eBay image hosting handbook

Why does eBay limit you to 24 images?

They made the choice because they are not an image delivery service, they don’t specialize in offering a an image delivery (CDN) service. Their main focus as a business is to provide a marketplace.

Offering specialized eCommerce image hosting means you need to have storage servers, a great easy-to-use image management dashboard and fast and reliable image delivery network. This stuff costs money and distracts them from their main focus. Another good example of how eBay does not focus on image hosting, is that images by default expire after 90 days, meaning you need to reupload them.

What are the accepted image specs?

eBay recommends 1:1 ratio or 16:9 ratio images of at least 500 by 500 pixels, preferrably at least 1600 by 1600 pixels. All the major image formats are supported, the good old JPG will be your best friend.

Deep dive into the best eBay image dimensions for each case.

Single image listing methods

Drag & Drop images into your listing

When you’re creating/editing single listings, you can drag and drop images directly into your listing description from Img.vision. We then take care of hosting the image and showing it to your listing’s visitors.

Read up on how to drag & drop images into your eBay listing (desktop only) or watch the video.

Add a lot of images to your listing

If you have a lot of images to add to your listing, eg. you are selling a stamp book and want to list all stamp pages of the book, then you can use a different approach than dragging and dropping that will be a lot faster.

You copy image HTML code, activate the HTML view of the listing description and paste the image HTML code into it. After that you can turn the HTML view off and see the result before creating/updating your listing.

You can get the steps to how to add a couple of extra images to your eBay listing or watch a step by step video here.

Add an image gallery

A third and final method is to generate image gallery code that is compatible with eBay listings.

So it isn’t allowed to use active code called JavaScript. The code should also contain style information, called css, that overwrites any stylesheets on the eBay site that may affect and distort the gallery when displayed.

Here is a step by step guide how to add an image gallery to your eBay listing, or watch the video.

Bulk listing methods

Besides single image listing methods, you also have the bulk workflows:

1. Seller Hub Reports: You can upload spreadsheets (xlsm, xlsx, txt, csv files) which contain all the product listing information and also link to product images hosted on an external host like Img.vision. This is done using Seller Hub Reports.
2. eBay Bulk Listing Tool: This is a point-and-click dashboard in your browser that acts like a spreadsheet/excel provided by eBay. Read on about the eBay Bulk Listing Tool.
3. eBay Listing Templates: You can save templates of listings and use them to start from next time you are adding listings.
4. Inventory management software: You can get paid software to manage your listings on eBay. You manage everything in their app, and they then post that info eBay using their API integration. Warning: they make take a commission and they charge a fee, sometimes even a setup fee.
5. Your own software: You can use the free eBay APIs if you build your own software to list products.
6. Merchant Integration Platform: A feed-based integration method for medium to large sellers with CSV or XML to keep large quantities of item listings in sync.

Typical errors with adding images to your listings

How to fix wrong photo orientation after uploading photo to eBay

When you take photos on an iPhone, the iPhone stores the orientation (the way you’re holding the phone when taking the shot) in metadata embedded in the photo. eBay can’t read that info when you upload an image, so they ignore it and your photo ends up being oriented wrong. Use a free online orientation app online to change the orientation of the photo without relying on metadata. We also offer an image editor at Img.vision that does this and I wrote a guide how to do it with the free app on Windows called IfranView.

My product images are broken

If you upload a product image to an item listing, eBay stores that image for 90 days. After that it archives the image and it cannot be displayed anymore. If you have a broken image, it could be because you’re referencing a product image that eBay has archived already. To prevent this you can use an external image host like Img.vision which allows you to keep your images online for as long as you want.

I get errors about HTTPS

Your external images need to be hosted on an image host that supports HTTPS links. These are “Secure” HTTP links. If you get HTTPS errors, then the image host you’re using probably doesn’t support HTTPS.

Optimizing SEO for eBay images

When you add images to your listing using eBay’s listing editor, eBay hosts the image. The filename of the image and the alt text gets renamed, you have no control.

If you are adding images into your product listing using an external host, you can control the filename and alt text of the images. This means you can optimize them for SEO. Don’t stuff the filename or alt text full of keywords, this will hurt your SEO instead of benefit it. Instead describe exactly what the image shows.

When selecting an image host, make sure they have a top-notch content delivery network (CDN) in place. They need to cache images in servers close to your visitors. They should also offer automatic image compression to make the loading of the images super fast. Speed matters.

Why you shouldn’t use a cloud drive like Dropbox or Google drive

If you use an external image host, take care to check the url structure of the images after uploading them. The biggest pitfall of new eBay sellers is that they don’t realize they need to use an image host that specializes in marketplace image hosting and thus has static image urls.

Cloud drives like DropBox, OneDrive, Google drive, etc. they offer hosting of files, but their image links are dynamic. That means that they can expire, they don’t follow a readable static format that may confuse marketplaces, causing images to be rejected or even deleted from listings.

Paying for more than 24 images

Well the short answer is that you can’t pay eBay to be able to add more than 24 images to your item listing. You can also not control where they are shown on the listing.

Using external image hosts, you can control where the images are placed, how, and accompany them with the right text.

The price of an image hosting plan at Img.visions starts at 4.99USD/month. All CDN features like fast loading through automatic image compression and reliable uptime are included starting from the lowest plan.

Read up on the image hosting features of Img.vision.

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