If you’ve decided to sell your car privately, you’ll need a great listing to help you get top dollar. The first impressions are made by the photos and the car is sold or ignored based on the description. Your photos and description are your biggest assets. We’ll help guide you through what you want to put on your listing, to make sure you get the eyeball attention that will sell your car like a pro!
How to Take Great Photos of your Car
You’ve got 2 options.
1. Pay a professional to take the photos for you. Your only job in that case is to have the car exterior and interior sparkling clean.
2. Listen up to what we have to say here. (Still clean your car though, that part is an essential carry-over from 1.)
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to have a $5000 camera to take a good photo. It helps if you know how to use it, but unless your car is worth over $85,000 we don’t think it’s essential. Just your fully charged, modern smartphone will do for now.
- Have your car as clean as possible, no one wants good photos of a dirty car. You need to show how you value your car and the quality that the buyer is looking for. A clean car will come excellent on film, and you can highlight how you treat your car in your description.
- Lighting. Lighting is essential. It will show your car off in exactly the conditions you need it to. The best time for photos is in the afternoon. If you can manage to have everything ready and set up for the “Golden Hour” that is perfect. The “Golden Hour” is the hour before sunset or the hour after the sun comes up. It is when the natural lighting will look the best and will give you the best lighting for your car.
- Scenery and backdrop. Natural scenery is best because it places the car at the forefront of the photos. You want to make sure that the car isn’t in mixed shadow. So no sun peaking through the trees and no direct sun on the car. It’s best if the backdrop and the car are in the same, solid, shade. This will leave all attention on the car and show off the quality of the paint and exterior.
*** no other cars should be in the photo, you don’t want attention moving away from your car. Make the background boring and the car the focus.
Now for the Important Part, Taking the Photos
- Time to take the photos. You want the car on an angle, one photo of it facing you and one photo of it facing away from you. Make sure to leave a gap on either side of the car so you don’t chop anything off. These will be your hero images.
- Now take photos as if you are walking around the car, showing all angles, low and high. If you have to highlight an imperfection, use a finger or a pen to show the scale.
- With interior photos, it’s much of the same principles. Take photos of the front seats, carpets, dashboard, instrument cluster, rear seats, headliner and boot. These will tell buyers all they need to know, it’s also a good incentive to have the car clean.
- Photos of the engine bay, service stickers, WoF and Registration are also important to help keep buyers at ease. If you can get a couple photos of the underbody, that would also help but are often not essential.
Photos Look Great, What Do I Say?
Your description should be easy to read and tell the buyer what they need to know, good or bad. Keep it relevant and keep it simple. The buyers want the information to confirm that the car is what it needs to be and what sets it apart.
- Year the car was built, kilometers travelled, service history, colour and trim/options.
- Make sure there are no typo’s, speak professionally, but feel free to use appropriate humour. There’s a very famous Toyota Camry ad that leant very heavily into the humour angle.
- Tell the buyers openly and honestly about any faults and imperfections. Make sure to not make them sound catastrophic, but just make them aware and reasonable.
- Finally, a personal favourite of mine, “No timewasters and no low-ballers”. Selling a car can be arduous at the best of times, let buyers know that you’re serious and you expect them to be the same.
Where to Sell My Car?
If you’ve nailed your photos and description, we love Trade Me for buying and selling cars. They give you all the relevant fields to fill out and make sure that your photos and description are where they need to be. The advanced tiers of selling options is also really handy and something that you’ll love.
If you liked this article you may want to learn a few more tips and tricks for selling your car, you can find those here.