I found time for these 5 things after I gave my photo editing task to someone else

It was the 22nd of July. Fifty new dresses were launching on the 25th of July. I had already told my customers that I am going to launch those dresses no later than 25th and I didn’t even shoot the photos.

I don’t hate shooting photos but I hate editing them. I always thought that I could do more pleasing things if somehow I can throw this boring, mundane, and non-enticing task off of my life.

I spent only 2 minutes per photo which means that I spent more than 400 minutes on 200 photos. I post 4 photos per dress. But, those 400 minutes were like 40,000 minutes to me.

Somehow, I shot and edited the photos before 25th July. I never thought that I would feel this kind of pressure in my entire life. I always thought that I am good at handling pressure but I realized that I am not.

I got fed up so much of this task that I badly want to hand it over to someone else in my team. But, that came out costly because my employee started charging for the overtime and her hourly rate was $22.

Also, the work was not good. The photos she edited were not looking consistent and also the editing style did not match the photos that are present on my site. I can clearly see that the photos she edited look different than the other photos I edited.

BUT the worst thing was that I cannot rely on her because if she’s on leave then I’ll be screwed.

I started thinking this mundane task to someone else. I went to Fiverr, but Fiverr is cheap only if you have 5-10 photos. It becomes expensive if you have 20+ photos. Also, you don’t find anyone reliable there. I wanted to have someone whom I can contact 24×7 and that person has some dedicated time for me. So, I searched more on Google and found TrickyPhotoshop.

I gave my photo editing job to them these are the things that I can do now.

I can now spend more time alone doing nothing

I am an introvert. I enjoy sitting alone more than sitting with two people. Now that I don’t need to edit photos, I can spend 400 minutes every week sitting alone and doing nothing.

Don’t judge me.

I can now learn to play piano

I have always been a huge fan of piano. I like how it sounds. It has always been my second most favorite instrument.

The first one is violent but I have tennis elbow. I cannot move my hands fast especially the elbow.

I love my daughter and I can show it now even more

I used to edit photos every Thursday. I upload them on my site on Fridays and then scheduled to go live every Sunday.

Because I handed over the editing task to TrickyPhotoshop, I can go home 3-4 hours earlier every Thursday.

My daughter comes home from school at 4 PM every day. I reach home at 3:30 PM every Thursday, cook a delicious dish for her, and then we eat it together. Yes, I do this every Thursday.

I can think about the future (even more)

Every Thursday, I think about my company’s future. I do this when I am cooking food for my daughter.

On Thursday morning, I write down things that are haunting me or bugging me. I then think about fixing them. I use Voice Memos on my iPhone to record what can I do about these things.

I can watch documentaries and read Medium.com

I enjoy watching documentaries more than watching Netflix. I prefer watching what are black holes, white dwarfs, nebulas, etc. rather than seeing what did Penny tell Sheldon on that 12th episode of the Big Bang Theory.

I also love reading Startup stories on medium.com. These stories fire me up.

All of these are possible only and only because I delegated the task that I hate doing to someone else.

I am Anna and I run an e-commerce site with an annual turnover of $400K. I sell trending dresses to the ladies.

What should be the size of e-commerce photos?

This is a debatable topic. There’s no exact guide for us to follow. But, the rule of thumb is that each photo should be lesser than 100Kb.

Google says that high page loading time decreases sales. Sites loading between 1 to 3 secs have 32% higher bounce rate than the sites which load under 1 minute.

Shoppers are really having no time nowadays.

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Do you see the increase in bounce rate?

Understand the effect of high bounce rate

Bounce rate means the number of people come to your site and doesn’t do anything (no link click, no button click, nothing) and leave your site divided by the total number of people who come to your site.

Case 1: Site loading speed is 3 secs

Suppose your current bounce rate is 20%. You get 1,000 visitors every month and with 20% bounce rate means 200 people leave your site straight away. Now, only 800 people are left to buy your product.

Case 2: Site loading speed is 5 secs

Now, your bounce rate will be increased by 90%. So,  90% of 200 is 180. Which means that total people who’ll leave your site are now 480.

Out of 1,000 visitors you get, 480 straight away leave your site.

Damn!

Now only 520 are left to buy your product.

How photos affect the loading speed and bounce rate?

Photos are a lot heavier than text.

In 1 KB of text, you can put 1,024 characters. Can 1 KB of the photo has this many characters? No.

Photos are heavier so they take time to load and page loading time increases.

Page loading time increases which increase the bounce rate.

So, there’s a direct relation between the size of the photos and bounce rate. Heavier the photo, higher the bounce rate.

But why are product photos necessary?

75% of Online Shoppers Rely on Product Photos When Deciding on a Potential Purchase. Source

Do you see it? I don’t think that I need to explain to you anymore.

One more.

Good Visual Content is 40% More Likely to Get Shared on Your Social Accounts. Source

What is the ideal size of the e-commerce photos?

My company and I edit e-commerce photos (yes, we make your e-commerce photos better by editing them).

From my experience, you should not worry if the total size of the photo is less than 100KB. You also need to make sure that your photo is looking equally beautiful even if it’s only 100KB.

But why 100KB?

Typically, a product has 5 photos. If each photo is 100KB then the total size would be 500KB.

Average net connection speed in the US is 2.33MB per second so loading 500Kb will take less than 0.3 sec. [Source]

The speed also varies by the cities. Kansas City has the fastest net and the average downloading speed there is 19.8MB. [Source]

How can you make photos lesser than 100KB in size?

