eBay picture requirements, and what actually sells

The rules eBay actually enforces

• Minimum 500 pixels on the longest side. Below this the upload is rejected outright.
• 1600 pixels or more on the longest side is what eBay recommends, and it is the threshold that enables zoom on the listing. Zoom is not cosmetic; buyers use it to check condition.
• No added text, borders, artwork or watermarks on your photos. eBay removed the old watermark allowance, and listings that still carry them can be flagged.
• No stock photos for used items. A used item must be shown as the actual item, with its actual marks and wear.
• Up to 24 photos per listing at no cost. Almost nobody uses them, and that is a mistake for anything over a few pounds.

What eBay recommends but does not require

A plain white or light background on the main photo. Unlike Amazon this is a recommendation rather than a rule, but the search results page is a wall of thumbnails on a white page, and a product against a cluttered background is the one that looks like a garage sale.

The product filling most of the frame. A tiny object floating in the middle of a large photo is unreadable at thumbnail size, which is the only size that matters until a buyer clicks.

Square or near-square framing. eBay's thumbnails are square; a wide photo gets its edges cropped or letterboxed, and either way you lose control of what the buyer sees first.

The mistake that costs the most

Photographing on whatever surface was nearest. A carpet, a wooden table, a bedsheet. The item might be immaculate, but the photo says the seller could not be bothered, and buyers price that in.

You do not need a light tent. You need one clean shot with reasonable light, and then a background remover to put the item on plain white. That turns a kitchen-table photo into something that sits comfortably next to a retailer's listing, and it takes seconds per image rather than the twenty minutes a manual cutout would.

The single exception is genuine lifestyle context that adds information: a bag being worn to show scale, a lamp switched on. Keep those as secondary photos, never the main one.

Using all 24 slots properly

• Main photo: the item alone on white, filling the frame.
• Every side, including the back and underneath. Buyers cannot pick it up, so show them what they would see if they could.
• Close-ups of any labels, serial numbers, brand marks or size tags.
• Every flaw, clearly, at full size. A photo of the scratch prevents the return; a surprise scratch causes it.
• What is included: cables, box, manual, accessories, laid out together.
• Scale: the item next to something familiar, or in the hand, or being worn.

A repeatable workflow for volume sellers

If you list more than a handful of items a week, the time goes into consistency rather than any single photo. Set up one spot with the same light and the same distance, shoot every item there, and batch the background removal afterwards rather than editing each one.

Name files by SKU or listing before uploading so a re-list months later takes seconds. Keep the clean cutout as a transparent PNG and generate the white-background version from it, because you will eventually want the same item on a different colour for a promotion or another marketplace.

Resize to a consistent longest side — 1600 or 2000 pixels — before uploading. Larger does nothing for eBay and slows the upload; smaller loses zoom.