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 has put all the important steps into one step-by-step guide.

Oops! Nearly forgot to mention another important point: the file size of your photos. Make sure that your 3 – 4 pictures of your item are NOT 1 MB big each. Can you imagine how patient your potential buyers/bidders are to wait until all pictures have loaded? That’s right! They are 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.

Thomas Haselhorst is webmaster of http://www.auction-design-for-free.com and
http://www.monster-ebook-sale.com

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