When paying for an additional feature, such as eBay gallery, it is best to get the most out of your investment. The extra fees associated with having a gallery image for each of your auctions really add up. You need to make those images work harder!
Here are 4 tips to get your auction titles clicked:
Drop the rectangle and use a square!
In order to get the largest gallery image available on eBay searches, you are going to have to crop your picture into a square. A square image will completely fill out the space that eBay provides (80 x 80 pixels), and it will look larger than most of the competition. Un-cropped images are typically 50×80 pixels.
Neon Border!
While using the photo editing software of your choice you should take one extra step to make your gallery image POP. Just insert a square border around your gallery image in a bright colour. Think Neon. This will draw even more attention to your auction.
Use a logo!
A great way to build your brand in your auction listing is to add a little logo in the corner, side, top, or bottom of your gallery image. If a logo is not your thing, try a word like “New” or “Sexy” in the image.
Mix it up!
You do not have to use the first picture you feature in your listing as a gallery image. You can crop the picture to highlight a specific aspect of your item. For more details read How To: Picking the Gallery Picture You Want.
Here is a great example taken from recent eBay listings where you can see how changing your eBay gallery picture can really make your title stand out:

Fine tuning your eBay gallery images will be a little more time consuming than what is likely your norm, but it will be worth it when you make more money than competitors selling the same items.
Editors note: In the UK gallery pictures are 64 x 64 pixels
22 Responses
Interesting. Ta.
I have to admit I’ve never twigged to using square pictures 😯
the gallery pics I find pointless are the ones that have the item far far far away in the distance… just a little dot….
🙄
good sound sensible advice I try to do all the above then forget or cant be bothered to go back and change it naughty I know, but
💡 My brain hurts 💡
Good useful article, I too hadn’t twigged on to square images!
I knew about the square thingy but I am too busy studying economics
I thought that Ebay resized pictures to a limit of 400 pixels in the longest side, so uploading a 400×400 picture would give you the biggest pic on your listing and gallery.
However I have seen some lisyings with bigger pics (and not ones hosted elsewhere) as the main listing picture and can’t see how it’s done.
Don’t crop your picture for the gallery to only 64 x 64 though unless you are hosting your main pics yourself – or you will end up with a teeny tiny thing in the middle of the space available as your main picture.
eBay will reduce the picture to fit the spaces available, but they can’t make it any bigger than the one you upload in the first place. The reduction will be in proportion, so you need to be as close to a square as makes sense of your picture.
I wish Irfanview could cut in a square…
Neon Border! That’s a great idea, never even considered that but I will be trying it out very soon.
Thanks for the tip.
Could this be a chargable feature for Ebay?
10p for a neon bordered gallery pic?
*chuckles*
You heard it here first.
be nice if they reduced the price for an ordinary non-neon one to 10p.. grumble grumble… 👿
Forgive my ignorance…whats the best program to add the Neon border?? Or any other colour for that matter.
And this is my first ever post here…hello everbody!! 😀
Hey Lynne, compare the US fees with free gallery and the UK fees with 15p gallery and I know which I’d choose 😉
Jeff, you can do it with almost any imaging program, if it’s a basic one like MS Paint create a neon square about 5 pixels larger than your image, and then cut and paste your image into the middle of it. If you have a more sophisticated imaging program like photoshop you can create a new layer with the border (and possibly also a watermark) which you simply add to all your pictures.
Jasc Paintshop Pro has a border function which it remembers so you can do about 60 pics in about 2 mins.
PSP is so easy – it puts the border on in any colour you select as your foreground colour, so you have the whole rainbow at your command!
I’ve tried bright pink…..
Chris – I meant 10p instead of 15p, AND keep our discounts… 😈
I’m all in favour of 10p gallery if we keep our discounts as well – in fact seeing as the UK gallery pics are smaller than the US gallery pics (by almost 13%) I reckon we should pay (almost) 13% less than the US….
…erm, what’s (almost) 13% off free? 😀
I think that should be a credit of some description ..:twisted:
I’d even go along with a BOGOF….
hmmmmm here’s a top tip… if you make your border too narrow, and you have a dark background to your gallery pic, you can’t see the border (even if it is pink….)
If you make the border too wide, your pic in the middle goes smaller….
what to do???
What to do??? Have a light background which you can easily make with a certain program you like 😛
once everyone starts this border malarky the search page will look lke a column of liqurice allsorts
sounds like a sweet deal North! 😆
Chris, I have a favourite dark blue I use for some stuff that shows up colours really well… that was the one I was using, and the borders are a bit…….errr…… invisible is the word I need! But then the blue makes it stand out a bit anyway…
And you are right, yes, a light colour will work fine. Blinged or not blinged… 😀