When you use eBay to list items that you physically own or have in your possession eBay will only let you post 1 photo of your item for free. The next (up to 5) photos will cost you .75 cents per listing.
Now if you list over 10 items per month and you want to show more than 1 picture per listing, this method I explain in this video will save you money.
To explain further let’s assume that you do 10 listing each month and you want to show 6 pictures on each listing. Remember, even eBay recommends that to have a more successful auction you should describe your items as completely as possible. So having as many pictures as you can on your listing page will result in a higher percentage of bids and eventually increase your profits for each of your listings.
Ebay way: 1 free picture and 5 more that you pay .75 cents for equals $7.50 per each 10 listings.
The way shown in this video costs you a domain name ( a .info extension only costs $1.99 per year on GoDaddy.com).
Hosting at Hostgator.com costs $4.95 per month for 1 domain name.
That will cost you a total of $6.94 per month for your first month then only $4.95 per month afterwards.
This could be a significant savings over the long run in your eBay business.
Watch the video below to see a step by step way you can self host unlimited images on your own hostgator account.
For those that prefer the written way I have included an outline of the steps Below:
Take your picture using a digital camera and download your pictures to a file on your computer.
Open up your image using a free photo editing software called Irfanview. Google Irfanview to find your free download link
I usually go to Image > sharpen to sharpen the image a little, then I crop it to show only the image with no unnecessary background, then I resize the image to a width of 400 pixels. That seems to show and fit best in the listings. Save your new image to a file for using later.
Once you have your domain name and hosting setup on hostgator you need to find a FTP program to upload your photos to your hosting account. I use CoffeeCup Direct simply because I purchased it awhile ago and am comfortable with it. You can find a free one by searching online for “free FTP”. Simply follow the help files to find out how to upload or you can watch the video to see how I do it with CoffeeCup Direct.
Once the files are uploaded to your hosting service you need to copy the address where the images are at and insert them into your browser address window to see if the image pops up correctly and the address you have is working.
After you have confirmed the images address you need to format it with the correct HTML code to insert into your listing. I use HTML-Kit (free version) to do this. But it is simply adding your address to the code
Replace the URL of YOUR IMAGE with your url and that is the code you need to insert into your eBay listing.
Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or need a video on a particular topic.
When I started buying and selling on eBay back in 2004 I sold mostly stuff from around the house or purchased from garage sales in the area. Which is the way most of the books told you to do to get started. But since then my eBay business has evolved somewhat to finding hot items and then finding a wholesaler or a dropshipper to provide those items. This is the method that I use to find what is hot right now on eBay.
Go to eBay’s home page at eBay.com and on the left side where it says “Shop Your Favorite Categories” scroll to the bottom and click on “view all categories”.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of that page and click on “See Item Counts” on the right. It will automatically change to show you all the categories and sub categories with the amount of current listings in them. This will give you information on how popular it is with the sellers. Hold on and I’ll explain later about how to find out how popular it is with the buyers. See the image below with the amount of listings in (xxxx).
Next you will want to go to pulse.eBay.com/ to check the search “Pulse” of popular products.
Once you get there it will tell you the 10 most popular items on all of eBay, but you can narrow the products down by category by looking right above the header where it says “Popular Searches” and it says “Categories”. Click on the drop down menu and choose a category that interests you. Once you go to the next page it lists the 10 most popular searched for products for that category. Click on any of those results and it will take you to a list of currently selling products. To see what has sold in that category just do a “completed listings” search on the Advanced Search page (see below).
To find out what is actually Selling on eBay go to the eBay home page at eBay.com. At the top on the right side of search box is the link to “advanced search”. Click on it to go to the next page.
Enter your keyword (your product you are researching) in the box and check off the “completed listing “box under the “Search Included” category. Next make the default search for “exact words”in the box next to the one you enter the keyword into. There are ways to further narrow down your results, but I suggest you not do that for the first search. Later you can narrow it down if the results are too general to find what you are looking for. You never can tell what other niches you may discover if you leave it as a general search first.
The results will show you whether it sold or not – price in green means sold, price in red means it didn’t sell. It will also tell you how many bids it received and when it sold. Generally speaking you want to see at least a 50% sell rate. From this result page you can also click on any of the listing and see the exact listing they used to sell with.
This is all great information for you to sift through and determine if this is a niche or product you want to pursue. At least it can tell you what is hot on eBay right now.
Once you have found a product you know is selling the next step is to source out were you can buy that product for less and sell for a profit.
A great place I have found where you can get a list of over 8000 pre-approved wholesale products and dropshippers is at SaleHoo.
