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Where/How to Sell?
14 years ago
Hello, everyone! Sorry for the disappearance. I went and had a baby.
I've been thinking about things, and I've decided that instead of continuing to produce originals for sale, I'd like to start following a one-at-a-time commission model. I have two more projects I'd like to finish before beginning. Not only will they both be good "example" pieces for commissions, but their completion will give me a better idea of how quickly I can expect to finish pieces as a mommy.
My quandary is that I no longer know how people sell commissions. I'm such an old fart I thought that Furbid was the way to go. It's dead! Similar sites seem to be less dead, but folks don't seem to be buying. I feel like a Furaffinity banner add might be a little overkill if I only want to sell one slot at a time. Advertising here would be logical, but I only relatively recently got to uploading here and it will take me some time to build up a following.
So... folks who are more into things than I am, how does one go about selling commission slots in this day and age? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. This doesn't mean that NO original pieces will ever be for sale again, but I'm shifting my focus. I enjoy working on commission. I also enjoy keeping the ones that come out of my own head.
I've been thinking about things, and I've decided that instead of continuing to produce originals for sale, I'd like to start following a one-at-a-time commission model. I have two more projects I'd like to finish before beginning. Not only will they both be good "example" pieces for commissions, but their completion will give me a better idea of how quickly I can expect to finish pieces as a mommy.
My quandary is that I no longer know how people sell commissions. I'm such an old fart I thought that Furbid was the way to go. It's dead! Similar sites seem to be less dead, but folks don't seem to be buying. I feel like a Furaffinity banner add might be a little overkill if I only want to sell one slot at a time. Advertising here would be logical, but I only relatively recently got to uploading here and it will take me some time to build up a following.
So... folks who are more into things than I am, how does one go about selling commission slots in this day and age? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. This doesn't mean that NO original pieces will ever be for sale again, but I'm shifting my focus. I enjoy working on commission. I also enjoy keeping the ones that come out of my own head.
Barring that, I really don't know where to sell furry-related stuff any more either. Yeah, FurBid is dead; FurBuy has drama surrounding it mostly in that they require you to purchase a premium account once you hit a maximum amount of money received via auction (it's something like $900, which most artists don't reach, but it holds hostage fursuit makers or popular artists that have their work sell for high dollar prices) so I don't even bother with either of those any more. The Dealer's Den is decent for an up-and-coming site, but people don't really browse it the way they once browsed FurBid.
In the end I've noticed that, if you want to deal with the furry crowd, there's a lot of cross-pollination involved, so to speak. You gotta post on LJ communities that might be relevant, you have to talk it up on forums, post it to all your personal stuff (FA/DA/LJ/whatever) and just get as much attention pointed to it as you possibly can. Sometimes people point toward their eBay or FurBid auctions; others just forgo the use of those sites all together and run an "auction" in the comments of their journal in which commenters have a set amount of time during which to place a bid. They update the main journal with the current high bid and that's how they end up with their sales.
Just some input. ;)