Umair Haque just asked “Is Etsy the next Google?” due, I think, to Etsy’s ability to build a community of artists & makers alongside (inside?) a community of art-, fashion-, and craft-lovers, and facilitate their conversations (social and financial) without getting in the way too obtrusively.

Etsy, for those who haven’t heard of it yet, is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade - artwork, clothes, crafts. A niche eBay for artists, but with a much more innovative angle on creating and sustaining conversations between buyers and sellers (AKA community-building).

Economically, it’s an aggregation site launched in 2005 connecting 60,000 - 100,000 specialist creators with their niche markets, charging a micro-fee (20 US cents) to list each item for up to 4 months, and taking a 3.5% cut of the sale price.

In their own words:

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

I think Etsy should probably open up its platform a bit, but that’s just the developer in me wanting to get my hands dirty with code. It does provide Etsy Mini - widgets for displaying your artwork on external sites (javascript versions for blogs & websites, flash versions for MySpace and other social networking sites).

Etsy could conceivably expand & innovate in a lot of different areas—a context-sensitive ad network for art & crafts sold on Etsy, Etsy-Books as a new outlet for self-publishing, Etsy-music—it’s difficult to predict which direction they’ll take.

I signed up for an Etsy shop yesterday to see how it goes. I think it might be interesting.

Oh yeah, here’s Technorati’s graph showing the rising buzz on blogs about Etsy:

Kentucky-based collage artist Randel Plowman launched a new project back in March 2006. The project—called A Collage A Day—was ambitious to say the least.

He committed himself to producing a new 4″ × 4″ collage every day and putting it up for sale on a specially created blog. Each collage is offered for sale at $25.00, which includes 8″ × 8″ archival gallery matting, documentation and free shipping within the United States (or $10 outside the US).

I ordered one of Randel’s collages back in November last year. It’s the one illustrated right here—it’s called Once Again—and here’s Randel’s the blog post featuring it.

It arrived promptly a week or so later: an original well-made, hinge-mounted 4″ × 4″ collage, complete with a signed document of authenticity, which now has pride of place on my wall (next to a postcard of Lee Miller).

Randel’s idea works so well because everything is made easy for the customer. The collages are great, the blog format is easy to navigate, the images and details of the collages are clearly available, and payment is made via PayPal. Equally importantly, he has priced the collages very well, so that just about anyone can afford one, and shipping costs are minimal (and non-existent within the US).

Let’s examine Randel’s strategy in terms of Kevin Kelly’s eight generatives—“categories of intangible value” that must be “generated, grown, cultivated, [or] nurtured” that make the non-free version better than the free version—comparing the free digital images of the collages to the collage I received in the post. After all, why should I spend even $25 on a collage when the digital image of it is available free on his blog?

Here’s the generatives that I think add value to Randel’s collages, making the non-free physical version better than the free digital version:

• Authenticity - the signed document of authenticity really nails this one - this is the guarantee that this is a one-of-a-kind original.
• Accessibility - a non-digital version means I can carry this around, and put it on whatever wall I want.
• Embodiment - The physical collage is the ultimate in embodiment. Apart from the textural qualities of the collage materials, Randel uses a nice chunky mount to add solidity to the artwork (turning it from an image into an object).
• Patronage - Kevin says that “It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators” - I completely agree, and at $25 a go, most people can afford to pay Randel.

Of these four, I think Embodiment is the crucial quality that made me buy one of Randel’s collages, followed in second place by Patronage (both of which are preceded by the fact that I liked his collages on an aesthetic level, of course - without that, any other values are moot since I’m not buying as a financial investment to make money). This is no real surprise with a hand-made physical piece of visual artwork which is unique—or scarce—by its very nature (or at least limited, in the case of a print) compared to the abundant multiplicity of the digital image.

I’m trying to alternate theory with practical examples, and it’s time for a practical example again, this time from my own practice in the world of visual art.

If you’re in the business of creating large pieces of artwork that cost more than the average person earns in a week then making your first sale is going to be difficult, whether online or in an exhibition. You’re asking people to spend a lot of money, to make a large commitment.

