I've been selling cw's for over four years now. Not saying 'wow that's a long time', on the contrary, it started out with a bang and it's slowing down to a light fizz. Meaning I was selling cw's really well the first two years, but the last two years just died out for me. I have cute cw's I'm trying to sell, at least I think they're cute, but none if any biters at all. I have one new cw that has only two slots left but it's taking a very long time to fill. And I have a few other cw's I 're listed, because they were listed once before but no slot takers so I pulled them. I re listed them a couple weeks ago and I got one slot request for the renewed cw's, and there's three of them I listed. I don't know what's going on, what I'm doing wrong, and I thought I'd come here and seek some advice. Perhaps there's something I could be doing differently... any advice, help, suggestions you can give would be immensely appreciated.

thread is here

I don't think the items are bad, but personally they're all in colors I would never use. Not sure what colors you already have and I'm not saying I'd be claiming slots on anything since I'm broke but; I'd probably only consider the dress in white / black or even white and black and possibly sheer? The wig probably only black / brown / maybe blonde? For the shoes, I just wish the colors were darker / more vibrant. The black is so light compared to the dress, and the gold is really pale / not very shiny.

As for the wings, I think the problem is more that the lines are pretty thick. I also think knowing what the item image is would help.

The crown, I actually think needs work before it can be accepted to the site. It's a full front view, when it needs to be a 3/4th view. I mean, the cord parts are correct, but the crown itself isn't.

I know exactly how you feel! If i want a CW nowadays i just save up and release it in my shop as i can barely fill 3 slots these days while a few years back i could fill a couple of batches. I dont think it helps that the CW market is monopolised by the same few artists and to make anything really popular you have to shell out a load of real money to commission them.

thank you so much for your critique. It helps a lot. Unfortunately I don't think the same artists are up to making second colors... I could try and ask tho. And I gotta save up too. feh.

totally! Before I had really nice cw's, but that's when I was able to grab one of the more popular artists when they were still "green" or somewhat green. Cheaper, more reasonable to commission them. I just don't have the finances to do this, and when I have a small chunk of change to commission one, I'll do it.

the market has definitely gone down in general in the past two years.

It's something that most releasers still do not want to accept and I see a lot of 'techniques' and 'habits' used nowadays that may have worked in the past but no long work today. I could go on and on about it, but probably the most prominent one is putting +200csc profit but at a higher batch count. It's hard to fill one batch these days, and most people who see 'capped at 3+ batches' will decide to wait until it ends in the pawn shop. We used to have enough buyers to make it up to three batches but it is rarely the case anymore. Sadly the prices keep increasing and this method has generally unchanged despite the shift.

Specifically about your shop, I think it's just that the colors / shapes may not always be something people are interested in. Try to make items that match an onsite item and preview them together. A lot of people have trouble visualizing an item on its own, and how it can be used on a full HA. Setting up a preview where the item is used gives the user a contextual feel.

Try also looking for interest. Make sure there are atleast 5-6 people who are interested before asking for the recolor to be done. I know it sucks when one or two people want a certain color but if they were the only two, it wont make it onsite in the end. Now more than ever also, people seem to be interested in interesting and unique items, whether shape or color. We used to have this huge wave of 'black, brown, platinum' where nothing else was welcome. But I've noticed a lot of really weird, funky things have become popular - it also increases creativity and it is certainly an avenue to be explored.

Also, you could look into releasing items per events/seasons. The lavender dress for example is pretty cute, but it looks like something that'd be more popular closer to vesnali/easter. A snowy, icy version would likely attract more attention at this time of the year. Or a blush/pinkish one for valentines!

Lastly (and ) since I feel I am part of the 'few artists who monopolised the market'. I would like to kindly remark that with progression comes the cost of it. I'll wholeheartdly admit that my commission/design prices have been considerably raised since I started doing cws, 5 years ago and 1,000 items later. But I've also improved a lot (or so I'd hope!).

A part of the issue is that we do not have enough new artists. I'm fairly certain that if we had a few new ones popping in, there'd be a lot of people ready to give them a chance and commission them at what you call 'a cheaper' price. I definitely agree with this - hey that's how I started too! But I don't think it is fair to say that established artists are too expensive to commission and that they are the reason why it's going so badly either.

I think it's safe to assume that anyone who improves in what they do would like to and should want to set their price accordingly. Not doing so is honestly a disrespect to everyone else who tries to make their name out there - it's like saying that you should be cheap because people don't want to recognise the time and the efforts put into being where you are after years of improving.

That being said, We should encourage and promote new artists. It's certainly not the lack of people who can draw, it's just that many of them seem to be afraid to leap from non-cw art to cws. In a way, I think the cw business looks like a vicious & closed circle -- we don't look too inviting I guess. This is something we should all focus on because the cw business overall has been going down the hill for a while now, unfortunately.

I am straying away from the subject, I apologize!

Like I said, I do think it would be a bit easier to sell items if you gauged interest, matched the items with onsite items and tried to make them correspond with events/seasons!

I wish you the best of luck!

oh thanks so much for your advice. I hold nothing against the popular artists because they worked hard to get where they are now. I give them credit for that. I'm an artist. Been drawing, painting, sketching, all kinds of mediums, for a long time now. I'm getting accustomed to my tablet, but I don't know how to use it with my PSP8 to get those fine brush strokes. And to stabilize my hand well enough to draw as well as I do with a pencil. So I'm really green. If I learned how to do these things, I would so jump on the bandwagon and try my hand at cw's. But ever since upgrading to WIN10, it messed up the programming with my tablet and it won't work. Oh I wish I had one of you here with me to help me.

I will do the cw idea check more often then. I'm always afraid that if I put something out there for interest check, someone's gonna snag my idea. Is there a rule for that somewhere?

last question... mind if I consult you on occasion? I so desperately want this to work for me, and I can tell I'm fading out, but I want to reverse that!