I’ve read a lot on etsy, and so far most of the newbie stuff says one of the main keys to success = take great photos. Seems simple enough. Looking at all the products featured on the front page of etsy, they all look professionally taken. How hard can that be? REAL HARD!
I am in no way a professional photographer. My day to day picture taking skills are that of a child. Usually they aren’t centered, lighting is bad and a lot of the time the people are out of focus. I blame part of it on my camera. Good in its day, my Canon Cybershot just isn’t the coolest thing around anymore. Oh how I dream of a Nikon. 
My husband has been helping me try to stage a few items and otherwise try to take the “suck” out of what I am able to do. I feel like I have a few decent pictures but in the end I know better pictures will help my shop. Something to invest in in the future. Maybe I should look into some photography classes too, although I might feel a bit stupid in a class with a bunch of people that are way better than I am.
Here’s an etsy article on Poster Sketch. Apparently this is a tool to revamp your pictures. You upload one of yours and someone else’s and it helps you develop a similar style (example – taking out the extra white space around your item, giving it a close up view).
The forum’s have a great post on photography tips. I found a good blogger that talks about the problems with taking pictures. She apparently had a hard time in the beginning as well and actually stopped selling on etsy until she was more confident and learned more about taking good pictures. She gives lot of great examples of before and after of what she’s done after learning how to take good pics. Read her post – it’s very helpful! Another great blog on photography here.
Completely unrelated, I read a good article on packaging your items. It’s not good enough to just have a good product, you need to ship it well too. Cool boxes, stickers, nice cards, cool wrapping. Something that looks professional and anything to help with your brand so that people remember your name is a plus. This article is great and has a lot of examples of shops that do a great job in their shipping process and include that as one of their item pictures. Not something I had thought about, but I will now!
as a huge fan and avid visitor of etsy I couldn’t agree more about how important pictures are!! I often don’t even click on items that have poor picture quality when i’m looking for new ideas and items! Picasa is a free downloadable program and offers one touch editing- I’m feeling lucky and an easy create a collage option! Focus on those pictures- pun intened.