Making that sale online is even harder, because your potential customer is at a disadvantage:

• they can’t view the work at full size,
• they can’t see the work from all angles (and this applies to paintings as well as 3D work),
• they can’t fully appreciate texture and tactile qualities,
• they can’t talk to you to get a better understanding of the work,
• and most importantly, they will probably have to pay shipping charges (and shipping insurance) on top of the price of the artwork itself.

It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult. But there are a number of ways you can make things easier.

I’ve had quite a few enquiries from potential customers in the US about buying my assemblages. All went well in the email exchange: they liked the artwork and were comfortable with the price I was asking, even with the weakness of the dollar making my work quite expensive for American customers. But when I calculated the shipping for these heavy, bulky pieces of artwork (they’re mounted on heavy wood for stability and measure, on average, 24″ x 18″) the sale went dead.

The problem was that trans-Atlantic shipping and insurance costs more than doubled my asking price for the work - and this was the sticking point at which I lost the sale every time. And unfortunately this wasn’t just the case for international orders - even domestic shipping put too much on the overall price.

On the other hand, I have lots of friends, acquaintances and complete strangers telling me that they liked my artwork, but the concept of buying it never entered their minds - in their minds they weren’t “the type of people who bought artwork”. They were struggling for cash, or making ends meet but certainly couldn’t afford to spend a three figure sum on a piece of artwork.

I was discouraged, but not completely. I’d obviously done some things right - I was presenting my artwork correctly, I was doing my promotion well enough to attract people who liked my artwork to my website, and the various areas for interaction on my site (the discussion forum, and ample opportunities to contact me by email) were a viable alternative for the experience of talking to the artist face-to-face at an exhibition.

Since I’ve frequently lived almost hand-to-mouth, I could completely empathise with people being put off (or just simply excluded) by the price of buying my artwork. I didn’t want to abandon my assemblage work, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t do something to complement it. I needed something that was very affordable, didn’t weigh a lot (so it didn’t incur huge shipping charges), and worked alongside my assemblages allowing me to try out new ideas which I probably wouldn’t have the time (or confidence) to attempt in a larger piece of work.

Obviously the heavy wood that the assemblages were built on would have to go. Paper would be too flimsy, so I looked around the art shops and found several packs of 9″ x 12″ Bockingford Board - meant for watercolours, but solid enough to stand a few layers of varnish and glue, and small enough to fit into a standard padded envelope.

I had an idea for some collages loosely based on the Principia Discordia (the “sacred text” of the Discordian religion written by Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley as a parody of organised religion). I got out my varnish, glue and collections of photographs, drawings, and found objects and set to work, soon finishing 6 collages on the Bockingford Board (incidentally finding I could experiment with ideas far more quickly and freely at this smaller scale.).

After creating the first six I packaged one up and took it along to the Post Office to get weighed and priced up - the shipping cost would be under £1 in the UK, around £1.50 to continental Europe, just over £2 to the US/Canada and nearly £3 to Australia.

After costing up the board and other materials (including the mailing envelope!), I came to a price of £12.50 (about $25 US at the current exchange rate) for a single collage including shipping to anywhere in the world. I would be selling the collages at only a £1 or so above cost price - not getting any real money for my time (but not losing any money on materials or shipping), but that fitted with my longer term plan. I had decided that just about anyone could afford £12.50 - it wasn’t a financial commitment that people had to weigh up: it could easily be an impulse buy - which opened up the possibility of selling my artwork to people who didn’t see themselves as “the type of people who bought artwork”.

And so my Principia Discordia series of collages was born.

There were a number of other decisions I made. I decided to sell sight-unseen: a risky strategy, but one that made it easy to use a basic PayPal ecommerce system - the customer ordered a collage and then I made it, with no need for me to quickly edit web-pages to show that a particular collage had been sold. I also included a certificate of authenticity which each collage, and recorded the name of the purchaser of each collage in the gallery. I set up a thread on my discussion forum dedicated to the series, where potential customers could ask questions (and check on the progress of their collage). I emailed several websites and blogs which specialised in collages and a (surprisingly) large number agreed to repost my “press release” (now I understand that this blogging business can be hard work - when someone emails you to hand you a blogpost on a plate which is highly relevant to your blog’s subject area, then I can completely understand why so many kind people were happy to post my news on their blogs for me!)

