Branding Your Etsy Shop Part Four from Becklee Cottage Blog

 

Sunlight and background terrible

Branding your Etsy shop Part Four: Good Photos

This was posted on my Becklee Cottage designs Blog

This is a short post this week lots going on. One of my pet peeves on Etsy is the quality of photographs. You are running a business, an online business and people shop with their eyes, long before they read the description and price. So for goodness sake make sure your photos are worthy of online shopping. Etsy has wonderful forum subjects and handbooks  http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/etsy-success-product-photography-for-beginners/ to help on this subject so I won’t belabor the point. I took all of the photos in this post.

1.Buy  a decent camera. I found one on sale a nice Cannon for under $200 bucks.

2. Buy a camera with a MACRO close up feature.

Not cropped,too dark and blurry

3. DON’T take photos in bright sunlight; it is too harsh and causes strong shadows. Cloudy or overcast days are best for photographing your items. Or use a lightbox.

Taken on a cloudy day

4. For goodness sakes CROP your photos, no one wants to see anything in the photo that is not related to your item for sale. I saw one photo that had dirty dishes in the background, “Uh gross.”

5. Props… I used to use them and fancied myself an artiste, but shoppers were confused as to what I was selling.

6. Some people use “light boxes” instead of natural light. Etsy has instructions on how to build one for on the cheap.

7. Editing your photos. There are many “free” programs that are fine for editing. Infranview,Picnik,Flicker,Microsoft Picture Editor and many more. Use an editing program to crop, lighten and edit the contrast.

Too dark but good image of items for sale

8. Set your camera at least 1 megapixel for each picture, the larger they are the better they stand up to cropping and editing.

As you can see I had some terrible photos in my Etsy shop, once I asked for critique and was blown away by the comments on how dark, out of focus my photos were. But after I got over it I read up and took their advice. Etsy has some great forums and people who are willing to help. Best Wishes and see you next post for setting up your blog. BL

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