You can sell your YCHs, Commissions, Adoptables, Crafts and everything else you can think of, as long as it's created (or owned) by yourself.
To create an appealing auction, you should add a title and a good picture to give your customers an idea of what they'll get. To show of your work, add submissions to your portfolio.
When creating an auction, it is always important to keep in mind some basic guidelines, that will make your auctions more likely to be successful and therefore make your job easier.
The description of an auction should contain the most important information, those are:
After you've sold your auctions, you and your client will be transferred to a CRM, where you can discuss all the details for the commission.
To finish a commission, you have to upload the result, this way your customer can also give you feedback.
The cover artwork is the preview users get when they open a link to your auction or browse the thumbnails on the home page. This is what the user will check when they're assessing whether they should buy your art.
Since this is the most important part to improving your auctions, we'll cover them individually.
Many users upload a messy sketch, or even a cell-phone picture of the artwork. Obviously, when a buyer sees that they lose confidence and are less likely to buy.
When uploading digital art, make sure to upload crisp and clean lines. For traditional art we seriously recommend scanning the piece or touching the artwork up with post-processing.
Uploading a line art with a pure white background (or none) does make your artwork barely stand out. Adding some basic coloring (and even some rough shading) does often do wonders for the auctions.
Try to also stay away from clashing colors. Pastel colors usually do work best and make the artwork easy on the eye.
We often find thieves on the platform. Sadly, whenever there is money involved, people try to steal from others. The most effective way is to sign or watermark your artwork.
A clever watermark will be hard to remove without having to restore parts of the image, but subtle enough so that a interested buyer doesn't get scared away or has a hard time even figuring out what's underneath the watermark.
This is often overlooked. A good description, and clear instructions on what you're comfortable drawing are always important.
Often enough, several tiers help you push that little extra from a user. Offer appealing tiers that encourage the user, but don't strip basic and to-be-expected pieces from the work if the tier is not achieved.
Think of tiers as stretch-goals. They sell better that way.
Never underestimate the importance of having a portfolio with artwork and a history of completed commissions.
Often, long time followers will soon push the auction. So a healthy following and subscriber list will definitely help selling better.
When you've finished an auction, you should always upload the result. This will give your customer the chance to give you feedback, which will also raise your reputation.
This also counts for adoptable auctions or private commissions. For private commissions, we recommend to upload a placeholder. When you've sold an Adoptable, it would be great to upload the file with the name of the new owner on it.
Your reputation will rise every time you receive positive feedback on a finishes commission. Every time you create a new auction you'll receive a small minus, this is to discourage spamming behavior. But don't let this discourage you, gaining reputation is easy!
Many rookies think that a 7 day auction is more likely to sell than a 3 day or 1 day auction. And while it's generally more probable that you'll receive a bid, it's also very possible that the user will have forgotten bidding on your auction when the timer runs out.
Therefore, you should prefer shorter auctions with lower starting bids that get pushed up rather than auctions that run for a long time waiting for that one bid to come in.
This is another important factor about your auctions. Set a starting bid as low as you can. This will help you considerably. The system rewards auctions with a low starting bid indirectly. This is due to the fact that our algorithm favors users who are likely to sell an auction. Remember that an auction will always adjust it's price automatically. If your art is worth $40 it will receive a $40 bid regardless of the starting bid being $1 or $30.
Do this exercise whenever you're creating an auction. Pick your preferred starting bid (for example, $30) and discount $5. Then ask yourself "Would I still sell this for $25?" if the answer is yes, then repeat until you reach a price when you're no longer comfortable. Using a friend to haggle with you helps a lot!
Generally, we recommend to host no more than 1 or 2 auctions a month. You can host as many as you want, but you'll see that hype for your auctions needs some time to recover. If you post too many auctions, you'll exhaust your users.
While recycling is good for the environment, when a customer buys something from you they expect some original work. If you resell the same auction to another buyer, interest in your auctions will quickly fade.
It's generally allowed to crosspost your auctions.
However, to avoid potential problems you should keep a few things in mind.
- Include that your auction is crossposted in the description and add links to all the other platforms your auction takes place on.
- Remember to keep your auction up to date. To do so, feel free to place the bids that where made somewhere else yourself.
- If an auction is auto-bought somewhere else, delete the auction, right next to it in your account menu.
It's not allowed to bid on your own auction to increase the rating or price. If it's not indicated that your auction is cross-posted, it will get cancelled and your account will be suspended for bid inflation .
There are a few differences in the type of auction that can be offered and each of them have a few varying things to consider.
YCH: A fixed pose where the figurine is altered to look like your OC/character of choice.
Commission slot: A custom commission offered by the artist.
Base/Line recolor: A pre-made base that is altered to the appearance of your OC/character of choice. The big difference here is that a base/line doesn't have to be made by yourself. If you offer an auction on a base/line, you have to add information about the original creator in the description of your auction.
Adoptable: A ready to use designed character. If you're not the creator of the adoptable, please make sure to add proof of your ownership to the description and give credit to the original artist.
Some artists need a little kickstart for their creativity. And using a base to provide a commission or a your-character-here auction is perfectly okay. In order to keep our community safe and help buyers make an informed decision we have a few simple rules for the usage of bases:
Failing to comply may result in your auction being cancelled and your account being suspended.
When adding links to the original source of the artist, please remember to make sure that the page fits our minimum requirements.
If the artist who's base you're selling does not provide this kind of page, please ask them to add this information. If the artist doesn't explicitly allow you to use their work we will take the auction down.
When creating your description, you should add something like this:
This auction is made using a base. Original creator: https://somebody.deviantart.com/ Link to the base: https://somebody.deviantart.com/the_base Terms of the base: https://somebody.deviantart.com/journal/123456-rules-for-my-bases
The terms of service page should contain a text something like this:
This artwork is a base . This base is free-to-use / pay-to-use . Commercial usage by the licensee is accepted.
If you come across a post on commishes that offers a base without providing proper attribution or without complying with the terms of service of the artist, we appreciate you reporting the artwork as stolen. Please consider this while filing your report:
If you're an artist and come across this page because somebody used your base in a way you did not agree to, please reach out to our support staff. We'll be glad to help you. Here's also a little list of tips to make it harder for thieves to profit off your work:
All adoptables have to be posted in the Adoptables category. This also includes weapon or clothing adoptables. Adoptables that are posted in any other category will be deleted and vice versa.
If you come across a post on commishes that offers an adoptable that they do not own, or that hasn't added proper credit to the artist, we appreciate you reporting the adoptable as stolen. Please consider this while filing your report:
Some of the things we absolutely do not tolerate on commishes. The violation of these rules will get your account suspended or permanently banned.
Do not use other artists work to make money.
It is not permitted to manipulate auctions in any way. This includes but is not limited to:
Starting auctions just to annoy or provoke anyone won't get you anywhere.