Watermarking photos for digital files - HELP

[PaperBoundLove]

Hi there.
I just started putting digital printable greeting cards on my shop.
My concern is that, whether I should watermark my first photo of each listings...
I've watermarked the second photo, which shows the PDF file that the customer will receive.
But I don't want to watermark the first photo, because it will like a bit..well, ugly..
I'm afraid people may crop the photo and steal the card design.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. (:

[AvonnieStudio]

How about make the first photos small, so they won't be able to zoom in that much. Even if someone steals them, the design would be blurry in normal size?

[SeaAirArts]

Make sure your photos are optimized for the web, then they are too small and blurry for printing. I make all mine 72 dpi and between 600 and 800 pixels wide. This is a good size for seeing detail on a monitor but lousy for a usable print. If you put a watermark on the first photo you are a lot less likely to get picked for any Etsy Features.
That said, there are always people who will try to steal your work. My feeling is that I can operate from a base of fear or a base of sharing. I choose the later.

[PiecesOfMePaperCraft]

I had the same concern about my black die cut images. I scan the die cuts because the image looks better than taking a photo. I realized that someone could easily take my image and print it without buying. Now I do what Deborah said and save for web. I select 72 dpi and low quality. I make the images even smaller than what she suggested. The quality of the image is too poor to print so it's useless to anyone trying to steal it.

[PaperBoundLove]

Thanks everyone for helping me out (: I'll change it to 72 DPI and 600 x 800 pixels :D thank you (:

[Former_Member]

I add in a watermark or my name to everything I put on the web, mostly (now) at the lower corner of the picture. The goal is less about people stealing my work (everything is at 72 dpi, pretty blurry) BUT for if somebody pins it on Pinterest and the link gets broken- somebody could look up my name to find my shop.

[TawnyFritz]

This is the precise reason I decided to print my own copies of my printables and photograph them the way I did. So that the customer can also see what it looks like when printed out, and the second photo is the watermarked one.

Just be sure to make it GLARINGLY obvious that it is a DIGITAL PRINTABLE FILE and not a physical copy!