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Selling Art - 14 Tips for achieving a better price on Ebay for Self Represented Artists.

As a self represented artist, who has sold original artworks on ebay for a number of years, here are some tips that I have learnt through trial and error. I don't promise to guarantee your work will sell using these tips but they may just help to increase your prices.

1. Before becoming a seller build up your Feedback rating as a buyer. People are more likely to purchase from someone with good feedback (even if all your feedback is as a buyer) than they are if you have no feedback at all. A rating of 10 is probably ideal but 5 is enough to show a bit of a track record. Whilst building up your feedback you'll also learn a lot about how other sellers operate and get a feel for what issues your potential buyers will face when making that final commitment to bid on your item.

2. Recognize that, unless you're an established artist with a following of collectors, most people will be buying your art because they like your work rather than as an investment.

3. Design your auction listing to be as professional as you can. You can't afford mistakes as these will discourage some potential buyers. At the very least use proper sentences, good grammar and upload at least one decent size, clear photo of your artwork (minimum of 400 pixels along the longest edge). Always pay the Gallery Listing fee for your artwork's photo to appear in buyer searches. It's your art that will grab people's attention and encourage them to look at your auction.

4. Create an auction title using general key words that describe the content/subject of your artwork. For example if you have created an artwork of your pet Siamese cat called 'Minky', few people looking for cat art will enter the word 'Minky' as part of their search. Make sure the words 'Art', 'Siamese' and 'Cat' appear in your auction title. That way if someone does a search on 'Cat Art' or 'Cat Siamese' your auction will appear in their search results. Your auction title might be something like 'Original Art: Siamese Cat'

5. If your auction title is short try adding in some more general key words that describe your artwork. Using the last example you could extend it to 'Original Art: Siamese Cat, painting, oil, pets, feline'. Now you've caught people using search terms such as 'Cat Painting', 'Pets Feline', 'Feline Art' etc. The trick is to get your work appearing in searches by people who are interested in your subject but may not have been thinking

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