So, how did it go? Well, it’s still going. I’ve sold 55 of the collages over a period of two-and-a-bit years. Many were sold to friends and regulars on my discussion forum (several of whom had not bought artwork before), but a large number were sold to complete strangers.

Stupidly, I failed to create a section in the PayPal order form where I asked how they had heard about my collages - I’ll fix that mistake next time. Most surprisingly (to me, at least) was that many people were buying multiple collages. One person ordered 10 collages!

What I’ve ended up with (apart from the money, and the great satisfaction of selling my artwork) is a number of benefits. I’ve found a way to experiment quickly and affordably with new artistic ideas which works in parallel with my larger assemblages. I’ve also now got a small-but-growing global email database of people who have paid for my artwork, who, having already invested a very small amount of money in my art, might be interested in doing so again - either another small purchase or, having had the positive experience of a safely completed financial transaction with an unknown artist, perhaps something slightly more expensive.

I’m considering a new series of artwork. It’ll still be small and lightweight, but probably slightly larger than the Principia Discordia collages, and each piece taking a bit more time and materials, maybe costing around £30 each. But this time I have a database of customers - people who have already bought my artwork - who I can notify as soon as I’m ready, which makes selling this new series just that bit easier.

I’m not proposing this strategy as the one true way of selling art online. It’s just one strategy that worked for me - I sold multiple pieces of artwork, gained a lot of traffic (visitors to my site, looking at my artwork), and I’ve got a list of customers from all over the world who have crossed the hardest threshold - they’ve made their first purchase from me. Now it’s time for me to build on that.

Tomorrow MySpace opens up its platform to developers. While MySpace have inferred that they’ve learnt from Facebook’s mistakes, in that their platform will be more resilient to spamming issues, I still can’t think of a single useful or interesting application (either for MySpace or Facebook).

Maybe it’s just that the whole social network app-development isn’t mature yet. Or maybe it’s because the current crop of social networking sites are just pointless and inane, so any application built on them is doomed to be pointless and inane as well.

I’m sure this isn’t just because I’m an anti-social bastard, but it seems like the big social networks have absolutely no purpose to an individual user. The signal-to-noise ratio is ridiculous - it’s just marketers (whether they be bands or brands) hitting you incessantly with really bad marketing. It reminds me so much of UseNet in the late 1990s it hurts. It’s like being forced to listen to Barry Scott shouting at you about the benefits of Cillit Bang, on a continuous loop.

You see, social networking shouldn’t be the raison d’être of a site. It’s a feature. Add social networking to a site that already has a purpose and you might add value to that site.

One site that got it right is deviantART. To explain briefly, deviantART is an art site where you can create an account and upload your artwork/poetry (or just browse through other people’s artwork). You can organise your gallery with a brief profile and an updatable journal - so far so unexpected. The reason it works, though, is that the social networking is just a feature, albeit an important one.

You can browse round other people’s artwork and add pieces you like to your favourites. You can also leave a comment underneath someone’s piece of artwork (or on their profile). If you’re really impressed by someone’s art then you can watch them. Watching someone is like adding them as a friend in any other social networking site, but it has a purpose beyond popularity contests. Whenever someone you’re watching uploads some new artwork then you get alerted via a thumbnail preview of it.

In addition to this, there’s the expected discussion forum, chat application, etc. - but it all makes sense because it has a purpose. I’ve been a member of deviantART since November 2002 - you can see my gallery here - and there’s the difference: you’re not just looking at a page listing my likes & dislikes and how many zombies/pirates I’ve killed, you’re looking at a profile which is firmly centred around something - in this case, a gallery of artwork.

The very fact that I’ve been active on deviantART for over five years says a lot about its ability to retain my goldfish-like attention. The fact that last year I upgraded to a paid subscription (£15.18 per year, which allows you more customisable features and no adverts - and I’ll definitely be renewing that subscription) speaks volumes.

Now, if deviantART opened up its platform to application developers then that would be interesting - because once you have a platform with a purpose, then you can build something exciting and worthwhile.