Picture Tutorial
The vast majority of bidders won't give your auction a second glance if you have not included a photo of the item you are selling. Pictures often make the difference between a sale and no-sale. However, for many new auctioneers, the prospect of adding pictures appears to be a daunting task. Well, fear not, this tutorial is designed to make simple work of this confusing task.
Basically, there are two steps to adding pictures to your auctions: 1.Getting a usable digital image of your item. 2.Storing your digital image on the web.
Step 1: Getting the Picture
Before discussing the various options for getting a digital image of your item and making it "web friendly", I want to pass on a warning: Resist the temptation to find an auction with an item similar to yours and copy their picture. You run the risk of misrepresenting your item's condition and may find yourself crossing onto the wrong side of a copyright law.
Your photo should be clear, well-lit, and have a contrasting background. For many bidders, having a poor picture is worse than having no picture -- it brings to question the professionalism of the auctioneer.
Image Format: To post the picture on the internet, you need a digital image in GIF of JPEG format. These are computer files with a .gif or .jpg extension. You have several options to do this. You can use a digital camera or a video capture device. These days, many photo developers will provide a disk or CD with your prints in a digital format for a small fee. You can scan your prints on a scanner (some libraries have scanners available for public use if you don't own one).
Flat items, like comic books, can be scanned directly into GIF of JPEG files. People have even scanned in beanie babies by covering them with a large sheet of white paper.
O.K., I've got my photo in GIF or JPEG format, I'm ready to post it on the internet, right? Not so fast! How big is that file? If it is too large, it is going to take forever and a day to load on your auction page. Studies have shown (by those that study these things) that the average net surfer will give your page 12 seconds to load. Anything longer than that, and they are off to the next guy's auction. So it is important to make your file as small as possible with out sacrificing picture quality. I try to keep my image files below 30 kbs.
There are basically three ways to reduce the size of your image file. I suggest using a combination of all three. The first method is to reduce the dpi (dots per square inch) when you scan. I set my scanner around 72 dpi. Next, reduce the size. You don't need to fill the bidder's screen with your picture. You just need an image large enough to accurately depict its quality and condition. You can crop and resize your picture at myImager.com. at myImager.com you can compress JPEG files, convert GIF files to JPEG and perform dozens of other image functions.
Step 2: Storing your digital image on the web
Some auction sites, like Yahoo! and Amazon.com auctions will allow you to upload images onto their server. If your auction site performs this service for you, you don't need to read any further. Your site will store your image for you and position it in your ad. Refer to them for detailed instructions. If you use eBay or any of the other many sites which leave storing the images up to you, keep reading.
If your auction site does not store the picture for you, you need to place the file on a server connected to the internet. There are plenty of sites on the internet that will do this for you. Most charge a fee, but a few are still free. You can even use free webhosting sites like geocities which are fairly easy to set up.
Additionally, many internet service providers provide free space on the web for their subscribers. Consult your ISP's home page to see if they offer this service and for instructions.
Also, make sure you make careful note of the URL of your image. Without it, everything you've done thus far has been for naught. This is what you will enter to tell you auction site where to get the image in order to place it on your ad. An important note: on the internet, file names are case sensitive. Picture.gif is differnet to picture.gif.
After uploading your image file onto the internet, you can test it by just typing the URL into your browser. If the image appears in your browser, you are good to go. If not, you have problems which need to be addressed before you submit your auction.
HTML Tutorials
The internet being what it is, there is an incredable range of HTML Tutorials to be found online. You may want to check out some of the following sites:
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