"How to Use Photos Effectively On Ebay to Increase Your Sales" by Jason James
It may be a cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it is one hundred percent true! A simple picture included with your ad can increase your sales by over two hundred percent! Like I’ve said before, people are not comfortable bidding on an item unless they are absolutely sure what they are bidding on. A picture gives the buyer a strong visual image of what they are buying.
Take a look at the items that have the most bids in almost any category on the auction web site, and I’ll bet you that the ads that have pictures have more bids, and also have higher bids than the ads that don’t include a picture! It’s the simple fact that seeing is believing! Ok, so you're sold on an idea that a picture will help your item sell. Now your asking yourself, how do I get a picture up on the Internet? Well, that’s a good question, and this next section is dedicated to showing you exactly how to take a picture of your item and post it to the Internet.
STEP 1- GET THE PICTURE INTO YOUR COMPUTER
Ok, so this may be a no brainer, even for the novice, but there are a few different ways that you can accomplish this. The first is the old fashioned way, and that is to use a normal camera, take a photo, and then take it to your local photo shop and get it developed. Once you get the photo developed, you need to get the photo scanned into your computer. You can either buy a scanner at you local computer shop for approximately $80.00 and up, or you can take your photos to many local copy shops like Kinko’s and they can scan your photos for you, and save them on floppy disk or CD. Or, you can search eBay and see if anyone has a scanner for a fantastic price. Getting feedback as a buyer, also gives you the credibility that you need as a seller.
The other alternative you can use is a digital camera, which will take a photo and download it immediately to your computer. These cameras are great to use, and the prices have gone way down. You can find them under $100.00 now. Of course, if you can afford a high quality one, then you will have sharper pictures. A company called Tiger Direct has a great selection of digital cameras as very low prices.
STEP 2-PROCESS THE PHOTO
Ok, you’ve got your photo saved on your computer in either a .gif or .jpeg file. Next thing you may need to do is process the photo in a graphic program. Programs like Paint Shop Pro (http://www.jasc.com/psp.html) or LView Pro (http://www.lview.com) are available as shareware on the Internet. You can use them to do things like crop the photo using only a portion of the photo with your item. You can use them to adjust thing like the brightness and contrast of the photo, or even add some cool text over the photo to create the perfect ad! Programs like Adobe’s PhotoShop Elements is a full blown graphics program that will help automate tasks like processing photos and adding some cool effects to both your photos and your text. You dont have to process your photo at all if you don't want it. It will just look neater if you do.
Take a look at the photo of the item you want to sell. The first thing you need to do is crop the photo to only show the item that you are selling. Each program will do this fairly simply. You need to click on the tool that selects a rectangular area of your photo. You then need to draw a box only around the area you wish to keep, and then select crop command from the main toolbars image or edit menu.
Then you should go and adjust the brightness, contrast and sharpness of the image as needed. Try to get as much visible detail as possible. Remember that the better the picture is, the more bids you will get!
You can also add text directly over the picture of the item. This may or may not be useful for you, since you can type in as much text as you want before or after the image on web page. If you do want to add text, simply click on the text button, which is the "T" button in 99% of graphics programs, and select an area on your photo and type away!
STEP 3- POST THE PHOTO TO THE WEB
All right, the photo is taken, processed, and ready to be used in an advertisement on the auction web. The next step you have to do is to actually upload the picture to a web site. If you’re on AOL or a lot of other Internet Service Providers, you most likely have some web space allotted to you through them. You can check with your provider to find out how much space you have, and how to access it. There are also many auction friendly images hosting providers that provide image hosting for a small monthly fee.
You can get reliable image hosting for only $6.99 a month from a company called Onvia Photo Hosting for Ebay. Click this link to visit Onvia's website.
Once you have someplace to put your picture, you have to upload the picture. Upload, for those of you who don’t know, simply means to send that picture file from your computer to your web space. There are a variety of programs, which are called FTP programs that you can use to transfer files over the Internet. You can easily find them for download on the Internet from places like http://www.tucows.com or http://www.download.com
The program called WS_FTP is very popular, and easy to use. You can download a copy directly from the manufacturer by going to their website at: http://www.ipswitch.com/Products/WS_FTP
Once you have your FTP program, you simply log onto your server and choose the files you want to send to the web site. For example, let’s say that your picture file is called "auction1.jpg" and it shows the item you want to sell. You would start up your FTP program, choose the directory on your computer that your picture file is in, select your file "auction1.jpg" and press the button to transfer it to your web space.
There is a great tutorial on how to get started using FTP at: http://www.ftpplanet.com/tutorial
Entering the following text to your auction's description can now access your photo: (This is just an example..) http://www.yourhost.com/images/imagename.jpg
In my next lesson, we will talk about creating... "The Killer eBay Ad"
Yours in success,
Jason James
Consultant and eBay™ Power Seller™
Founder, Auction Resource Network
Click Here to get photo hosting for your Ebay items for only $6.99 a month.
Jason James is originally from Boston, MA. and has spent time in the U.S. Marine Corps learning some of the discipline that is required for a successful home-based Internet marketing business.
Jason has built a long track record of success mastering eBay and building profitable membership websites.
His first Internet success was selling products on Internet auction site eBay, becoming a power seller then eventually putting together the website www.auctionresourcenetwork.com which detailed the exact steps a person can take to make money on eBay.
Jason's most recent venture is putting together a series of Online videos made by some of today's top Internet marketers to help budding entrepreneurs get trusted information to help their online businesses grow to phenomenal levels.
Jason has kindly allowed us to post one of his articles about how to be successful on E-bay each day for the next couple of months. Thanks Jason.