Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about five tips to take photos that sell your items.
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5 Tips To Take Pictures That Sell!
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about pictures, and more specifically, five tips how to take good pictures that will sell your items. Alright guys, today it's all about pictures and how you can get your items sold quicker and better with good pictures.
Melissa: So, are pictures really important in your flipping business?
And the answer is yes. Absolutely! They are important. I want to also give a caveat real quick though. Don't let having to take a perfect picture stop you from getting started. If your pictures are not great in the beginning, that's okay. They're going to get better. But taking good pictures is a huge thing for your business.
Rob: Such a great point. What Melissa just said, do not make yourself have to get expensive cameras, light boxes, picture stages, all that. Don't let yourself do that. Use exactly what you have. Currently, we do all of our pictures on our iPhones. You can totally do that. Our iPhones are what, like three or four years old.
We don't even have brand new iPhones. We have older versions of the iPhone still take beautiful pictures. And I think Androids are even better than iPhones on their picture quality. So don't let any of that stuff stop you start where you're at, but we're going to give you some great tips on how to use whatever you have.
And get the best pictures to sell your items quickly.
Melissa: So one other thing before we get into those tips is pictures are super important. They're more important on eBay or where you're going to be shipping the items. So if you're selling on marketplace, they're still important because you're going to get more people to view your items.
But they're not as important because if you're not shipping on Facebook, if you're just selling locally, because the buyer can inspect the item before they decide to purchase, like they can see it. Then. So if they said, oh, it's in worse condition than I thought, then, you know, they don't have to buy it.
But on eBay or on Facebook marketplace, if you're shipping, they don't see the item. So that's why pictures really need to show everything that the item is.
Rob: So such a great point. Absolutely. eBay is where people can inspect it before, marketplace, OfferUp, Craigslist, yeah. They can, they have the opportunity to refuse the item when they meet up to you, meet up with you to buy that item.
They have that option. You still want to get good pictures even with those cases because you don't want somebody to be upset. set, but at the same time, they still have the ultimate option to opt out. They don't want it because it's not what the pictures look like. So this is a really good point and something you have to be aware of.
Melissa: All right. So number one is no clutter in the background of your pictures. No clutter.
Rob: Don't take pictures where there's a lot of stuff. That will turn people off very quickly. So, to get good pictures, maybe get a spot on a wall where you can move some stuff out of the way. If you do have clutter, get it, everything out of the way to where you can get that item on the wall alone and get a picture with a flat background. That's the best way to do it. And think about also, yeah, if you can move stuff around to get some good pictures, you might have to do that. I do that in our case. Some of our larger, if it's bigger, it is some of our larger items and I don't have a good wall that's big enough for that item.
Sometimes I'll move our dining room table out of the way, and put it where I have a wall. I know there's a nice wall right there where I can back up and I have enough good lighting. Exactly. So. Be thinking about that. You might have to move a couple things over, move a chair over, move a table over, something like that to get a good spot that you can get a really good, clean, crisp picture.
Melissa: Yeah, and if you can set up a station to eventually, like, don't let that stop you again, but if you can start to set up, like, an area, like, a little table that you have where you can photograph items and it's just a clean background, then that is the best. The biggest, if you go look on Marketplace, some of the pictures that you see, not as much on eBay, but on Marketplace, some of them are hilarious. And those are items that we look for, because then we can get a great deal on them. Yeah. You know, so.
Rob: I think about that. You posted one not that long ago of somebody who was selling a couch and said, no pets. And there's a cat sitting in the table right behind the couch.
It's like, come on! That's the kind of stuff that you do not want to do. Don't tell people you don't have any animals, and then they can see one in the picture. That's one of those things. But yeah, so definitely, first thing is get rid of clutter. You do not want pictures with clutter, move some stuff around.
And we're not telling you to go buy picture boxes and all the special lighting and all that kind of stuff. Just use what you have, but move some stuff around to try and get a good, clean picture without clutter.
Melissa: Yeah. And another one also be careful if you're selling mirrors. because some of the, it's hard to not get cluttered in that, you know, it's just a reflection.
So, and there are some funny pictures out on the internet of on eBay, even like that are people taking pictures of mirrors. And it's pretty funny cause they don't like think that they're taking a picture of themselves and it's pretty funny. It's pretty funny. Alright.. Number two, number two, make sure you put the item in the full frame.
That's something I remember you talking about a long time ago to like, don't just take a picture and have all this back, like, space, you want to get the full frame of the picture, so can you explain that a little bit?
Rob: Yeah, absolutely. So if you're taking a picture of something, yet you definitely don't want to be so far back that there's a lot of space around it and people can't get a good view of it.
Nowadays, with our cameras, you zoom in, grainier.
Melissa: It will be grainier.
Rob: It will be that much better if you can get the, the full frame of the picture in, or the item in that picture. So it is already blown up as much as you possibly can get it, and then when people do want to zoom in and see if there's any scratches, anything on it, They can totally do that because you're already close enough to it.
So, yeah, definitely use the full frame that you have, for the picture.
Melissa: Shows the picture a little bit better.
Another tip, number three, you can brighten your photos. So say that you don't have the best lighting or, and even we do some, well, no, I guess our house doesn't really have great lighting.
We have a ring light now that we use. Didn't start with that, but, we use that now. But still, sometimes the pictures just feel like they could look brighter, so they catch more attention. Cause you, you want to grab attention with your item, on your phone, you can just use the editor and just brighten it up a little bit.
Melissa: The biggest thing you don't want to do is change the color of an item, especially if you're, this is for eBay. Like again, again, Marketplace isn't as important cause they'll see it. But still, if you brighten something so much that it now, like, purple now looks like red or something. Like, you know, whatever it is, you don't want to change the color of it because that would be, you're selling something that's different than somebody who's thinking they're getting something different and they're not going to be happy. So, so yeah.
