Hi, I'm Samantha. I'm a small business owner and I work here at Shopify. In this video, you'll discover three ways to create unique photos to help you sell the products you're dropshipping and stand out from the competition. As a dropshipper, you have amazing access to product photos you can use on your website. The challenge? Your competitors also have access to the exact same photos. Your website photos can be a key differentiator when it comes to presenting your business to potential customers.
The first method of creating unique photos is to take custom photos yourself. If you have the budget to do so, buy samples of all of your products and take your own photos for your store. If your product collection is too big, buy samples of your most popular products. Another approach to creating unique photography is hiring an influencer with a small audience but great photos on Instagram. Professional influencers can be expensive, so be resourceful and try to find an up-and-coming photographer who may be open to taking photos for free to build their portfolio.
You'll need to send them samples of your products for the photo shoot. When it comes to working with influencers you'll need to set clear expectations of what you want out of the photo. If you don't want to take your own custom photos, or maybe you don't have the budget to partner with an influencer, there is another way to create unique photos, but it takes a bit more work. With the photo you have from the supplier, you can use an image background remover like remove.bg to remove the background of your product image.
Then, go to canva.com and upload your picture. Using Canva, you can add different colored backgrounds to your photo. You can also flip or change the orientation of your product, so that the photo appears different. When it comes to selecting a background color, we recommend using a white background, if possible. This allows your product to be easily viewed by customers with limited distractions. If you're running a print-on-demand business and the photo includes a model, you can also choose to add a background to your photo.
On a free stock photography website, search the term "background image" and you'll typically find dozens of potential backgrounds you can place your model in front of. Not all images will work, and this will require a bit of trial and error. You want the photo to look as natural as possible, so you might want to play around with some of Canva's editing settings. Another option for print-on-demand users is to find a mockup of the exact product they're selling on a site like Creative Market.
You'll need to have Photoshop in order to use the mockups, but with these mockups you'll be able to add your unique design to a model to create lifestyle photography. This works particularly well for those who prefer lifestyle photos instead of photos of their clothing clothing on a plain white background On Creative Market, you can search for specific products and find their mockups. While others may also be using similar mockups, the fee acts as a barrier, making it less likely to have direct competitors using the same mockups.
You can also flip the orientation of a photo so that it doesn't appear in image reverse searches. If you'd prefer not to use them for your website, you can add these photos to your ads or social media. And, of course, you have Burst, Shopify's free stock photography website that offers a variety of product photos for popular dropshipping products like apparel, kitchen supplies, phone cases and much, much more.
When it comes to dropshipping photos, you have a few options. You can take your own custom photos, partner with an influencer or photographer to take photos that match your brand, or alter the supplier photo to make it your own.
