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| Contents Auction Training: What to Sell Let's Get Selling Creating Your Ad Misc. Thoughts Basic HTML Pictures Photos in Ads Graphics Online Cool Ads Online Get Organized Email Control Other Buy/Sell's How to Snipe Shipping Final Thoughts |
PICTURES CAN INCREASE YOUR SALES They say "a picture is worth a thousand words" and there is no place that statement rings truer than in the internet auction world. A good picture included with your ad can double or triple your chances of making a good sale. I know, I said earlier that pictures will slow down the display of your ad, but many times they are critical. If your item is so obvious (like a current beanie baby) that everyone knows what it is, then HTML would be helpful, but why waste the time and effort on a picture ... however, most items are not that obvious to the buyer, and if the item is not brand new, then everyone is "from Missouri", so SHOW THEM! People will bid some amount on most items, but they need to be 100% certain of what they are getting and what condition it's in before they will bid their highest. A good picture gives the buyer strong "visual" confidence to go for it! This is proven every day on every auction site - Pictures help bring the Big Bucks! Using pictures in your ads involves four basic steps:
GETTING PICTURES INTO YOUR COMPUTER The three most common ways
to accomplish this involve your regular camera you've had for years, or a camcorder you may have bought to record
the kids growing up, or one of the new digital cameras. A CAMCORDER - With this option you need to get a video capture device (like a Snappy) that will grab
an image from the camcorder and transfer it to your computer. Advantages: Medium priced equipment. Fairly reliable
and easy to use. Disadvantages: Quality is not quite as good. More cumbersome and not as mobile. A DIGITAL CAMERA - This is my preference. A digital camera will take a still photo and download it directly to your computer with it's own software. Advantages: Similar to a regular camera. Very mobile. Good quality. You can take and delete the pictures as many times as you want to until you get it right with no film or processing costs. Many have built in viewing screen. Disadvantages: High equipment costs. ($200 to $1000 - but they are coming down) More fragile and tempermental than a regular camera or camcorder. WORKING WITH THE PICTURES Now that you have the images stored in your computer as files, the next thing you will probably want to do is process the pictures in a graphics program. I like Paint Shop Pro 4.0. It contains many handy tools to convert and enhance your photos in the .JPG or .GIF file formats. (Note: Only files with .JPG or .GIF extensions can be used on web sites on the internet.) Paint Shop can convert your files for you, as well as do many nifty deletion, cropping, brightness, and other paint brush effects. Paint Shop is available on the internet at http://www.jasc.com/psp.html. I use the program and like it, so if you choose this one, I may be able to help you over some of the trouble spots. (Please note: There are other programs available on our links pages to do this job. Windows 95 even includes a small paint program that can help out.) GIF images contain up to 256 colors. JPG images contain up to 16 million colors. For graphics, GIF is usually best. For photos, JPG format is recommended. (Note: You need to keep your file sizes small so they will load quickly. A file size of less than 70K is best. Paint Shop will let you keep reducing the number of colors and checking on quality until you have a good quality picture in a smaller file.) UPLOADING TO A SERVER Your photos have been taken,
loaded into your computer, given a makeover, and you are now ready to use them in your ads. Hold on! You have to
"post it to the web" first. In order for a picture to be displayed on a web page or in an ad, it must
first actually be located somewhere on the web, in some web space, on a server computer. There is no way that someone
viewing your ad can look into (or retrieve from) your computer's hard drive. It must be uploaded to "your"
web space on the internet to be accessible. Most auction sites will not permit you to actually put the picture
on their site, so you have to arrange for some web space of your own on which to store your pictures (or graphics
or web pages). If you ask, your own Internet Service Provider will probably allot you a little free space. If not,
there are numerous places on the web that will offer you free space on their sites (for example: Geocities, Freeyellow,
or Xoom). To find a site, just use your search engine again and type in "free web space." Once you have
your own web space allotted, you can now begin uploading (sending a file from your computer to your web space site)
your pictures to the web and using them in your ads. This will require FTP (file transfer protocol) Client software.
I use WS_FTP. This may seem confusing now and may be tricky the first time you try it, but it is being used by
a lot of regular people like you and me and the software is pretty easy to use. You can download a copy of this
FTP software at http://www.ipswitch.com/Products/WS_FTP/index.html. You will have to go through a simple sign up program choosing a password (for your protection)
and such, but it is quick and easy. Once you are set up you can simply log on and choose the files (your pictures)
that you want to send to your new web site. The screen comes up with a double window. The left side shows files
in your hard drive and the right side shows the files you have transferred to your web space. To transfer them
you just highlight a file on your hard drive, click on the transfer arrow, and the file copies to your web space.
Very easy and very quick. |
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