You're already paying for your .Mac account, might as well get the most out of it. Here's how.

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How to use your .Mac account to sell on eBay.

There are a couple of reasons why one might want to use their .Mac account. Image hosting is the most significant reason. eBay offers to host one image as part of your base listing fee. Some items, arguably all items, benefit from photos taken from multiple angles. .Mac and iPhoto make quick work of including one or more photos in your next eBay listing.

I'll show you two methods you can choose from. The first, saving images to your iDisk, is likely to be your first choice. The second method employs .Mac, iPhoto, and your Homepage slideshow feature. This method might work best for complex items such as automobiles, computers with accessories, etc. Either option you choose is free, so let's get started.





Using your iDisk to host your eBay images

This lesson assumes you're fluent with eBay's listing process. If you're not, it might be worthwhile to navigate to eBay's "Sell" tab and create a moc-auction. You won't confirm (or actually list the item), you'll simply familiarize yourself with the steps and information required to list an item.

Host images placed within the item description on iDisk:

1) Select an item to sell on eBay. In this example, we'll be selling a BaBar stuffed animal.

2) Set up BaBar in the area where you take your eBay photos, and take several photographs from different angles. Be sure to highlight any damage, or special features.

3) Connect your camera to your Mac's USB port and turn it on. This will launch iPhoto

4) When iPhoto launches, it will append to the Import tab. Import your images.

5) Once your images are imported click the Organize tab (and turn off your camera). Rename each image using the following pattern as an guideline:

5 photos of Babar in total:

babar1.jpg
babar2.jpg
babar3.jpg
babar4.jpg
babar5.jpg

Naming your images in this way will ensure that the coding in your listing goes smoothly.

6) Select all, or nonconsecutive images that you wish to include in your eBay listing. To select all, click the film roll icon (or date and roll number) if you have your iPhoto preferences set to show images by roll number. To select nonconsecutive images, use your mouse and the (command) key. Command+click each image you want to include in the listing.

7) When your images are selected, you will export the images to your .Mac account. To do this, navigate to the Apple Menu > Share > Export.

8) A dialog box with three tabs will appear:

A) Select "Original" format if it's not the default "Format" option.

B) Click the "Scale images no larger than" radio button, and enter 320, 640, 900, or whatever width suits your needs, in the first field.

C) Click the pulsing Export button at right. When exporting one image, a sheet will descend with two options: Save As and Where.

D) When saving multiple images, the Where sheet will descend. You will see the items in your sidebar at left, one of which will be your iDisk.

1) Single-click the iDisk and allow up to several minutes for the contents to load if you're on a slow connection.

2) Click the Sites folder

3) Click the "New Folder" button, and label it "ebay"

4) Click the "New Folder" button again and label this folder "in" for your active images.

5) Click the "ok" button

6) Verify that your images were exported correctly. Do this by clicking your finder in the Dock and clicking the iDisk in your sidebar. In Column View, navigate to your "in" folder. You should see the images you exported with the correct names and file extention. Your file name should follow this format:

babar1.jpg

7) Rename your images if necessary. Follow the naming pattern suggested above. The extension ".jpg" is important. If it's capatalized your URL might not work.

8) Now, once your images are correctly tagged, create an "out" folder inside of your "ebay" folder. You will have a total of two folders in your iDisk > Sites > ebay folder: in and out. The out folder will be used for completed items when you want to save the original images, but are not currently using in a listing. You might want these images in the future, but can keep your in box lean and mean by moving "dead" images to the out folder when not in use.

9) Test your URL links to your images. To do this, you will need to follow this path:

iDisk > Sites > ebay > in > babar1.jpg

The URL will look something like this (where "yourname" is replaced with your .Mac account name, sans "@mac.com":

http://homepage.mac.com/yourdotmaclogin/in/babar1.jpg

Test the process

Now, export an image to your iDisk's "in" folder. Launch Safari, or other browser, modify the URL above in your browser's location field, and hit enter. You should see your single image in the upper left corner.

This URL will be how eBay "sees" your images. Note that you can use your "best" photo as your single free image hosted by eBay. Just copy and paste the entire URL and enter it during the listing process.

Host images placed within the item description on iDisk, plus utilize a .Mac Homepage slideshow:

This is something I rarely do, but I did sell a car using a .Mac Homepage with slideshow.

You will publish your homepage and copy the link to the page into your item description. I suggest including one or two images inside the listing (hosted as described above) along with the URL to your .Mac homepage that hosts your slideshow.

First, follow steps 1-6 above; that will get you to the Export step. But instead of exporting, you will create a Homepage using the iPhoto Homepage button (in the well at the bottom of the iPhoto viewer in the Organize tab).

Once you've created your Homepage, you will be presented with window containing the URL. Copy the URL and paste it into your HTML item description page.

After you've created your item description with images hosted on your iDisk and the link to your Homepage slideshow, preview your HTML. If everything looks good, paste the HTML into the item description field in the eBay online selling form. Preview the actual listing. It it looks good, Bam! you're done.

Use your iDisk URL(s) in your WYSIWYG HTML editor

Now you can use one or more images in your eBay item description. I recommend a side-by-side format for a clean look.

I use a HTML template in Dreamweaver to manage my auction listings, but you can use any HTML editor to reach the same results. First, create or locate your existing template. I use a spacer image to represent my future .Mac hosted eBay images. That way I can simply change the "image.jpg" portion of the following URL which you'll use as the spacer image's location:

http://homepage.mac.com/yourdotmaclogin/in/image.jpg

You would change the "yourname" and "image" portion of the url above, of course. If your .Mac account is "fishy" (fishy@mac.com), and your image name "babar1" the URL should look like this:

http://homepage.mac.com/fishy/in/babar1.jpg

If you regularly include several images in each eBay listing, place several spacer images into your template that use this URL format:

http://homepage.mac.com/yourdotmaclogin/in/imag1.jpg
http://homepage.mac.com/yourdotmaclogin/in/imag2.jpg

This makes easy work of exporting, for example, six images from iPhoto to your iDisk > Sites > ebay > in folder. Just check iDisk to ensure you have the correct file names and extensions (lowercase), and they match your template's image tags.

Preview your template, and you're off and running.


Thanks for reading this how-to. More How-To's in the sidebar.



Don't forget How to Buy a Mac.

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