**Apologies to the folks who subscribe via email. My daughter ran over and hit my laptop pressing keys to publish this post before I was done typing it... sorry for that.**
I enjoy reading the eBay Discussion boards. Particularly the "Building an eBay Business" board because the people there are alot like me. People who take what they do on eBay seriously and are professionals. Quite often people post asking for critugues or suggestions on thier stores. I LOVE to do this. This hits on several of my favorite things. 1. eBay 2. helping people 3. telling people what to do. Yes, I hate to admit it, but I love to tell people what to do. If I didn't start eBaying when I did, I was going to go into restaurant management. I figured it would be a good fit because I love to tell people what to do and I had 14 years experience in the service industry.
Ok, back to the subject at hand. Most every time someone asks for criques, PICTURES are the main thing that needs inprovement. All of the things that go into an eBay auction are important but many times it is the picture that makes (or loses) the sale. Your pictures need to give your customers a clear idea of what they are really going to recieve. It should look exactly like the item does in real life. If you ever have to write an apology for the bad pic in the description than you need to go back and re-do the photo!
How to do that: You can spend a lifetime learning how to take great photos. Obviously, you have something that you need to sell NOW, so that is no good. I think these basic tips are a good place to start...
- Use good lighting. Either natural of bright household lights
- Use a tripod
- Crop your photos very close. no one needs to know what is going on in the background
- make your gallery photo the right size so it doesn't warp
- clean the product or if it is clothes, iron them (no excuse for dust or wrinkles)
- take shots of all sides
- have a regular shot and a close up
- place a ruler, tape measure or something next to the product to indicate size
- use a template or basic html to insert picturs into the description to save on fees
Of course, as with all selling on eBay, some of these things may not apply to you. I mostly sell clothes so I rarely use the tape measure trick, but use it always when I'm selling fabrics to that people can see how large or small the pattern is.
I would also give the advice to not over-edit. I had a consignment client one time who told me that she had taken all the pictures for me. She emailed me the photos before bringing over the products. I think I hurt her feelings when I didn't use any of her pictures. I didn't use them because she had photoshoped them to look great. The products were in ok condition, but not perfect. Her photos made the products look perfect!
Just this week I had an issue where a seller "borrowed" one of my photos. I turned them in to eBay and got a canned response back from eBay that my photo was a stock photo therefore they were allowed to use it! I guess this is the drawback to having a really good photo. It was NOT a stock photo, it was one I had taken of my best friend wearing the dress. So, now I've even started watermarking.
There are lots of sites out there that can help with pictures. Here are a couple I've found recently:
http://ezauctionphotos.blogspot.com/
eBay photos/html discussion board
http://www.sigma-2.com/camerajim/index.htm
Feel free to comment here and add a site that you find helpful too.
(if you'd like, you can Read my old post about pictures too)
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