Selling Online
Getting Started Selling Online - Website and eBay Basics
By Steven Pollack
Mar 14, 2006, 19:37

Digital Cameras

One of the most basic skills you will need for selling online is the ability to take digital photographs and post them on the web.  Purchasing a digital camera, like purchasing a computer, is a confusing decision making process with the possibility of information overload and buyer paralysis.

It is important to remember that most digital cameras on the market today are of good enough quality to do your own photography for both the web and print advertising.  As long as you get a camera above 3 megapixels you will be fine.

There are, of course, better and worse cameras but for most applications the differences are imperceptible to all but the camera connoisseur.  And these people are never happy with anything less than 35mm quality so we can discount their opinions because 35mm is way more complicated than the busy retailer can worry about.

Of course there are special needs by certain retailers that will affect the type of digital camera to purchase.  Jewelers, for instance, need a good macro (closeup) capability.  The proper camera for this use would have the ability to focus on an object closer than one inch.  The Nikon Coolpix cameras are usually good candidates.

In my case, I could only devote a small portion of my warehouse to a showroom for photographing our bathroom vanities.  Because I did not have the ability to back up very far in order to capture the entire scene I needed a wide angle camera and chose an Olympus.

For most other needs you should not obsess over the decision too much.  A good site to visit for camera reviews, discussion forums, and comparisons is Steves Digicams. Because prices are always dropping and new models are always coming out it is easy to become paralyzed in the decision.  The fact is, however, you want to start selling online soon so you need to purchase a camera soon as well.  

More detailed information on Digital Photography 

Photo Editing Software

Alright, you took your pictures and downloaded them to your computer, now what?  Well you cannot simply post your images on your website because the pictures are going to be too large, contain content in the periphery that needs to be cropped out, will probably be too dark or light and need contrast adjustment, and will need to have the file sized down for quicker downloading.

The industry standard for photo manipulation is Adobe Photoshop. This is a very robust and full featured software that is unfortunately very complex to learn.  Fortunately you are not in the graphic arts industry so you don’t need Photoshop.

Instead, you can use a less full featured and simpler to learn software which will still do much more than you need for selling online.  I have used PhotoImpact by Ulead for about 6 years and find it extremely user friendly.  At $90, it also costs a lot less than Photoshop’s $649 price.

Image Hosting Service

So now you have your images looking great and saved to a folder on your computer.  But how are the thousands of consumers you want to visit your online shop going see them?  You certainly can’t grant them access to your own computer so you will want to find an image hosting service.

You can use the server space provided by the Internet Service Provider hosting your website but if you want to also have your goods listed on eBay then it can be difficult to locate the URL of your images.  Image hosting providers offer easy navigation so you can place your images in both your online store and your eBay listings.

There are a lot of these services on the internet.  The cost is nominal, about $5 to $10 per calendar quarter.  They all advertise 99.99% uptime, multiple servers, etc.  I personally use Auction Assist because they have a nice interface for finding the images and providing the URL for insertion into the sales template.

Formatting Your Sales Copy

Alright, you took your picture, edited and cropped it, and uploaded it to the server.  You are almost finished.  Now you need to describe your item and position the text and images to create a visually pleasing presentation.

I use Microsoft Frontpage  to format my listings.  It is fairly simple to learn if you are used to the Microsoft Office toolbars.

I prefer to use a format composed of a general product description followed by a bulleted list of benefits and then a bulleted list of features.  It is very important to not skimp of product details in the feature section because you are asking for the consumer to make a leap of faith when buying online.  The more detailed and professional looking sales copy you present the more credibility you will gain.  And the more credibility the consumer perceives in the listing the less apprehensive she will be about making an online purchase.  The final section after the features is our general policies on payments and shipping.

With the completed Frontpage copy you are ready to upload to your website and to eBay.  To see the format I use, visit this listing on my website.