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Using Top Notch Pictures in Your Auction Listings

by: solpol( 377Feedback score is 100 to 499)
11 out of 14 people found this guide helpful.
Guide viewed: 1928 times Tags: picture hosting | selling on eBay | images | how to sell | gallery


Pretty sure that by now you've spent enough time on eBay to realize, the higher quality your listing is, the most people will spend time looking at it and consider buying your product.  So what's the first thing people see when they open up a auction page?  Your images.  So if you want them to stay and keep reading...well lets just say you need to have good pictures.

A few point come to mind when dealing with pictures and auction listings.  As with my other guides, I'll give you bullets to get you started, and if you need more of an explanation keep reading.
-Clear/Focused
-Bright
-On Target
-Fast Loading
-Small and Large
-Hosting

So here's the details.
-Clear/Focused: You've seen it, its annoyed you, and you've closed the auction page because of it - fuzzy blurry pictures.  You may not be a professional photographer, but just keep taking pictures until they look right.

-Bright: After the pictures are on the computer, play with them for a little bit to make sure the image isn't too dark and hides many of the fine details of the item.

-On Target: This one is pretty important, you want your image to display the item and nothing more.  If you have too much going on in the background it takes away from the product.  So take your pictures on a solid or clean looking background and once on the computer use the 'crop' function to get rid of any part of the image that doesn't include the item.

-Fast Loading: If they close the auction listing before the image loads, all your work is going to waste.  Make sure you find some kind of file compression software that allows you to shrink the image size (length x width) as well as file size (kB, MB, etc).  There are plenty of free services online that will do this for you.  I stick to keeping my images under 20kB and less than 500x400 pixels so it loads quick and they can see the whole image at once.

-Small and Large: If you took a bunch of pictures, take advantage of the thumbnail option some hosting websites have.  You upload a big picture, the hosting site gives you a small version of your image to place in your listing, and when someone clicks on that small version of the image it pops up with the big version.  So have 1-3 large images right on the main part of the auction listing, but after that use thumbnails to avoid making a really slow loading page that might cause images to not even show up.

-Hosting: There are many places that will do it for fees, many that do it for free, the fun part is sorting through them.  My favorite is ImageShack (just Google ImageShack image hosting to find them).  They host your image for free, don't slam your image with tons of watermarks, they are reliable, and all they ask for is a little bit of promotion or a link back.  For their free services I recommend them to all my friends and fellow sellers.  Without them, all these images would never be seen.

Here's my low-down for putting pictures up on my auctions:
-I'm not the best photographer, but I keep taking pictures until I'm satisfied as if I were actually buying the product.  
-Next I'll put the pictures on the computer, and crop the image so it includes only the item and no other distracting parts of the environment.
-Using Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro I'll lighten up the picture so it looks appealing but still true to its natural colors.
-Then I take some kind of image compression software (there are many free online ones that do this, send me a message if you need help finding them) I use the one built into Macromedia Fireworks and make the image smaller and faster loading.
-Lastly I'll upload the image to my favorite hosting site ImageShack.

I stand by the quality of the images used in my auctions.  Take a look and see what you think.  I jumped in the Lacoste polo market on this account and iPods, PSPs and Xbox 360s on my other account and look at how much better my auctions sell compared to the rest of the market.  I consistantly keep getting higher prices for my products because of the quality pictures I take.  (But also because of the low prices I can sell these quality items for and still make a huge profit.)  Top notch images will get you top notch dollar!

We give help to finding low prices for products.  Check our auctions or contact us for help!
Apple iPod Nano 2GB $139 - Sony PSP $159 - Lacoste Polos $10



Guide ID: 10000000001321529Guide created: 07/06/06 (updated 02/26/08)

 
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