FUR: eBay Statistics about furry art sales
Michael Russell
Howdy
Just for the fun of it, I have conducted a survey of the furry art sales
that have appeared on eBay over the past month.
You can find the results of the survey in an Adobe Acrobat file at the
following location. This means you will need the Acrobat reader or
plug-in in order to read this document. Sorry, but given the layout of
the report in MS Access, it was the only practical way to share the
results in one document rather than a lot of little web pages.
The survey results are copyright (c) 2000 Michael Russell.
http://www.vickifox.com/eBayStatistics.pdf
Some notes on how the survey was conducted.
Only furry artwork was included by doing a search for "Furry art*".
Only sales of single pieces of artwork was included. So, comics,
portfolios, and multiple print sets were excluded.
The artist is listed. In many cases, the artist is different than the
person doing the sale.
The assessment of artwork attributes is subjective. I tried to follow
suggestions from several art books and animation books as to guidelines
to lead my subjective assessment, thus trying to achieve a level of
consistency.
In many cases, the sample size is too small to determine any
statistical signifigance. Therefore, the information is presented
with little commentary.
The statistical releavance is to the specific sample. This information
cannot be used to predict future trends or behaviour.
A quick summary ...
Cute artwork ($32) sold better than not cute ($16).
Cartoon artwork ($27) is nearly tied with non cartoon ($26)
Sexy artwork ($27) sold better than not sexy ($24)
Funny artwork ($41) sold much better than serious ($26)
Power or action artwork ($38) sold better than flat, inactive ($25)
Colour ($29) sold better than B&W ($15)
Art with a background ($29) sold better than art without ($26)
The order of sales given the overall style was:
Cartoon ($32) > Anthro ($28) > Anime ($27) > Fantasy ($16) > Wildlife ($10)
Originals ($31) sold better than prints ($19)
The order of sales given the overall theme was:
Pinups ($33) > Story-driven ($24) > Character studies ($23)
The order of sales given the MPAA rating was:
PG13 ($41) > PG ($29) > G ($26) > R ($24) > NC17 ($0)
And, the ladies win in terms of sex of characters shown
Females ($26) compared to males ($20).
If time and interest permit, I may continue to collect eBay statistics for
another month and see how much this changes.
However, there is a possibility that this may be meaningless given the
small number of people who are actually buying the artwork.
--
Cheers, Mike 'Flafox' Russell
Career - I/T Architect; IBM Global Services ( msru...@us.ibm.com )
Hobby - Owner; Vicki Fox Productions ( mrus...@ix.netcom.com )
Web - The World of Vicki Fox ( http://www.VickiFox.com )
Todd Knarr
> Just for the fun of it, I have conducted a survey of the furry art sales
> that have appeared on eBay over the past month.
Nice statistics. It would be useful, however, if you included a few things:
1. Your definitions of what fits into each category, so we know exactly
what falls under 'cute', 'sexy', etc., and what distinguishes 'anthro'
from 'fantasy', for example.
2. Examples of pieces in each category, to help illustrate the definitions.
3. Ideally, the raw data from which you derived your statistics, ie. the
list of pieces and how you categorized them. This is needed for any
useful analysis of the results.
Without at least the first 2, my statistics profs would have laughed the
survey out of class. The last is mainly of interest to those of us who're
familiar with statistical analysis and have too much time on our hands.
<sighs and corrects spelling errors>
--
Safety hint, dude ... never, ever get up to go to the john at night unless
you can actually feel your body.
-- Sonya Marie Gildencrantz
Mel. White
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Michael Russell
Howdy,
> Cool!!! Thanks for the stats!!!
Thanks for the feedback.
There was a previous request for more information about the
various attributes used and how I decided which piece fell
into which category/attributes.
I plan to provide this information in the future. I am thinking
about putting this information on a web page, to make it easier
to view and review.
Also, if any of y'all can think of additional statistics to be
collected or reported, please let me know.
Andre' Heinonen
>sales that have appeared on eBay over the past month.
>A quick summary ...
>
>Cute artwork ($32) sold better than not cute ($16).
