As e-commerce sellers we see a lot of change and we see it fast. So much so that I must admit sometimes I find myself a little gun shy when it comes to adapting a new service. I've often been disappointed when the trial of the "next best thing" doesn't work for me, so much so that sometimes I'll sit back and await services that don't even exist yet with the assumption one will have to come along eventually which fits me right.
That said, never be afraid to try something out, just be prepared for it not to work exactly as you'd expected. Sometimes it works for awhile and then you learn a lesson.
One area I was schooled in about 4 or 5 years ago myself was image hosting. The lesson learned: host them yourself.
The scenario: I was very happy with my third party auction listing provider, so much so that I had about 7,500 listings on eBay that were prepared through it and 10,000 items total in the service's own provided store. That 10,000th item however bumped me into a new pricing level that I was not prepared to pay. Dollars and cents dictated I leave the service. Problem was, despite having copies of all of my images on my hard drive, the uploads to my listings through this service used images hosted by them, not me--in other words, the day I shut the service down would be the day all of my images disappeared from my listings.
(PS: This service is now long defunct, but I still preach this as the practice continues.)
I had to pay for an extra 3-4 months of the service in order to have time enough to edit all of my image URLs. It was worth the money to do it right, but what I look back upon with dread was the time I invested. I can make more money, but time, well, you know the rest.
So take my lesson and practice self-hosting your images from the start. How? Easy, here you go:
Sign up for a hosting account. GoDaddy, while not everyone's ideal host is cheap and reliable for this purpose. The economy plan starts at just $4.99 per month.
Publish your images to your site. If you're using GoDaddy you can FTP them right to your account from inside their Hosting Control Center. I've used the same FTP client for several years myself now, but friend Vince Jelenic of Green Spot Antiques recently pointed out FireFTP to me, a free FTP client for Firefox users. Also free is old standby Filezilla.
While you're at it, on that same $4.99 you can set up a website or a blog to help promote your listings elsewhere. Even if it's just a single page, that home base will help you out in the long run ... but that's for another day.
Note: Above is my own method, though Marianne Dow of Ms Dow Antiques just pointed out an even easier way to go if that intidates you. She suggested using a photo sharing site such as Picasa, an option well-worth mentioning! You don't get the benefit of your own web site, but if the idea of setting up a hosting account or using FTP intimidates you, then there's your work around.
Whichever option you use once you publish your images online they're each going to have a unique web address consisting of your web site's name and the file name.
Like this:
http://www.things-and-other-stuff.com/images/Stock/1939-rothmans/garbo-greta-a.jpg
Click it and you'll see my "naked" image.
Just cut and paste that web address into your listing tool or your actual listings whenever it offers you the option to enter an image URL. If the option isn't there, or if you prefer to position your image somewhere specific, then you just enter the code into your listing. You have to do this in the source view:
<img src="http://www.things-and-other-stuff.com/images/Stock/1939-rothmans/garbo-greta-a.jpg">
Or you can jazz it up a little with some basic html:
<p align="center"><i>"I vant to be alone ..."</i><br><img src="http://www.things-and-other-stuff.com/images/Stock/1939-rothmans/garbo-greta-a.jpg" border="0" ></p>
Which winds up looking like this:
"I vant to be alone ..."
Don't let the basic html scare you. If intimidated think of it as taking a trip to a foreign country and learning a vocabulary of 10 or 20 words just to get around. Heck, I took German in high school, and I don't remember much, but if I ever find myself in Berlin I still know how to ask where the bathroom is! Learn some basics and you have just that much more power for yourself.
Once you own your images you're just that much more portable. You can take your listings from site to site, or switch from service to service, without having to worry about losing time, effort, or money, like I did.
Comments
Excellent -- but may I also add this?
Stop trying to disable right-click-and-save or otherwise prevent folks from downloading your images; the person you are trying to stop is probably a blogger who would be giving you free exposure & press. (Plus, with screen capture we can really get it -- but it's more work and many of us will not bother to work so hard to help you.)
An excellent roundup of the "HIT" we all take as services run up and down the ladder of success.
Owning your website is almost rule #1 these days. As we spread ourselves around the net, flitting between social sites, selling sites, forums, groups, and communities, we leave bits and pieces along the way.
I like the concept of "HOME", my one place I can (so far as possible) count on being there. As you point out in this article, your HOME for your images is a nice safe harbour, giving you piece of mind.
if I had 10 items for sale I guess it wouldn't be worriesome, but with hundreds? or thousands, as You, Cliff, maintain. it's a nightmare.
We have just changed internet service provider. Guess what?
Besides the typical changes to our email services, contacting our customers , there is now the issue of having to also change all the social sites we participate on. YIKES... it only gets worth monthly.
HOME, A person can be a gypsy, for e-commerce not possible.
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