The answer is “Export As” in Photoshop.

I use this feature all the time. I simply go to File > Export > Export As

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I decrease the quality to 50% and dimension to 800 pixels wide.

This normally make the photo only 40-60KB in size which I consider a perfect size.

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Outsourcing e-commerce photo editing – what should you know?

After or before starting your e-commerce store, one of the most important questions is who would take your product photos. If you hire a professional photographer then it’s good. But you may want to shoot photos by yourself if you don’t have much cash. The question here is whether you’d outsource e-commerce photo editing to someone else?

Nowadays, even phone cameras like iPhone’s and Oppo’s camera do a great job. The photos are big enough to put on your e-commerce store and sharp enough for your customers to see the edges of your products.

What you should know about e-commerce store owners psychology on product photos?

You’re not alone if you think that your product photos should look better than your competitors. But if your competitors have a great in-house photo editing team or outsource their photo editing task to companies like us then you’re already behind them.

Does this mean that you’ll sell less?

This is where the tension among e-commerce store owners start. But, you don’t need to worry.

Orlego says that 68% of your potential customers make buying decisions after seeing your product photos. 60% after reading the description and 58% after reading the reviews.

You don’t need to go worried as long as you see that your customers are liking your product photos.

When should you NOT outsource your photo editing job?

When you set up your e-commerce store, you have two options for the photo editing task.

    To hire some agency to edit your photos or outsource your photo editing job
    To do the photo editing job by yourself

The question is which one should you do?

Well, there are answers.

1. When you have only so many photos

If you’re starting very small then you should do the photo editing job by yourself.

Let’s say that you have only 10 photos and you’re not planning to have 10 more photos next month or anytime soon. In the case, you should do the photo editing job by yourself because outsourcing it will be a costly affair.

I charge $4.99 per photo for photos up to 50. Editing 10 photos will cost you $49.

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Yes, $49 is not much but you already have so many other expenses like setting up a store, paying the merch, and running ads. First, see whether you’re getting traction.

What’s the point of adding $49 to your expenses?

2. When you have good and reliable in-house photo editing team

Guess what? Most of the e-commerce store (even those which are making millions) use their in-house photo editing team.

I’ve met so-so many e-commerce company CEOs who say that their in-house photo editing team is the best?

How can you be sure that your in-house photo editing team is doing a good job?

I wrote at the beginning of this guide that 68% of people say the product photos affect their buying decisions. If you see that your conversion rate is high (the number of the purchase divided by the number of unique visitors saw the product) you don’t need to bother.

A typical conversion rate for an e-commerce store is 2-3%. If you’re getting this then you’re doing good. If you’re not then something is wrong. And the issue is not necessarily to be with the photos.

In this case, it’s best to ask someone else to review your site. Some of the photo editing agencies like us do the review at free of cost. Contact them and let them do their job.

3. When you don’t have any budget

This one is self-explanatory. You may not need to hire a photo editing agency if you’re running short on cash.

Yes, if you don’t have good photos then your sales will dip. But, you need to make a profit out of those minimal sales and then hire an agency when you have some cash.

When should you outsource your photo editing job?

1. When you have so many photos

If you’re a fashion and apparel excommunicated store, you may be having 100+ photos every month. As a CEO or creative director, your job is to focus on the growth of your company rather than editing photos.

It’s a good time to hire an agency rather than editing the photos by yourself.

2. To save time

Editing photos is a boring task for the majority of people. It’s not boring for the photo editing agencies because of they breath Photoshop.

Editing one e-commerce photo requires 10 mins if you’re an intermediate user and 5 mins if you’re a pro. Don’t even calculate the time if you’re a newbie because most of your time will waste in searching the right tutorials that’ll enable you to edit your photos.

Many of our clients are from the fashion and apparel industry. They all have 200+ photos every week and we edit those for them. Some of them have also 200+ brick and mortar store across the US.

Just think about the time they’ve wasted if they decided to edit the photos by themselves

But I already have an in-house photo editing team. Then why should I worry about the time?

Photo editing agencies use many tools to edit one batch of the photo. We keep ourselves updated with the latest apps and tools in the market which can help us to edit the photos in minimal time.

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For example, making the background light gray takes 2-3 mins in Photoshop for a medium complex photo. There’re tools we know that does this job in 1-click. Guess what? We just saved 2-3 mins.

Photo editing agencies also spend several thousand dollars to purchase the license of these tools.

My agency uses around 27 tools for photo editing. Yes, Photoshop and Lightroom are the most used among them.

3. If you want to save your a*s

Photo editing is a daunting task. Imagine that you’re planning to launch a product next week and photos are not even edited. If this has already happened to you then you’re not uncommon. If this has never happened to you then you’re uncommon.

We see this kind of issue every week. Many of our clients come to us and say that they’ve messed up. New 100 products are launching next week and 500+ photos are not even edited. We ask them to calm down and send all the photos to us. They send the photos using Dropbox or Google Drive and we use our additional workforce to deliver the project on time.

Guess what? He spent his weekend happily after that.

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4. When you start making profit

It’s a rule in business that you need to keep on making your product better. Product photos on your e-commerce store is a kind of product that your customers see. Making the. Better is the thing you always want to do.

Once you have a profit, you’ll have enough money to hire a photo editing agency. Photo editing agency doesn’t charge much. One of the services we provide is e-commerce product photo editing and we charge only $1.99 per photo for 100+ photos. The cost per photo is higher for lesser photos.