CHAPTER 3 – USE PHOTOS TO INCREASE YOUR SALES
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 is no brainer, even for the novice, but there are
a few different ways that you cam 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 $100 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.
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, but cost about $300 to $500.
You can also use a normal camcorder to grab the image. With a
small device (like SNAPPY) you can hook any video source, Like camcorders, to
your computer and transfer the image that way. These devices cost between $100
to $200 and are a good alternative if you already have a camcorder at home.
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 sharaware 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 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.
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!
STEP3- 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. Most sites like eBay™ do not allow
you to actually put the picture on their site, so you have to have some web
space of your own in which to store the picture. 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.
If you are on AOL, you can skip down to the next section,
which will take you step by step through the process that you have to use to get
your pictures up on AOL’s web space!
If your Internet Service Provider does not offer you any web
space, you can always find free web space through the Internet from services
like Geocities (http://www.geocities.com). These services allow you to sign up
for free web space that you can use to display your pictures on your website, or
to create your own actual web site. There are a variety of places that offer you
small free web sites, just do a search on http://www.yahoo.com
for web providers and you will find some others besides Geocities.
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.shareware.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/index.html
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.
Entering the following text to your auction's description can
now access your photo:
<a href="http://www.yourhost.com/-directory/imagename.jpg"> http://www.yourhost.com/-directory/imagename.jpg</a>
AOL PHOTO INSTRUCTIONS
This is for all of you who are on America On-line. This will
take you step by step through the process that you need to follow to get your
pictures posted to your personal web space with AOL.
First, Go to the keyword "MY PLACE". If you are a
novice, you may want to click on the section called "My Place Help"
for a quick overview on what to do.
Second, click on "MY PLACE" where you will find a
folder that is called "private". This folder is where you will store
all of your images for eBay™. You can also create a new folder, call it
something like "auction" or "eBay™" and you can store
your pictures there if you like.
Then click "ok" and cancel to go back to the screen
where you see the folders that you have. You are now ready to post your pictures
to the web. You must know where your photos are located on your hard drive.
Click on "UPLOAD".
You will now see the Remote Filename Screen. In the space that
is provided, you must type in the name of your photo file, including the file
type extension. The two types of files you can use are .gif and .jpg files.
Overall, .jpg files are better for photographic images, but you can experiment
with your photos if you’d like.
Press "CONTINUE".
Click on "SELECT FILE" and find the photo file that
you want to use. Click on the photo’s name to select it. You will see the name
of the file that you selected on the bottom of your screen where it says
"FILE".
Click on "SEND"! Your file is now stored on AOL’s
web server, where you can access it from anywhere on the Internet!
Your file can now be called by using the following text on
your eBay™ listing:
<a href="http://members.aol.com/yourscreename/filename.fileextention"> http://members.aol.com/yourscreename/filename.fileextention</A>
Please remember that web addresses are case sensitive, so be
sure to type it in exactly as it appears on the server or you might have
problems accessing them from the eBay™ site!
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