Tips for managing image quotas

Your "image quota," is determined by how much disk space you are using on our server.  The number of listings you use has no relevance on your image hosting quota.

Your images should be between 20KB and 100KB before uploading.  If they are over 250KB, we will attempt to resize them while maintaining as much image quality as possible.  You can use other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro to edit your images.  We also have tools available for you -- to pull up the image manager, simply click on any image.

To monitor your quota, just go to your image folder.

Your account is checked once per day, at midnight, to determine if you used extra space.

Deleted photos are immediately removed from your quota, even though we may not actually delete them from our systems until some time later. In other words the images will most likely still be visible on your listings.

Optimize your image sizes.

Auction Hawk has a full suite of tools for you to optimize your images:  Just click on any image from your Image Folder to see the tools available.

Optimizing your image space is a necessary part of your selling experience. Optimizing means to reduce the size of your images without affecting their appearance. (Your connection speed does not affect the quality of the image; only how fast the image loads.)

Why Optimize?

  1. LOAD TIME.  Images over 50K take several seconds to load over a 56K connection. Statistics show that 4 out of 5 users will click "back" or "stop" and avoid listings that take too long to load. Longer load times mean less bids, and for 500K images, a 20-30 second load time will chase away buyers.

  2. 600 SELLS BETTER.  800x600 is the setting that many people use for their monitor, and we constrain your images to this size so that your buyers can see your entire listing without having to adjust their browser window.  You do not want to distract buyers away from the Pay Now button by making them click scroll-bars instead!

  3. YOU GET MORE IMAGE SPACE.  High-quality images should take up no more than 25K - 30K each. If your images are higher than this, then you will quickly use up your space.

Optimize the setting on your camera or scanner:

All cameras work differently, but on most cameras, press MENU, and then go to RESOLUTION mode. There are three choices, e.g. "standard quality (SQ)". Refer to your camera owner's manual. Use the lowest-resolution setting. Most cameras allow you to set both the dimension size and the resolution. If you are scanning, use the lowest scan resolution.

What does "JPEG" mean?

JPEG is a format that most digital cameras and scanners use. It is popular because it has several levels of resolution, 0 through 100. Many cameras can take pictures at three different levels. For selling auctions, the middle setting is usually adequate. For example, if your camera offers low, medium, and high, then try medium.