Everything is Selling!

It seems as if most of the stuff I list to sell on eBay is selling but it's selling at a really low price. They raised their fees again last week to 3% for the most comon selling prices: $25-1,000. Well, they did lower the cost to list items under a dollar. Instead of 25 cents it's now 20 cents. WOW. They made quite a big deal about how generous they thought they were being by lowering this tier. Let's face it- if you are listing something for under a $1.00 and it is costing you 20 or 25 cents to sell it plus 35 cents to put a picture in there- you need to list 50 of them in order to make a profit. I am starting to see why so many of the artists who list their call it GREEDbay. Raising prices without addressing the listing problems that occur frequently since they have adjusted the way searching is done is just not helpful to all the self-representing artists who fork over their hard earned money to eBay each month.
Enough on that subject-- it is enough to raise my blood pressure just thinkiong about it. I am working on another very large painting but I won't be listing this one on eBay unless I start it at $200. It is just turning out too good. It's another large one- 24 x 30 and the subjects are a pair of Native Americans. I am working on the background- there are some interesting possibilities I want to explore and I might not just leave it blank.
Last week I pulled out an old project I began a few years ago: a painting of my cat, Nikki in front of the fireplace at our old house. This painting was a complete failure. I think I started it in 2002, the year we moved here. I could not get the cat to look right. After I pulled it out, I found the old photo reference of the chair and fireplace and another picture of my cat. I had it finished in less than two hours. I am happy to say that I can really see progress in my painting ability. It seems like everything started to click in 2004, which is when I started winning a lot of awards too. This is the cat picture as it looks now.