"PAI is a beacon. A candlelit labyrinth just over the hill. A song through the trees that calls you home."
-- SJ Tucker (sooj), Frontwoman, Skinny White Chick/Tricky Pixie/Fire and Strings http://www.skinnywhitechick.com

With more endorsements like the above, DVPN's Pagan Arts Initiative (PAI) would sell itself. I must admit I'm still happily reeling after receiving the email containing this statement. (If you're wondering how we got a quote from Ms. Tucker, just call us blessed. Franklin Evans, PAI's Producing Director, was writing about DVPN's PAI on the LiveJournal forum, "nonfluffypagans," and she responded privately to his post.)

Anyway, now that I'm done glowing, let's get down to business. The Pagan Arts Marketplace (http://pai.dvpn.org/marketplace) was formally kicked off on November 1, 2006, after months of research and several false starts. The community asked for a collective marketing tool, and PAI has delivered!

Now Pagan artists and craftspeople have a special auction engine to use in selling their creations. Plus, during the beta period, the Marketplace will be available to qualifying artists entirely free of charge! That's right; artists can run auctions and sell merchandise without paying any auction fees until May 1!  (After May 1, we will be using a membership-based fee structure, not a per-auction fee, so artists can budget annual auction expenses in advance.)

As of this writing (the end of January), the Marketplace had 46 registered users, 19 of whom were sellers. We had 26 active auctions and two previous auctions had ended in sales. Bidding was very light, but I remain convinced the solution to that is for us to continue adding more and more content and continue spreading the word. The Marketplace has only been open since November 1, after all. Taking that into account, I can only call current results amazing.

Other progress includes the first steps toward allowing sellers to run static stores using the Marketplace, as well as simply posting auctions:

• All sellers now have direct links to their active auctions in the form http://(username).pagan-arts.org/. Auctions may now be up to four months in length, so you don't have to keep re-listing items you sell all the time.
• Auctions may also contain multiple items, so you can list 100 copies of your signed/numbered prints in a single entry.
• Artists now have a new option on the Selling tab of 'Your Control Panel' named "Store profile." They can select this option to add basic information to the active-auctions page. Right now all it supports is a store title, a store subtitle, and a store announcement. Over the next few weeks, more features will be added to this area, giving more of the sense of a personalized store to your active-auctions page.

The Marketplace is already linked to the popular Froogle online sales search engine. At this point, every auction that has a 'Buy It Now' price will automatically be listed at Froogle.

ince I built an RSS 2.0 feed to send to Froogle, I decided to try feeding it to other places, too. Sure enough, this works very well. If you're a member of LiveJournal, you can currently watch auctions on the Marketplace using the feed at http://syndicated.livejournal.com/pai_mkt_feed/. Or you can try pointing your favorite RSS aggregator at http://pai.dvpn.org/marketplace/product-list.php to see how you fare.

I'm still looking at connecting the Marketplace with the Yahoo! Shopping program as well.

I should also mention that access to The Marketplace isn't limited to visual artists and craftspeople. If you're a performer who has CD or DVD formatted media to sell, you are welcome to create a store, too. If you're an author who has copies of your book to sell personally, you're welcome as well. It just has to be an original work you personally were involved in creating -- and to which you hold the copyright.

This brings us to our happy reminders portion of this article. Don't forget that you, too, can help make the Marketplace succeed. All you need to do is:

• tell your friends.
• post as many free auctions as you can.
• invite existing customers to visit your auctions here in the Marketplace.

That's it for this update. Go make some money!

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