Experienced sellers at online auction sites such as EBay will tell you that the single most effective tool of persuasion is a good image. Multiple images are even better. After all, buyers want to know what they are spending money on, it's only natural. EBay, however, takes advantage of that fact to charge relatively large fees for storing your images online. Here is a simple list to illustrate the point:

Additional Pictures: $0.15
Picture Show: $0.25
Supersize Picture: $0.75
Picture Pack: $1.00

These fees will slowly eat away at your profits, unless you store your pictures elsewhere. Free image hosting sites will allow you to upload your pictures and link to them on EBay. For most sellers, the basic free service is more than enough and can easily save over $1 per auction in picture fees.

Take advantage of the service to post as many images on your auctions as you can. It will help you increase the number of bids received by making the sale more attractive. All the code you need is provided at the click of a button, you simply have to copy and paste into the EBay form.

Another benefit is that image hosting sites generally allow you to edit your pictures online (rotate, resize, etc) so that you do not need any special photo editing software.

Best of all, perhaps, may be the online photo album options many sites offer. You can take advantage of this feature to set up an image gallery to display all your items on one page. It will provide a convenient way for customers to browse your offerings.

Whether you are a high volume seller or a newcomer to online auctions, take advantage of the service to reduce your selling expenses. Experiment with different techniques to learn what works best to increase sales.