>Cartoon artwork ($27) is nearly tied with non cartoon ($26)
>Sexy artwork ($27) sold better than not sexy ($24)
>Funny artwork ($41) sold much better than serious ($26)
>Power or action artwork ($38) sold better than flat, inactive ($25)
>
>Colour ($29) sold better than B&W ($15)
>Art with a background ($29) sold better than art without ($26)
>If time and interest permit, I may continue to collect eBay
>statistics for another month and see how much this changes.
Interesting! It seems to confirm every "prejudice" I have about
what sells well, except in the category sexy/nonsexy,
where I'd have expected the difference to be greater.
It would be more relevant however if you could show that
the opposites funny/serious, active/inactive etc. have no correlation
with the technical skill level (prowess) of the artists, or if it has,
to correct for it. For example, it might be that better artists
focus more on action artwork, and that those pieces sell better
simply because they're more professionally done, not because they
feature action per se.
A job, I think, for a professional statistician, or someone with
WAY too much time on his hands. :)
Regards,
Andre'
David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus)
>>Just for the fun of it, I have conducted a survey of the furry art
>>sales that have appeared on eBay over the past month.
>> /.../
>>A quick summary ...
>>
>>Cute artwork ($32) sold better than not cute ($16).
>>Cartoon artwork ($27) is nearly tied with non cartoon ($26)
>>Sexy artwork ($27) sold better than not sexy ($24)
>>Funny artwork ($41) sold much better than serious ($26)
>>Power or action artwork ($38) sold better than flat, inactive ($25)
>>
>>Colour ($29) sold better than B&W ($15)
>>Art with a background ($29) sold better than art without ($26)
So clearly an artist who wishes to get ahead in this place needs to
create a cute sexy funny artwork in colour with a background showing
plenty of action.
--
Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia. See
http://www.zeta.org.au/~dformosa/Spelling.html to find out more.
Michael Russell
Howdy,
Andre' Heinonen wrote:
>
> Interesting! It seems to confirm every "prejudice" I have about
> what sells well, except in the category sexy/nonsexy,
> where I'd have expected the difference to be greater.
A larger sample size might help.
> It would be more relevant however if you could show that
> the opposites funny/serious, active/inactive etc. have no correlation
> with the technical skill level (prowess) of the artists, or if it has,
> to correct for it.
I would need to have a way to assess the skill and popularity
of an artist. I could add this information and then generate
reports of these attributes by skill level and popularity
level.
I welcome any suggestions on how to do this.
Mel. White
When you get into rating artists, there comes a point at which
personal taste enters into it.
I find the numbers more useful because an artist's skill level
(and visibility) changes. Knowing that "funny pictures in color
with backgrounds" is a winning combination is more useful (and
less frustrating) than "Terrie Smith and Michelle Light pictures
and humor in color with backgrounds." I love 'em to death, but I
can't draw like either of them. That sort of data might
encourage rather dull clones. The strict numerical data
encourages more creativity.
..in mah (oh-so-humble) opinion! :)
Todd Knarr
> Ehhh, the raw data is probably useful enough (minimal as it is).
> When you get into rating artists, there comes a point at which
> personal taste enters into it.
True. That's one reason I would like to see it. One can skew
statistics drastically by how one classifies. If you've got
10 pictures that are definitely cute, 10 that are definitely
non-cute and 10 on the borderline, you can bias the statistics
drastically by always putting borderline cases in the cute
category. A quick look at the raw data will show up any such
bias. Similarly with a picture that could meet the qualifications
for fantasy, furry and anime at the same time. Were such
pictures counted for all 3, or just one in preference to the
others? When someone starts putting up statistics like this,
I like to know things like that.
> I find the numbers more useful because an artist's skill level
> (and visibility) changes. Knowing that "funny pictures in color
> with backgrounds" is a winning combination is more useful (and
That's the reason I want to see the definitions, as well. Is, for
example, Russell's idea of 'cute' or 'funny' the same as mine or
yours? If it isn't, then one might draw conclusions about which
pictures are more popular that are not correct. Without the
definitions, we've no idea whether a picture we considered 'cute'
was in fact counted as 'cute' in his statistics or not.