ebay image hosting, PHOTOBUCKET NOW CHARGING

[CustomLED]

Hi

I ahve come in this morning to find all my listings (1200) have had all their images removed, as photobucket now dont allow you to link to 3rd parties unless you pay for their top package which is $400 a year.

So my question is, has anyone else found this, and does anyone have a discount code that i could have or even buy as im sure there will be ones out there.

 

[The Byre]

Just rent some server space for $5 a month or even less from any one of a thousand suppliers dotted around Planet Earth!

 

[arnydnxluk]

Hello,

What are the images being used for?

Which features did Photobucket offer which you want to keep?

Some ideas:

- Imgur (wouldn't trust them to be around forever either to be honest)
- Google Drive
- Google Photos
- Jumpshare
- Backblaze B2
- Shared web hosting

Edit: Sorry, missed the eBay part. Any of the above should be fine, although I'd avoid Imgur as it's not going to be reliable in the long term.

 

[fisicx]

The problem the OP has it 1200 products. Changing to a new image host would required a huge effort sorting out all the image URLs.

Just pay the £400 (£1/day) and increase your postage cost by 10p and you will recover the money in no time at all.

 

[TheConsulter]

There are some free image hosting providers out there that you should try.

• Google Photos
• Postimage
• GifyU
• Imgur
• TinyPic

 

[fisicx]

Finding somewhere to put the images isn't the issue. The problem the OP has is the listings - updating the1200 image URLS will take a while and during that time they are losing money. So the simple answer it to just pay the £400 and recover the cost with a tiny price increase.

 

[Mr D]

Did photobucket not announce something in advance?

 

[fisicx]

Did photobucket not announce something in advance?

They don't need to. It's in the T&C:

Free account : ...The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.

The OP has just been lucky up to now and not got caught.

 

[Mr D]

Sounds like they avoided lots of fees then.

 

[arnydnxluk]

They don't need to. It's in the T&C:

Free account : ...The free account does not allow any image linking or 3rd party image hosting.

The OP has just been lucky up to now and not got caught.

The terms were revised 2 days ago. If we go back to the beginning of June that part didn't exist. So rather than the OP being lucky, I think Photobucket just pulled the rug from under them. That being said, some may say it's best not rely on a free service for business use.

Regardless of the terms and the fact the service was free, I personally think it's morally wrong to do what Photobucket has done without notice. So for that reason, I'd definitely go through the effort of pointing my eBay images elsewhere rather than pay $400/year.

 

[The Byre]

That ought to be a lesson for us all. Nobody should rely on a free service just 'being there' and even paid-for services can vanish overnight.

Though if you do have a paid supplier, at least that company has an interest in keeping your custom and not facing contractual difficulties.

Rather than de-trouser $400, the OP would be well advised to get some server space to call his own and start moving them images. If he does just 200 a day, he'll be done in under a week.

 

[fisicx]

I personally think it's morally wrong to do what Photobucket has done without notice.

Maybe they did give notice. Looking as some of the forums discussing the matter and it appears they sent out emails to everyone telling of the changes to the T&C.

Photobucket still works. All the images are still there, you just can't hotlink to the likes of ebay anymore.

 

[jjscruff]

happened for me too on 100s of listings
the worst thing is you can't revise a listing that has already sold some items
So you cant remove the failed photobucket icon any more.

 

[fisicx]

Did you read the new T&C they refered to in the email they sent you?

 

[jjscruff]

Did you read the new T&C they refered to in the email they sent you?

no haven't seen one

 

[fisicx]

They sent an email to account holders telling of the change to the terms and conditions. Maybe the email address on the account isn't the one you now use.

 

[antropy]

Just rent some server space for $5 a month or even less from any one of a thousand suppliers dotted around Planet Earth!

Make sure they don't throttle the speed as your bandwidth usage increases!

 

[paulears]

I've never had any of my image hosting throttled back - must just be the less reputable providers.

 

[antropy]

I've never had any of my image hosting throttled back - must just be the less reputable providers.

Or maybe you haven't used very large amounts of bandwidth on an apparently "unlimited" bandwidth provider for $5/month.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Is it possible to mass update the image URL's using SQL or CSV export / import?, if the filenames remain the same, then you may be able to use simple find and replace to update the rest of the URL, or maybe use REGEX to transform the data (but this is harder to do)

I'd consider a CDN to host images, they have many speed benefits as they are mirrored across multiple server locations, you may also gain page speed benefits due to domain sharding.

Another benefit of some CDN services is static or even on the fly image optimisations such as lossy / lossless compression, smushit, metadata removal and image re-sizing... all of these things can have a huge impact on your page load speed.

 

[fisicx]

Is it possible to mass update the image URL's using SQL or CSV export / import.

It's ebay. You can upload product data but I think this only works for new listings not existing listings.

 

[Xtm_Mike]

Is it possible to mass update the image URL's using SQL or CSV export / import?, if the filenames remain the same, then you may be able to use simple find and replace to update the rest of the URL, or maybe use REGEX to transform the data (but this is harder to do)

I'd consider a CDN to host images, they have many speed benefits as they are mirrored across multiple server locations, you may also gain page speed benefits due to domain sharding.

Another benefit of some CDN services is static or even on the fly image optimisations such as lossy / lossless compression, smushit, metadata removal and image re-sizing... all of these things can have a huge impact on your page load speed.

A CDN isn't a host. The OP would still need somewhere to host the images to take advantage of a CDN.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Ah damn ebay you are probably correct fisicx

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

I use cloudinary but they are pricey

 

[Videoguy]

They sent an email to account holders telling of the change to the terms and conditions. Maybe the email address on the account isn't the one you now use.

I've got two free Photobucket accounts on two separate e-mail addresses and haven't received any notifications about changes to T&Cs on either. Thankfully I don't use them for anything important.

 

[Eshan Imrit]

Hi friend,
I have limited knowledge about this topic (saving images with an URL...) However, I would like to ask you guys an advise on a similar nature:

I have a small business on eBay and saved most (not all) my edited pictures with my logo (in a png format) in a folder on my pc. I am soon adventuring to sell on two other platforms and need to insert the same images to these platforms.

What is the best way for me to manage/save images to make my life easier in the future?

As a beginner on eBay, I tried to make my images look nice by framing, inserting logo and adding fast shipping logo on them. Recently, I tried to upload a picture on Amazon, but refused to upload my image due to the logo and frame on them.
Thank you in advance .

 

[fisicx]

You may well find ebay will remove your images as well. The guidelines for both platforms are clear - you cannot add any logos or badges to your images.

 

[mcmm]

i have a hosted solution with unlimited space for whatever I want at £60 per year including 1 free domain name. (The only thing couldnt do was setup my own cloud storage program for personal use). It is relatively simple to upload your images to such a hosted solution and provide the link in the posting.
message me if you need additional assistance.

Kind Regards

 

[Free.stockphoto.com]

Just rent some server space for $5 a month or even less from any one of a thousand suppliers dotted around Planet Earth!

Just a word of caution - most of the shared hosting providers have T&Cs that prohibit using their server space as a file server. On one of my projects, I ended up using a dedicated server to circumvent this.

 

[paulears]

I followed a link to a photobucket image from a forum I trust - and not only are they pushing the charging and changed terms of use, they identify my popup blocker, and I can't get rid of their popup that hides the images = very annoying.