 and maybe in four different colours.
From China and gets them shipped across and he sells them on Amazon and he says, he can almost not buy enough of them. They sell so many. And because he's literally just drop shipping straight through Amazon and getting prime.
That's the other thing you have to get the prime badge and to get the prime badge, you have to have them doing your delivery and that's a whole new thing.
So his, everything is managed for him. Basically.
And look, he's only making 50p on each one. But that’s £2,500.
That's the thing. It's the quantity. If you can get the quantity, that's why everything's so cheap because on a piece of artwork, you need to make quite a good margin on it. But if you're selling a hundred of them, then you don't need so much.
And I think that's the real thing to know about Amazon, especially is if you don't get the quantity, you are not going to make any money on it. And even when mine were really low the people that Amazon will go, well, maybe it's not cheap enough. And I was selling A3 art prints for like £11 pounds, I guess, the outcome or the takeaway from this is be really sure it is the right platform because you invest time and money
See I'd have naturally thought you were on Etsy, because that's the kind of place I would go if I was looking for.
And it's a lovely, easy platform to use. And I do get lots of likes. I probably should start the advertising again, but at least I'm getting feedback. There is no liking in Amazon.
So you don't even, yeah. You can see if people are viewed, but there's no interaction apart from the sale, which is w which is quite interesting where it was on Etsy. You feel well over time, I'm building up my likes, which means that, that my profile will get higher and that's helpful. And as an artist, it's slightly more reassuring than Amazon.
Which is a volume finding somewhere where you can get it produced really cheaply and delivered and sold at a price where other people can't compete. That's where the money is. I mean, selling bicycles through eBay has been interesting as well. A) there's a lot of stolen bikes on eBay. So you've got to make sure that you've got a backstory for it,
eBay sounds even worse than the others.
I think the worst one is probably Facebook marketplace.
I haven't been down that route actually. And I think I might not!
Well, if you're in an art group. Let's say you were in the Suffolk artists group, then maybe that would be a route for you to go into that marketplace. But I don't think that that's what people are buying on Facebook marketplace.
As far as I can see what they're doing is they're selling cars, washing machines, old bikes that no one, would ever want. And bits and pieces. I'm a member of some groups through my scale modelling because sometimes it's the only way to find things or get bits and pieces, but that looks like a proper nightmare to me, that Facebook marketplace.
And there seems to be no protections, all transactions done individually. Whereas at least with eBay as a buyer, you feel quite well-protected.
I thought Facebook were bringing in their own Facebook currency. for their marketplace.
Yeah coz everyone's going to buy that.
Mark Zuckerberg is the last person I would trust with my money just to talk about selling on eBay.
Plus you're selling on pink bike, which is a very bike specific place. Now you got a better price on eBay but you constantly have this fear of someone going, oh, I didn't like the bike I'll have my money back, whereas pink bike, because it's all bikers and other people who are into bikes, you won't get as good a price because it's people who know what they're buying but on the other hand, I find the transactions are a lot easier because people know what they're buying and it's a community.
So the community, I think is the interesting part. And you're saying maybe not Facebook, but on Etsy, I felt like the customers were. Willing me to succeed. They wanted me to do well, and they were appreciative of me putting stuff on there.
Whereas I didn't feel that on Amazon at all, it felt faceless, completely faceless in a weird way. And I wonder if that's the same with eBay and pink bike.
eBay's not as faceless as Amazon, because when you go to Amazon, you think you're buying off a big faceless corporation. Whereas with at least with eBay, there's an understanding that you are buying or off of human beings.
And then with pink bike, y'all got an understanding you're buying off other bikers. Now, probably with Etsy you've got that extra feeling of your supporting artists and creative people.
That's interesting. Isn't it? It's the sites that I really are a community that, that feel better. There are lots of other art ones that have popped up that are quite interesting in that they do everything for you.
So there's one called Society6, but there's lots of them. And what you do is you upload your artwork and then they print it onto any product in the world and ship it and you get a percentage. So it's like Amazon in the fact that they do everything for you, but it's like Etsy. And the fact that it's art, it's quite interesting.
I had a look at it, but I didn't go too far down that route, but it is definitely democratizing art it's basically making art very very cheap. You can get nice pictures for really not very much now, is it a good thing? Who knows? But it's another interesting way of being able to sell because you don't have to make the product that's all done for you.
Yeah. I've found that there are sites where you've got artists creating specialist t-shirts so you designed by humans is the one that use, or threadless.
That's right that is quite nice as well. That's done on voting if a certain amount of people like it, and then the t-shirts and then available to buy.
There are a lot of quote t-shirts on it, but they're not the ones I'm looking at at the moment.
I'm looking at Viking Ravens, my current wish.
Why do you want Viking Ravens?
Saul's raven, amateur history and especially the Vikings because they end up being the Norman's, the Varangi Guards, in Constantinople, they end up being the Russians, the Ruse, the Kiev Ruse or Russians, are actually Vikings, and a lot of the Irish. It's just a very interesting period of time.
Wow. So they became everybody.
Yeah, exactly. But they also quite funny because they're down helping out Constantinople and they, take the city and then they decide, actually I just like the city and they just stay there. They don't give it back to the people they were fighting it for.
Clever, they'd have done well on eBay.
Yeah, they are your typical, just annoying rabble. So I quite like them.
Okay, well we better go there, but nice to chat again,
speak soon about non fungible tokens (NFTs). Okay. Bye. Bye.
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Dan & Abi work, talk & dream in tech. If you would like to discuss any speaking opportunity contact us.