I've noticed a lot of threads and bulletins popping up on here about people looking to sell or buy DeviantArt points from people.
I'm surprised no topic about this was made already, so I'm here now!
It is against DeviantArt rules to sell your points or buy points from others, and from what I understand, it is a bannable offense.
To be specific, you may not sell or buy for real currency.
"Members are expressly prohibited from and may not sell deviantPOINTS for real currency to one another either within or outside of deviantART. "
I'll edit this later to include screenshots and a link to the rules. Currently on mobile!
ethanol bc its more expensive buying points from DA. the rate is $1USD = 80 points.
but yeah ive been side eyeing those threads lately so thank u for the psa 👍
spicytunaroll
I had no clue it was more expensive, huh. interesting. not too surprised tho, DA loves charging a boatload for everything.
no problem! figured it was needed. if it can educate at least one person, then i'll be glad!
100% sure you can buy points directly from Deviantart.
Pretty sure DA also offers a way to convert your points into money, like Paypal or something... can anyone confirm this?
Eitherway, people shouldn't be buy/selling points.
PhantomForest you can buy them directly from DA. you may also convert into money, but only points that you received from someone else, and if i remember correctly, only from the commission widget.
As someone else has said before, buying points from a third party is cheaper and more profitable for everyone.
For some background information, before the commission widget was implemented there was no way to convert points to money so selling them was the only way to earn money through point commissions. After the commission widget was first introduced, it used to be available to premium members only so not everyone was able to use it. However, when using the commission widget, DeviantArt would take 20% of the earnings, which is where the popular $1 = 100 points came from. After taking out 20% you get the original $1 = 80 points. Otherwise, the artist would be losing money if they set it at the original price for points.
The problem with this now is that for commissioners this makes the price higher than it would be if they were to buy points directly from the site.
So for example, if an artist wants $5 for a commission, they would have to sell at 500 points to be able to earn/withdraw $5/400 points. If they set it at 400 points (the price you would buy from deviantart), then they would only receive $4/320 points, even though the commissioner paid what is worth $5.
So because of this, the commissioner needs to pay 500 points, which is instead now $6.25 if they buy from deviantart.
Now, this makes it clear as to why someone would prefer to buy from a third party. Since the standard price for selling is also $1 = 100 points, the commissioner can now buy at the price the original artist intended.
As for why someone would prefer to sell their points rather than convert them, there are several reasons.
Before everyone was able to use the commission widget, this left regular users without a way to convert their points so they sold to third parties. Although this is not applicable anymore, I thought I'd mention it because it is similar to the first and main reason.
If you do not receive your points through the commission widget, you cannot convert them to money. This is obviously so that deviantart can keep making profit and not refund all the points they've sold. However, because they want to keep their money from points, they do not allow users to use the commission widget for anything other than commissions. That is, if you have a bunch of points you've received outside of the commission widget, whether it be from buying or from other users, you cannot convert your points to money. If you try to get around it by sending it to a friend to send back to your commission widget, you will be suspended by deviantart from using the commission widget for weeks (its possible the punishment has been changed).
The second reason is that there is a two week waiting period to be able to withdraw your funds from the time you accept the commission. For people who regularly take commissions through the commission widget, this may not be a huge problem for them, but for people who don't like waiting for so long or can't wait, it is easier for them to sell to a third party.
While I understand that it is against the site's rules to sell or buy via third party, I wouldn't go as far as to condemn anyone who does so. You can leave that to deviantart if they get caught. Selling and buying points allows both artists and commissioners to do business with each other at a fair price rather than having to give in completely to the company that only profits off of other artists.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
More of a different question XD
Um if u have comms would it be alright to sell your comms for DA points on Toyhouse?
Falotalo
You are most definitely able to advertise DA Points Commissions here, and just do the actual point transaction on DA itself(I mean it kinda has to but still :p). Plenty of artists here do offer such commissions, as well as character sales, too.