Hey, it’s David with Oberlo, and it’s question time!
This week we’re answer the question: “How do I get professional-looking photos for my
dropshipping store?”
This is a great question, because your product photos are vital to your success in dropshipping.
Why?
Well, as a dropshipper, you will always be competing with other businesses selling the
exact same products as you.
And having unique professional photos of your products is one of the best ways to differentiate
your brand.
Okay, but how do you get high quality photos for your store?
Well, there are three main methods.
Find existing photos online and edit them, Have a professional service take them for
you, or…
Take new product photos yourself.
Here at Oberlo, we recommend that you order a product for yourself, and take your own
photos.
The added benefit to this is that you can check the product’s quality and test it
out for yourself.
But, let’s take a quick look at each of the three options.
First, you can find the photos of your products online, and then edit them for your store.
If you’re using Oberlo with Shopify, it’s extremely easy to add the existing product
images to your store.
You can then download these images to edit them.
Or, use Shopify’s built-in image editor.
This lets you crop or resize the image, change the lighting, add text, and more.
Now, you might be thinking, “That’s great David, but how can I remove the watermarks?”
Firstly, we wouldn’t recommend that you do.
If an image is watermarked, it’s almost certainly copyrighted.
In which case, you don’t have the right to use the image at all.
But, if you reach out and get permission to use the image first, there are ways that you
can remove the watermark.
You could use professional editing software like Photoshop.
Or, you can download a program like TheInPaint.com which makes it relatively easy to do.
This program is $19.99.
Or, you could visit a site like Fiverr, or Upwork to find an photo editor to do it for
you.
Lastly, you might also want to change the image so it has a plain white background.
Again, you can do this with a tool like Photoshop, or a free online alternative like BeFunky.com.
There are links to all of these resources below in the description.
Now, if you’d prefer to create unique images, you could choose…
Option 2: Send your products to a professional photography service.
A quick Google search will present many of these services.
Including Productphoto.com.
This service makes professional product photography a breeze.
You simply ship them your product, and they take the pictures, and edit them.
Plus, you don’t pay anything until you’ve approved your new product photos.
If you order over 31 photos, the cost is $15 dollars a photo.
Alternatively, you could visit experts.shopify.com/photographers to find a service to help you.
But, if you don’t have the budget for a professional service, or you just want to
test out the products yourself, you could go with...
Option 3: Take Your Own Photos This is the option we recommend.
It’s a great way to create images unique to your specific brand.
Simply order one of your products, and then get to work!
There are a few big benefits here: First off, it forces you to order your products, which
gives you a chance to interact with suppliers, to evaluate the packaging, and to gauge shipping
times.
Your own photos are also nice because nobody else has them.
This makes your website, your product pages and your advertisements stand out from the
crowd.
And if you’ve seen some of the default product photos out there, you know that you don’t
necessarily want to be part of the crowd.
Finally, having your own product photos will prevent people from identifying your suppliers.
As you may know, Google Images has a feature that lets you upload photos, and then Google
will tell you where the photos came from.
So someone could very easily reverse engineer where you are getting your products.
Using your own photos gives you that extra bit of secrecy and prevents your competition
from scoping out your suppliers.
If you’re ready to try your hand at being a shutterbug, the Oberlo blog has TONS of
content about how to create compelling product photos – we’ve dropped some links in the
comments below.
And, if you have a question about dropshipping, let us know in the comments below!
We check the comments every day, and would love to answer your question in our next video.
Thanks for watching, and if you’d like to see more videos like this, be sure to hit
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See you next time!