Home >>> Including photographs in your auction ads.

eBay provides a facility for including photographs in your auctions. Using this feature on eBay, you can show your photograph once at the top in the description and once near the bottom of the page. However, you may have seen ads where the photographs are right in the middle of the description. By adding some extra HTML code to your listing it is possible to include one or more pictures of your product in your ad. You will have greater flexibility in how you lay out your advert and it is possible that your photograph will be clearer than if it was provided by eBay.

So how is it done?

You will require a computer scanner and/ or digital camera, some image editing software and some web hosting space. I will briefly discuss each of these in turn.

Computer scanner and/ or digital camera - These are used to take web ready photos of your goods. Use a scanner for smaller items (badges, jewellery, stamps, postcards etc) and a camera for most other things. Each product operates slightly differently, but it is essential that you save the image produced at 72dpi (dots per inch), which is the most appropriate 'dpi' for the web.

Image editor - The next stage is to open your photograph in an image editing package. You may be able to achieve most of what you require in 'Paint' which comes with Microsoft Office/ Works. However, you are advised to obtain a proper image editing package such as Paint Shop Pro, Photo Impact or Photoshop. It is important that your editor allows you to export images 'for the web'. This process reduces the 'weight' of the image in computing terms without altering the size or look of the image. Reduced photographs download from the internet more rapidly and are more likely to please people looking at your auction advert.

Web hosting space - You will also require somewhere to store the images you have made, so that they can be accessed over the internet. Companies such as 'Lycos' and '1 and 1 internet' will provide this service, and there are many other hosting companies around so it is important that you shop around. You will need to purchase an internet domain name and web hosting space. For example, to give you an idea, only, of the sort of costs involved, at the time of writing (April 2004) Lycos provides a package made up of 50MB hosting space and 1 domain name, free for the first year. For this they charge £7.99 as a one off set up fee, then £2.49 per month incuding VAT (there may be other charges to consider and prices change all the time). Your hosting company will tell you how to transfer your photos to their computers.

You will also have to chose a domain name. This choice is particularly important if you aspire to have a website. This choice will also depend on the name of your eBay business and the availability of suitable names. In my case I was lucky enough to find a suitable domain name - www.snowysstore.co.uk and so my website has the same name as my eBay store. If that is not so important to you, you have more flexibility in your choice of domain name.

The code for including a image in your auction is as follows:-

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