Selling Motorcycle on eBay Guide - Take Many Good Pictures of Your Motorbike
That’s true that a good picture worth thousand words. In this case, a good photo will bring you more money for your bike. It will attract more buyers who will place more bids, which will drive your final selling price higher. But you need not just one but many good photos. Photos provide buyers with added confidence in the seller and ultimately in their bidding and purchase behavior.
Prepare to spend some time on this. It’s best to use a good quality digital camera for this since you’ll be uploading your photos as digital images to eBay. You will need to take many shots of your bike, not just one or two. Choose a sunny day, but not when the sun is right above. Choose the time in the morning, maybe between 8am and 10am or in the evening between 7pm and 9pm (of course, this will depend on the season). Your main objective is that the sun light should come straight at your bike from about 30 to 45 degrees angle and not from right above you when it’s noon. Make sure there is no shade from trees or buildings (you don’t want your shade to be part of the picture neither). Oh, and make sure you force your flash in your camera, even when it’s plenty of sunlight out there (it will redistribute the light evenly and get rid of any small shadows). Turn off the flash if you’re getting a glare from short distance shots.
Take pictures from far and from close, from different angles, a little higher, a little lower, from the front, from the back. Make sure you take the pictures of both sides of your motorbike and from the top (sit on it and take a picture). Focus on the shiny chrome parts, but also don’t forget to shoot any scratches you have on your bike. Take multiple pictures of each handle, the seat, the lights, the front, the back, the wheels, the gas tank. Take close-up photos of the odometer reading so the mileage appears clearly in the photo. You should now have made at least 50 to 70 photos of your motorcycle. From these, choose 40 to 50 photos you want to include in your listing.
For examples of bad and good motorcycle pictures please see our Pictures page.