How to Choose the Best Amazon Product Photographer

Product pictures can make or break your Amazon business.

Long-time blog readers will now that I’ve been stressing for years now how product photography is one of the most important aspects of selling online, and this applies more than ever with Amazon.

And don’t think I’m exaggerating here! For me product pictures and reviews are the two most important factors when it comes to being successful on Amazon. Even the listing and description, which some people agonise and spend hours over, are nowhere near as important.

Just think about it – customers can’t see or touch or test your product, so what are they relying on? Reviews and pictures!

If your product pictures are premium, then naturally buyers will assume your product itself is premium. So not only will you be able to get away with charging a higher price, you’ll also have a higher conversion rate.

And the importance of this can’t be overestimated – a high conversion rate increases the profitability of everything you do on Amazon!

For one thing it automatically means you make more sales and money off the bat as a listing with a 15% conversion rate will make 50% more sales vs a listing with an average Amazon conversion rate of 10%.

But this also has the knock-on affect of making Amazon love your product and bumping it higher and higher in the search results, meaning… more views and more sales!

And it doesn’t stop there. A high conversion rate can also be the difference between a profitable and unprofitable PPC campaign. Again, it’s all simple maths here – if you pay on average £0.10 per click for 500 clicks a day and make 50 sales from that (a 10% conversion rate) that gives you a PPC cost per sale of £1. But if you instead get 75 sales from your 500 clicks (a 15% conversion rate) that means you’ve lowered your PPC cost per sale to £0.67.

This all makes a HUGE difference when it comes to scaling your Amazon business.

So what am I getting at with all this? Well it’s simple really and the main point of today’s blog post – don’t cut corners when it comes to product photography for your Amazon FBA business – get the BEST pictures that you can.

And yes, that means NOT doing it yourself at home with a smartphone camera! The days where this was good enough are long gone and you need to use a professional for this.

How do you choose the best Amazon product photography company?

Now over my many years of ecommerce, eBay, and Amazon selling I’ve personally tried a lot of different product photography companies – ranging from big studios to small freelancers and even semi-amateurs.

And honestly I’ve had much more success with some of the “smaller” companies, especially local photographers who you can even meet with and discuss what you want to achieve with your product pictures.

For me the bigger photography agencies just don’t offer the level or service and customisation that’s needed for Amazon sellers to create a unique but premium look.

However, using local photographers and smaller freelancers, who are often one man (or woman!) bands, also has the problem of them not always being available, moving away or even stopping their business altogether.

And that’s exactly what happened to me. Margaret, of fineartimaging.com, who I had been using and recommending for years, retired and closed her business.

So last year I started searching for a new company to use for my own projects and also to recommend to my blog readers and Amazon Sharks members.

And from hours of testing and research – here are my recommendations:

Local Photographer

This is my no.1 choice as when it comes to quality vs cost, you just can’t beat a good local photographer.

This is especially true when you have multiple products and go back to them often as once you build a good relationship and they know what kind of pictures you’re looking for, it’s plain sailing.

For me this is the main advantage of using a local photographer vs using studios where you usually need to give a lot of input in terms of ideas and copy for your pictures. Also the quality is way more consistent as it’s the same photographer every time. This was a big issue I had testing some bigger companies where the outcome was just too random.

Unfortunately the biggest downside to this option is that finding a good local photographer is sometimes easier said than done and it does require some work on your part as you have to look at local classified ads, check out forums etc. But don’t let that put you off as if you can find one you’re set and this is my no.1 recommendation for getting the best product pictures possible without breaking the bank.

Product Photography Studios

This is my second recommendation, which may be surprising after all the negatives I talked about BUT they can all be minimised by choosing smaller companies that specialise in Amazon product photography.

And this is a big point because never mind the technical requirements, the style of effective Amazon product pictures is different to even Etsy or your own ecommerce store.

Of course it’s not as simple as just searching for “best Amazon product photography companies” as you’ll be met with thousands of results – most of which are completely rubbish. Seriously, I won’t post pictures and attack businesses unnecessarily but so many of the options I looked at are just terrible. And if that’s what they choose to put in their portfolio then I’m scared to even see the normal results!

But thankfully you don’t have to go through this from scratch as I’ll start you off with a few recommendations for Amazon product photography studios in the UK:

Photography Works offer 3 different Amazon image plans, but for what we’re looking for we’re only really considering the Conversion Booster PRO as simple white background images won’t be enough to stand out against the competition.

This costs £299 and for that you get 7 branded images for your Amazon listing.

One important point to note here, you can’t have any branding on your main image and this will lead to your listing being suppressed so be careful with this. I’m sure Photography Works are well aware of this but I wanted to point it out just in case!

Overall I’m really pleased with the quality of their portfolio. That, along with some very reasonable pricing, makes them a solid recommendation.

Next up we have:

Photograph My Product again offer 3 different packages for Amazon sellers:

And what I really like about their options is that they all include a lifestyle image! So actually in this case you could quite happily go for the Starter Pack as it includes 7 pictures in total in a variety of styles.

And for £225, considering the quality of their portfolio, it’s another a great option for your Amazon FBA product photography.

Moving on and we have:

Now I wasn’t 100% sure about including this last option, for two reasons.

One, because they really specialise in clothing and jewellery, and two, because as I covered in our product photography test a while back, I find their images to be a bit too “clean” when we’re looking for something more lifestyle focused (think Instagram pictures here as that’s what really sells your product).

But there’s one thing I can’t argue with and that’s the unbeatable pricing they offer, with 3 product pictures starting at £15 + VAT and additional images only costing £2 on top!

So while it’s still not my main recommendation for all the reason written about above, 7 product pictures for your Amazon listing for £27.60 is a crazy price and a solid budget option for people that don’t have £300+ to spend here.

Final Thoughts

And there you have it!

As I talked about, I have had some great success using local photographers so I always suggest trying to go down that route initially. But if you’re having no luck there then here are some great options to consider.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions so if you have a product photographer that you’ve used and recommend, please feel free to share them below for other blog readers to see as well.

Otherwise, until next time!

All the best,
Andrew