Monday - November 1, 2004:

Ebay is a double-edged sword. I've done well selling a couple of slabbed comics through them, Spider-man 300, 299, 298, and 252. They were key issues and I timed the sale to end the night the second movie was released. I've also had luck selling books, a collection of first edition Orwell Letters and a tool identification guide. After those gems, the drop-off is sharp. Personally, I've never bought anything though I did bid once, on a Fat Albert production cell and original background. My heart raced as I was instantly outbid, four times. In the end, it didn't matter because neither of us bid high enough to cover the reserve. A quick browse through the rest of the cels up for auction confirmed my suspicion. The vast majority of items don't get sold these days. Ebay and Paypal are still making plenty of money through their fees though.

I found the same phenomenon at the comic shows I've done, lots of product, little selling, the guy running the show is the only one raking it in. For both worlds, there's got to be a better model of exchange. I spent over an hour dealing with each of the items I've sold between photographing, uploading, creating the listing, fielding questions, sending invoices, collecting payment, shipping the item and leaving feedback. Recently, I went through all of this and more for a 99 cent item, which, in the end, was broken by Fed Ex and returned to me without a refund.

I'd really like to offer items for sale through this site in addition to sketches, but I'm not sure it's worth going through the setup. I've finally built a website that lets me spend 95% of my time on the words and pictures and only 5% on maintenance and programming . I'm not sure how much of that I'm willing to give back in order to make a few bucks that are only marginally related to the content of the site. A friend suggested cafe press. I've seen plenty of sites offering cafe press items for sale, but I have no idea how successful they are with the actual selling. -anyone have any advice?

-Bob Stevenson