There's no question that buyers like to see lots of images in an auction listing, but many sellers shy away from doing that because of the cost to add those images within the eBay system.
There's a host of solutions out there that let you store images for this purpose, but the one I like the most is Photobucket.com. It's very easy to use, it's quick, and it's free.
Once you've set up an account and logged in, it's one button to select the photo from your local hard drive and upload it, and since all your images are displayed on the same page of the Web site, you're instantly able to copy some HTML code to paste into your eBay listings.
It really couldn't be any simpler to use, which is why I recommend it highly.
Figure one shows what you'll see on the home page once you've logged in. At the top you simply click on Browse to select the image you want to upload. Bear in mind that your images should be less than 100kb in size for eBay.
Once you upload the image or images, copy the text from the HTML Tag box below the image to the clipboard (right-click your mouse in Windows and select Copy), and then paste them into the HTML area of an auction listing.
Once you've pasted the code, eBay knows how to suck the image in from Photobucket and displays it in your listing. Clever stuff, eh?
Photobucket can even host videos, although I've not tried that service. They also have a paid service, their Pro version for $25 a year, which is a bargain, but I can't really see any benefit in upgrading for eBay use because the standard service is so good.
The only exception might be if you are an extremely heavy user of the service. If you still need some more help with the techie stuff, you can visit the Tutorials section where the friendly folks at PhotoBucket.com walk you through the entire process.
Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses "get more done and have more fun."
