previous
next
Why have more than one photo?
Let's face it. Someone looking to buy a Heathkit 2 meter lunchbox radio already knows what they look like, so why have more than one photo of the one you want to sell?
1. Potential buyers want to know what condition the item is in. So you should have pictures of front, top, bottom and back
2. Have all the 'accessories' for the radio? Things like power cords, covers, manuals? Photos of these items lets viewers know that it is all there (or not) before they even read your text.
3. Are parts missing? Scratched? Dented? Rusted? You will likely get paid more when people are confident that they know what they are buying. So go ahead and take real close-up photos of scratches and dings. If your radio is in really good shape then take good close-up photos around the knobs. If the paint is not worn from fingers, by all means brag about that with a few good photos!
4. Take photos of the very item you are selling. If you are selling an Henry 3KD amplifier and you claim its in very good condition, you definitely should not post a 'stock photo' or a photo stolen from ebay. In my opinion, the number one clue that someone is a slimeball thief is when they take the time to post a photograph but it is not THE item they are selling. If you do not have a camera, then it is better to have no picture at all.
5. The more photos you post in your ad, the less time you will spend answering questions. If one of the plastic feet under the amplifier is cracked, go ahead and show it rather than to have to answer 7 emails about the feet.
We allow (at this time) up to 40 photographs per ad. Uploading photographs is free, so why not take a lot of photos and post them all ?
More megapixels does not make a better ad.
Reviewing statistics of ad performance on SecondHandRadio.com, a few
things become quite apparent.
* Ads with photos get, on average, 15 times more views
* More photos in an ad will get you more responses
You do not need a fancy digital camera. You don't even need an expensive one.
The one thing that is most important is that the digital camera can take
pictures quite close-up. If you haven't yet bought a camera, look for a camera
that boasts "macro mode". Macro mode is what the camera companies call 'extreme
close-up' photos.
Set your camera for a low resolution. There is no need for pictures to be any
more than one megapixel. Seems like so many people want to buy cameras that
boast 12 megapixel; but to view that photo on your computer would require a
monitor screen about 3 feet wide! (LCD Monitors are typically 96 pixels per
inch, so a 14 inch lcd monitor can only display 900,000 pixels !)
When you upload photos onto SecondHandRadio.com they are automatically re-sized
to fit the site pages. So even a 1 megapixel photo is made smaller! If you have
taken pictures at the 8 megapixel mode (depending what your camera can do) you
will have to wait all that time to upload the photo only to have the site resize
it anyway.
Why do we resize all the photos?
There are several very good reasons.
1. Many people are stuck with dial-up internet access. They do not want to wait
30 minutes to see a photograph!
2. Making all the photos the same size makes it much easier to layout the site.
3. Once the size for photo display has been chosen, we can keep the size of disk
storage constant for all photos. This makes database management much easier
4. We re-encode all photos with our own algorithms. So when slimeballs try to
upload photographs with a virus in them, our re-encoding of the picture will
destroy the virus.
back to site discussions