Rob: Definitely hit that home with the eBay versus Facebook marketplace. Again, people are able to see it.
If it is the wrong color for whatever reason, they don't have to take it. If it's on eBay, you're already paying for shipping to get it to somebody before they actually inspect it. So yeah, if you are messing with the brightness of it, make sure it doesn't change the color. It just lightens the background up so people can see the item better.
Melissa: So it catches your attention. So, and take as many pictures as possible. Number four, take as many pictures as possible. Again, this is more like, you don't have to have as many for Facebook, but still if you only have one picture of the item on Facebook marketplace, it's not going to catch as much attention because they can't see more all sides of it, or they can't see the condition that well.
So, like, one picture is not that great when you're trying to sell on any platform. But, definitely utilize as many pictures as you can. On Facebook, you get 10, right? Facebook's 10. And then, eBay's now 24. It used to be 12. So, we used to say use all 12 pictures. 24 could be excessive for some things. Like if you have a plush toy, how many pictures can you really, of every angle? Like, you don't, you want to take every angle, but you might not need 24 pictures. But still, just take as many as you need to show the item off as much as you can.
Rob: For us, 24 pictures is great for high profit, a high value item so that you can take a lot of different things.
Do you use all 24 usually? I don't. I haven't been able to get that high with them, but typically I will use 15 to 20 pictures when I'm doing them. It's way better than the 12 that they used to have. It is. You can get so many more angles. You can get so many more features of the item with the 24 pictures now.
So definitely if it's possible, take as many as you can. We will say also goes back to any imperfections. Right. That's number next one. That's number five. So number four, definitely get as many pictures as you possibly can so there's no surprises to the buyer when they meet up with you or you ship it to 'em.
Melissa: Number five is show any imperfections in your pictures, and that might be contradictory to what you wanna do because you're trying to sell something and show it in its best light, but. Take it from experience. You need to show all any and all imperfections that isn't on the item.
Rob: Yep. Our motto is under promise over deliver.
So I want somebody to be very happy. And a lot of our eBay feedback shows that when somebody gets something, I just sold a stretcher to a guy. It actually went to Puerto Rico. I shipped it to Puerto Rico and he got it and said this looks like brand spankin new and that's not how I disclosed it in the eBay listing.
No, never. I don't want to disclose something as excellent, mint, brand new. I don't want to do that. Even if it is in that condition, I still don't want to do that cause you're setting expectations that 10 times you're not going to live up to those expectations. My idea brand new in great condition is going to be totally different than somebody else's idea of how it should be.
So if I said that and it got there and there were some scuffs around the wheels and there were some scuffs on the lower portion of it, that buyer is going to be upset about it. But if I get there by saying, this is a used item. Please expect normal wear, could have scrapes, scuffs, all this kind of stuff on it.
The buyer's expectations already are, okay, this is not going to be mint condition. And then when he got it and saw what kind of condition it was in, he was very surprised and very excited about it. Which warranted the good feedback that I got from him saying, this is like a brand new item. I love it.
Great, great job. That kind of thing. So that's what we're, we're doing is we're under promising. Over delivering on whatever we are selling.
Melissa: Yep, and then bonus. Bonus. Add a video to your listings.
Rob: Pro tip! Huge and you can use this on marketplace and eBay. Now you can add these videos now. I will give you caveat marketplace I think is under one minute on our iPhones, I don't know if it changes with newer iPhones, more memory.
Because they all record different.
Melissa: Yeah. And it's probably what kind, well your settings in your phone too. Yeah. It's not just what phone you have.
Rob: So make sure you're testing that. Don't take, I can tell you for a fact, don't take a two or three minute video and try to put it on there. They won't let it go.
No. So I know where we're at. Marketplace, you can do a minute or less, so 59 seconds or less on a video and eBay is, for me, it's 50 seconds or less. So it's 10 seconds less than what Marketplace is. These are, like I said, this is a pro tip, not a lot of people will do this, but I want to do this. It will weed people out.
It will show people that the item is working. Yeah, it's just a really, really cool habit to get into with almost everything that I sell. Now, if you're selling something for five bucks and it's a plush toy, come on, no, you don't have to mess with that. But the normal stuff that you're selling
Melissa: or anything that needs to be shown that lightens up, powers on, it's working condition.
Rob: You can totally take those videos and put them in your listings and that will be a key.
Melissa: Yeah, cause it's a lot harder to fake a video than it is to fake a picture, like really make a picture doctored up. Although with AI we'll see how that goes, but, but for like people, you can, with a video you can really see it. So it really helps get your items sold faster, so. Awesome!
Rob: So guys, right now we are heading up our Flip It For Christmas challenge.
And if you have not registered for it yet, you're going to want to go do that. This is kind of a... teaser of what we're going to be going over in the flip it for Christmas challenge. We're going to go in a lot more depth and get you. Our goal is to make you $500 throughout this challenge. You guys are going to have so much fun.
We're going to have so much fun and we want you guys to register for that event.
Melissa: We're so excited about it. It kicks off November 13th. This is our fourth year actually running the flip it for Christmas challenge. Lots of people have made lots of money for Christmas and we want to help you do the same.
So go check it out with the link in the show notes below as well.
Rob: It is $7 to register. So just so you know that ahead of time guys, and if you do not get value, if you do not see results and you do what we tell you to, you let me know and we'll give you your money back. That's how confident we are with this challenge.
We love showing you guys how to make money and you are going to get your money's worth. We're going to teach you guys how to make $500 throughout this challenge.
Melissa: FlipItForChristmas.Com.
Rob: You rock. Have an amazing day. Thanks for spending some time with us and we'll see you guys on the next episode.