Dec
2
eBay Picture Tutorial
Filed Under How-To's, Sellers' Insights
Adding Pictures to Your Auction Listing Makes a Difference
The vast majority of bidders won’t give your auction a second glance if you have not included a photo of the item you are selling. However, for many new auctioneers, the prospect of adding eBay pictures appears to be a daunting task. Well, fear not — Auction Insights is here to help.
Make Your Net Auctions Sell!, generally accepted as the bible of net auction selling, states: “Pictures often make the difference between a sale and no-sale.” This tutorial is designed to make simple work of this confusing task.
Basically, there are two steps to adding eBay pictures to your listing:
- Getting a usable digital image of your item.
- Storing your eBay on the web.
Step 1: Getting the Picture
Before discussing the various options for getting a digital auction picture of your item and making it “web friendly”, I want to pass on a warning: Resist the temptation to find an auction picture with an item similar to yours and copy their eBay picture. You run the risk of misrepresenting your item’s condition and may find yourself crossing onto the wrong side of a copyright law.
Your eBay picture should be clear, well-lit, and have a contrasting background. How many times have you seen an auction with a lousy picture? In my opinion, having a poor eBay picture is worse than having no eBay picture — it brings to question the professionalism of the seller. And, as we’ll discuss shortly, you have at most about 12 seconds to make an impression on a potential bidder.
Image Format
To post the eBay picture on the internet, you need a digital image in GIF or JPEG format. These are computer files with a .gif or .jpg extension. As a general rule, the JPEG format is best for photographs, while the the GIF format is best for images such as clip art.
You have several options to obtain your digital image. You can use a digital camera or a video capture device such as Snappy ™. These days, many photo developers will provide a disk or CD with your prints in a digital format for a small fee. You can scan your prints on a scanner (many libraries have scanners available for public use if you don’t own one). Finally, a copy shop will perform this service for a small fee.
Flat items, like comic books, can be scanned directly into GIF or JPEG files. I’ve even heard of auctioneers scanning beanie babies by covering them with a large sheet of white paper.
O.K., I’ve got my eBay picture in GIF or JPEG format, I’m ready to post it on the internet, right? Not so fast! How big is that file? If it is too large, it is going to take forever-and-a-day to load on your auction page. Studies have shown (by those that study these things) that the average net surfer will give your page 12 seconds to load. Anything longer than that, and they are off to the next guy’s auction. So it is important to make your file as small as possible with out sacrificing picture quality. I try to keep my image files below 30 kbs.
There are basically three ways to reduce the size of your eBay picture. I suggest using a combination of all three. The first method is to reduce the dpi (dots per square inch) when you scan. I set my scanner around 72 dpi. Next, reduce the size. You don’t need to fill the bidder’s screen with your auction picture. You just need an image large enough to accurately depict its quality and condition. You can crop and resize your auction picture at myImager.com. Next, if the the file is a GIF file, reduce the number of colors the image has. Take, for example, these two pictures:
 11 Seconds |
 5 Seconds |
The auction picture on the left has 128 colors, is 36 kbs and takes approximately 11 seconds for a browser to load with a 28 kpbs modem. The auction picture on the right has 48 colors, is 17 kbs and loads in approximately 5 seconds with the same modem. As you can see, there really is no loss in picture quality. Once again, myImager.com, a free site, is a great place to do this (if you don’t mind pop-ups). You can compress JPEG files, convert GIF files to JPEG and perform dozens of other image functions at this site.
Step 2: Storing your eBay picture on the web
Some auction sites will allow you to upload images onto their server. If your site will store your image for you and position it in your ad, refer to them for detailed instructions. If you use eBay and want to upload more than one auction picture, or use any of the other many sites which leave storing the images up to you — keep reading.
If your site does not store the auction picture for you, you need to place the image file on a server connected to the internet. There are plenty of sites on the internet that will do this for you. Most charge a fee, but some are still free. Listing Factory is one service that provides reliable, inexpensive eBay picture hosting as well as professional listing templates.
Additionally, many internet service providers, including AOL, also provide free space on the web for their subscribers. Consult your ISP’s home page to see if they offer this service and for instructions.
AuctionEssentials4u.com’s AOL picture storage tutorial demonstrates how AOL members can take advantage of 2 Megabytes of free storage for use on your auctions.
Oh, by the way, make sure you make careful note of the URL of your image. Without it, everything you’ve done thus far has been for naught. This is what you will enter to tell you auction site where to get the image in order to place it on your ad. An example of a URL of an image stored on AOL might be: http://members.aol.com/your_screen_name/image_name.gif
An important note, on the internet, file names are case sensitive. Typing in http://members.aol.com/your_screen_name/Beaniebaby.GIF
when you really meant: http://members.aol.com/your_screen_name/beaniebaby.gif
will result in the dreaded broken link symbol: 
After uploading your image file onto the internet, you can test it by just typing the URL into your browser. If the eBay picture appears in your browser, you are good to go. If not, you have problems which need to be addressed before you submit your auction listing.
You Shouldn’t Need a Computer Science Degree to Add Pictures to your Auction Listings
Auction Photos, if clear and well-done, add professionalism and
impact to a your auction listing.
Unfortunately, to do it correctly, eBay pictures usually require a significant amount of time, effort, technical expertise and (often) money.
However, this doesn’t have to be the case. I have recently discovered a program called Listing Factory. This service is the ideal way for both new and experienced auction sellers to upload, source, and remove the photos for for their auction listings from the internet without any downloads, programming, or frustration. What I really like are the professional listing templates I can easily create, offline on my own computer, before I post the eBay auction. They’re are many web sites that will store images for you, I’ve never seen one with this many features.
CLICK HERE to learn more about this outstanding eBay picture storage and template service.
P.S. Give it a try for 30-days FREE!
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3 Responses to “eBay Picture Tutorial”
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This is a really good site for all to utilize and I first used it back in late 2002 and early 2003 when I discovered the wonderful worl of ebay auctions and html.
darthoz [-o-]
http://www.darthoz.com
April 2006
I like your website..because I am running on a low budget..and I really cannot afford a $1500 fee for these e-bay template designers…Thanks very much for your free info
Sorry about the last comment submitted, I am using Sell on My Ebay site. Do I need to create my own Website, I really want to do this, I must because I will soon have to come out of the workforce, and I need to work from home, that is why your information was really needed…..