Is selling art on ebay worth it,an how does ebay work?

Since someone else already answered the other question: How Ebay works, I'll simplify my original answer a bit. Ebay works by having a seller post art and having buyers come and purchase it. The seller posts their item for a minimum price, and the potential buyer is given the option to bid on it (at a set increment usually $0.50) until time runs out on the item (you can list an item for fewer or more days), OR if the seller has listed it, the buyer can pay a Buy-It-Now price and get the item right there. The buyer finds your item the same way you would if you were using an online shopping site that contains millions of items. This means potential buyers need to pass two 'tests' before even choosing whether to buy your item or reading more info about it: 1: They want the item or were searching for something similar. 2: Your prices are reasonable enough to attract buyers this way. For you this means a number of things: 1. Your shop will maybe receive 1 in a million of the Ebay customers, since art is not a second-hand or bargain item that is popular on Ebay. 2. Your prices must be competitive, most Ebay shoppers will use the: Arrange search by cheapest function. Which will usually include 2-3 pages of items listed for $0.99. There is a point where your costs will be higher than the end profit (if you sell for 3 dollars, the print cost 70 cents, Ebay takes a dollar for its fee, the person pays by paypal which adds maybe 30c, your end profit is $1 out of your $3 print, and that's how much your time was worth producing that print unless it was a copy). 3. Your art has to be good enough to compete with other similar types of artworks on Ebay. Lots of artists don't ask, they just do. And many artists on Ebay are not selling artworks out of the blue. Online manga or comic artists sell related material often through Ebay because it makes their transactions safe and secure. --- That said, I have always recommended that artists looking to sell their work online join an art community that does not only have artists (Deviant Art), and get popular. And Sell Your Services. To put it into perspective. I sell prints often at conventions, the profit on those is $3-5 per print depending on which size they buy. For a single image that I draw, I would need to sell 40 to 100 of those $5 prints to make back the same amount I would gain by drawing that single image once without reprinting for someone else. People like to have artists draw their creations more than they like to pay for non-famous artists' art. And once you have a steady fanbase (by getting into an art community and being a good artist), people will want to buy other things you've produced before. A lot of people buy famous artworks for investment, because art increases in value over time. There are also job forums on DA where you can find unpaid work for practice and work experience or paid work (the job lister will pick from the people that show interest, so it's competitive, but there are plenty of listings). You can also post your own prices for art. Obviously if people think your prices are unreasonable they will just not commission you. It's certainly easier to find customers selling commissions on Deviant Art if you're good at working to people's specifications and a good/reasonably priced artist. Ebay is just too vast and not enough people are looking for amateur art. Here's the end perspective, having tried both. Total money I've earned off Ebay over the year I had stuff there: $170 (after cutting out all costs and keeping only profits earned). I earned about $1-1.50 off every sale, so that was 100+ sales under my seller account then (raising the price would have seen me not get sales, I was selling at $2.50 - $5 a print). I now only buy there. Worth of jobs I've taken on from DA in the last 4 months: $2340 (+ a stack more character designs worth $15 - $30 each I haven't taken into account). This is after telling people I'm putting them on waiting list because I can't fit their jobs in my schedule till April.