I studied photography for about a year before I opened my shop again, and believe me the pictures make a world of difference.
Here are a few suggestions, that you may want to follow.
Try and find the north facing window in your house. Put the model in front of that window, or even a mannequin. There are several very good ETSY shops that take pictures of clothing on a mannequin. Just make sure your composition is nice. Make sure the background is perfect for the clothing you are offering. Not busy. A nice wall, and maybe a nice painting.
I agree with the light sets you can buy on Ebay or Amazon. I bought background material at Joann's and Fabric.com. Try a marine vinyl that you can throw over a large stack of boxes. Here is a sample of my marine vinyl over my clothing rack
http://www.etsy.com/listing/67154239/preorder-for-spring-2011-the-felicia. Make sure you use your editing program to white out the vinyl and give you a nice bright background. It is tricky but there is all kinds of tutorials out there on how to set up an inside photography studio.
Another popular idea is to set it up in your garage. Just open the door, and viola natural light. Believe me snow is a wonderful background. I also do some boutique photography for shop owners (
http://kinderphoto.etsy.com), but I did not want to force that upon anyone. I know what it is like to be frustrated with your shop pictures. Thank goodness I have a good friend who is a photographer, and while my husband was in Afghanistan I had lots of time to study everything I could find on photography.
Hope this helps,
Jeannine