As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words --  

Especially on eBay blogs !

Here’s a brief tutorial for posting your blog pics

First, you have to get the pic stored somewhere on the Internet. You could pay eBay for extra space in Photo Manager, but why do that, when you can go to a site like Photobucket.com and create a FREE account? So, do it!  Find a freebie photo hosting site and open an account.  (Be sure to set your album to PRIVATE unless you want everybody and anybody searching through your pictures.)

Upload your pics to the Net 

Next, upload your blog pictures to Photobucket or whatever service you chose. (Of course, if you already have storage space on a website, you can use that instead. But with a high traffic blog, this could use up your bandwidth and cost more money. Which is why, even though I have a website, I prefer to use freebies for my blog pic storage. If you run out of storage space, open a second freebie account.)

Remember the "Ten Second Rule"

Before posting the pics on your blog, go to the "edit" function for each pic on Photobucket and see how big it is. Really huge pictures take a long time to load if people have slow Internet connections. Always remember the Ten Second Rule: If it’s not on screen in ten seconds or less, many people will go elsewhere. Also keep in mind that many rural folks, including me, are still stuck on slow dial-up connections. So, use smaller pictures!

Resize to "blogs and email" option

Photobucket has a neat feature called "resizing," which allows you to reduce a picture right there online. (This does not change the original on your own computer, just the copy you have stored on Photobucket.) Unless there is a specific reason for using a full-screen picture, I always downsize mine to the "website and email" option. This is big enough for people to see without choking their computer systems.  (You can also resize the display on the blog draft later --  while in "write new post" mode, choose the pic and move the arrows on the corners --  but I'm not sure if this cuts down on the download time.)  Resizing also prevents people from stealing full-sized copies of your pics.  There is a "stop-thief" code you can use to prevent this, but eBay blogs won't let you use it.

How do you get the pic on your blog?

• Open Photobucket and upload your pic.
• Open a new window and go to your blog.
• Click on "New Entry."
• Check the "View Source" box in the upper left corner. The screen will change to HTML mode. (If you see some bits of code already there, ignore it.)
• Go back to the Photobucket window and copy the HTML code for your pic. (Photobucket automatically generates code for each photo.  Be sure to take the "HTML tag" version.)
• Paste it into the editing area on the blog post.
• Uncheck the "View Source" box. In a few seconds, your picture should appear. Write whatever text you want and hit "Post." That’s it!

WARNING:  This link will not work on eBay listings !!!!

But fear not, you can disable the forbidden pop-up window to make it work -- To learn how to do that, go to my guide How to get Photobucket pix embedded in listings to work.  I myself always disable the pop-up feature in blogs, too - it is annoying and also allows people to steal full-sized photos - something I do not want happening.  So visit this Guide and learn how.

Getting text to wrap around the pictures

The default setting for picture links is to post the picture without text wrap.  That can look pretty clunky.  And, unfortunately, that's the only option you have here in the Guides section, because you can't write your own HTML here.  So I can't clearly demostrate how to do it in a Guide.

On the blogs, however, you can get the text to wrap.  So, rather than try and explain here without the benefit of examples, I have written a nice how-to on my blog.  Go to my page, Rooster reveals how to wrap texts around pics on blog posts, for illustrations in living color, complete with step-by-step HTML instructions.

Happy blogging!