Guides / Selling & buying
Photographs that actually sell it
You can add up to 4 photographs to a listing, as JPG, PNG or WebP. Four good ones sell an item; one dark one taken at arm’s length does not.
Take your own, of the actual thing
Not the manufacturer’s picture, and not one off the internet. A stock photo tells a buyer nothing about the item in your house, and it is the first thing that makes somebody wonder whether you have it at all.
Photograph the marks as well as the good side
This feels like sabotage and it is the opposite. A chip you have photographed is a fair description; the same chip found on the doorstep is a wasted evening for both of you. Buyers who can see the worst of it turn up ready to buy.
- One picture that shows the whole thing, then close-ups of the detail.
- Daylight, and a plain background. A kitchen worktop beats a patterned carpet.
- Anything with a serial number, a model plate or a size label is worth its own frame.
Location, and treating a photo as public
A photo taken on a phone usually carries the coordinates of where it was taken, often to within a few metres. Every picture you upload here is rebuilt on the way in and that location data is removed, because a picture taken at home would otherwise hand over the address the advert deliberately withholds.
Even so, treat a photograph as public the moment it goes up. Photos are stored at an address nobody can guess, but anybody given the link can open one. Look at what is in the background before you upload: post with your name and address on it, a house number, a car number plate, other people, the view out of your window.
Large photos straight off a phone are shrunk automatically before they are sent. If the form says they were too large to send all at once, upload fewer at a time.