It’s a well-known fact that photos are a key piece when selling an item online. Photos can sometimes make or break your sale. If your goods can be photographed with good lighting and interesting angles you’ll have a better chance of selling your item at a high price than if the photos are out of focus or poorly angled.
Below are some tips that will help you when taking photographs of items you put in your online stores.
- Use Natural Lighting – Natural lighting is the absolute best way to show all details of an item. I find that early morning and late afternoon are the best times to get bright lighting for your items. Many times you can place them next to a window that gets a lot of sun to take advantage of natural lighting. It also helps you add interesting shadows to your products. The second best thing to natural lighting is Halogen which has a bright glow that doesn’t glare too much.
- Take a million pictures of your item – Ok, maybe not that many! You want to have a good choice of photos to choose from when listing your item. Sometimes they look better on the camera than they do on the display so don’t cut any pictures from your camera memory as you take them. Wait until you can check them all and pick from the best. With sites like Etsy you only get 5 photos to upload for each listing so taking a ton of pictures really increases the chances of getting those excellent shots.
- Use Photo editing software to make your products more interesting – Photos online tend to be all the same. Dull colors are a common theme among products on both Ebay and Etsy. By using a photo editing software and adding effects to your pictures, you can increase the chances that people will zero in on your photos out of the million others out there. I love using Picnik.com which offers a ton of free functions and lots more if you want to pay for the premium version. Some of my favorite effects are lomo, increase brightness, cross process and adding seasonal banners. I have found sales really increase when doing this and all I have to do is add a note stating “first photo was edited and colors may not match actual item.”
- Use a plain and simple background with nothing but the item in it – People want to see what they are buying and a plain background is usually your best bet for increasing sales volume. It keeps photos uncluttered and keeps confusion down about what’s included in the sale. A light box is surprisingly cheap when purchased from eBay. They work great for photographing small items. Using a light-colored wall and a mannequin is best when photographing clothes.
I hope these tips help you increase your sales volume! If you have any other tips please feel free to share them in the comments so others can learn from them. Below is an example of a photo that I’ve edited with Picnik. Don’t you love the Christmas lights?!
Happy Holidays everyone!
Resale Chick 