How To Add Unlimited Pictures To Your Ebay
Auction Listing – For Free. by Thomas Haselhorst
I get a lot of questions from people wanting to know how to add
more pictures to their auction listings. Do you know that eBay
charges for additional pictures? Yes, that’s right. Pay
attention when you launch your next eBay listing. Only the
first picture is for free. For any additional photos you will
be paying $0.15 per photo. This does not sound much but you
will be surprised how these figures add up: Imagine you add 3-4
photos per listing. This will end up to an additional $0.50 –
just for hosting of your photos. Let’s say you have 3-5
listings a day at the end of the year you might have paid
$400-600$ just for picture hosting. The fees can add up very
quickly. Do you know that you can add as many pictures as you
like – For Free and even without using eBay’s image hosting
service? Well, you could use one of the so called “auction
management” services. You pay a monthly fee and hosting of all
your item photos is included. But do you know that these
services are expensive too? Fees are ranging between $20 and$70
per month – depending on your selling volume. This easily adds
up to $400-600 a year – maybe even more.
So, what can you do to avoid these additional costs? Of course,
you can add only one picture per item, but guess what?? Right,
the chance that your potential customer/bidder quickly moves to
another listing is high. In fact, VERY high!! Because people
like to see first what they are buying and do you think that
one picture is enough? I don’t, because we live in highly
visual world…people want to see the product or item they
potentially want to purchase. Yes, the even would like to
“touch” it - if they could. What about you? Do you take the
product you want to buy in your hands and “touch” it? I bet you
do. Imagine you are in a shop and want to buy a birthday present
for a good friend. If one special gift catches your attention
you take it from the shelf and you carefully look at the
product, don’t you? You “touch” it and turn it around to get a
“feel” for it. How can we add this “feeling” experience to our
eBay auction listings? Yes, by adding a couple of good photos.
Take pictures of your item from all sorts of different angles.
The potential buyer will get a good “feel” for the item and
it’s more likely that they place a bid. As mentioned above: You
can add as many pictures as you like – For Free. How can you do
it??? The answer is simple: Host your own pictures! Not sure
how to do it? Here are some ideas:
1. It’s very likely that your Internet Service Provider offers
you also free web space. I have used (and still use) the 10 MB
web space my ISP gives me for free. Check the policy of your
ISP – maybe an email to them is a first try.
2. Find a free or cheap web host – but be careful! Some of the
free webs hosting companies do not allow that their service is
being used just for data storage. Read their policy carefully
before you sign up.
3. Search for some image hosting services. There are a couple
of free image hosting companies out there allowing ‘hot
linking” to eBay auctions.
4. In case you own a website you can make a special “ebay”
directory for your auctions pictures.
Upload all your photos and item pictures BEFORE you design your
auction listing and copy and paste the image URL into the source
code of your auction description.
http://www.auction-design-for-free.com
may assist you with
that, in case you are not familiar with this process.
One important point to mention is the file size. Make sure that
your 3 – 4 pictures of your item are NOT 1 MB big. Can you
imagine how patient your potential buyers/bidders are? That’s
right! That’s right! Not very patient at all. If the pictures
are not loading within 20 seconds your visitor leaves your site
and moves on. There are maybe other listings offering the same –
with pictures loading faster. So, make sure that the file size
is in manageable range.
You’ll be amazed how more pictures will add more credibility to
your selling practice and gives the potential buyer/bidder the
feeling that they can almost “touch” your item.
About The Author: Thomas Haselhorst is webmaster of
http://www.auction-design-for-free.com
and
http://www.monster-ebook-sale.com