Most Revenue or Best Profit? What was the Best Place to sell Art in 2013?

This is my Annual Making A Mark Poll which aims to find out about the trends in how artists sold their art - in 2013.

I've moved it to after the end of the calendar year so that those who do their accounts on a calendar basis will know better:

• which place generated the most revenue
• which place generated the most profit

The last time I ran this poll in 2012, I split the poll in two to make a distinction between gross revenue sales ("most revenue") and net profit ("most profitable").

That's because those places which generate the "most money in art sales" are not necessarily the "most profitable" after the "cost of sales" has been deducted.

Interestingly, the fact that one place happens to be the most profitable doesn't mean to say that's where the most profit will be made - unless an artist has already identified this and is capitalising on this knowledge.

So what these polls will do is identify

• The most (and least) effective places for selling art in 2013 - in terms of which places generate the most revenue and turnover (i.e. gross sales)
• The most (and least) profitable places for selling art in 2013 - in terms of where did you generate the best profit (i.e. net profit - profit from gross sales after deduction of the cost of sales)
• Trends in selling art in the last 6 years

There are two NEW Polls in the right hand Column. Both polls have identical options. Be sure to note the distinction between 

• MOST REVENUE and 
• MOST PROFIT.

For those interested in what the results were in 2012 here are the results of these two polls and the trends observed in September 2012

• ANNUAL POLL: What's the best place to sell art in the last year?
• 2012 Poll Results: What's the best place to sell art? (Part 1) - this reveals 4 places where (1) the most money & (2) the most profit were made from selling art in 2011/12.
• What's the best place to sell art? Trends in selling art 2008-2012: (1) direct from the studio; (2) via third party galleries ad art societies.
• The Best Place to Sell Art - More Trends Trends in selling art 2008-2012: via temporary venues and online websites.

Techie - Thoughts on Tumblr?

I've been talking to people about Tumblr and looking at some Tumblr sites recently.  Some of the images are amazing.  In short, it's a microblogging service - an analogy might be Twitter with pictures and sounds.

Now I'm interested to know:

1. How many of you are aware of Tumblr?
2. How many of you are actually using Tumblr on a regular basis?
3. What tips do you have if you use Tumblr?
4. What you want to know if you've looked at the site but as yet have not taken the plunge?
5. If this is the first time you've visited the website, what are your first impressions?

For the record here is:

• The Tumblr policy on content - which is explained in a straightforward way. 
• These are the terms of service
• this is what the company say about why everyone loves Tumblr
• These are the themes you can use  - some are free and some are paid
  
• if you'd like to browse and explore here are the links to those posts which are categorised as:
• Art
• Illustration

Copyright and accreditation

 

See Feature Friday- Quilled Starry Night for ORIGINAL content

I'm not sure they are too hot in enforcing copyright infringement - which is one of my queries (mainly because I've seen it happen)

• above you can see images which have been notionally sourced from The Telegraph - which in turn appear to have sourced them from a blog by Susan Myers called Suzy's Artsy Crafty Sitcom
• the top image used has carefully removed the accreditation line - see feature pic on original blog post cited below
  
• Although both the article and post name the artist, neither the so-called "source" or the Tumblr post actually accredited the artist with a link to the ORIGINAL source ie Feature Friday- Quilled Starry Night - which is stunning post which shows you how this was done with quilled paper.  So everybody gets to admire it but the artist gets no traffic to her blog!

Any thoughts?

UPDATE: re copyright infringement of Suzy Myers' work

7th August 2011

I left a comment on Suzy's blog post yesterday (ie Feature Friday- Quilled Starry Night) after publishing this post and indicated that maybe the visuals have travelled rather further than she was aware. 

I got this very nice comment by way of reply which I'm republishing below.  Note in particular her comments re Tumblr and that Etsy practices proper accreditation

Hi Katherine!

Thank you for the heads up.  Since the photos went viral about a week ago, I have lost track of where they are being shown and if I have been linked to them.  It seems that tumblr is the main area where copyright seems to be lost.  Unfortunately they are picking it up from each other and passing it on, crediting the tumblr site that they found it from.  I figure that at this point, if someone wants to know more about me or my artwork, I am easily found on google.  Most likely the way you found me.  Ha!

Fortunately, some of the larger sites have credited my site, including Etsy's Facebook page who picked it up and it resulted in 4000 folks an hour swinging by to check out my work.  I am more than thrilled.  

In a normal world, I have been known to persue folks and make them add a mention of where they got it from.  But this has gotten so out of hand, it would be very difficult to try at this point.  I do appreciate your post.  It brings to light an issue that gets more prevalent every day.  

Thank you!!

suzy