I've done some photography for internet and I will offer the following suggestions. You may not be able to control all of these, but any of them you CAN control are worth investigating. It will be up to you to develop a setup that works for your equipment and situation.
1. Lens. Is it clean? If not, you will be taking foggy photos from the outset - but before you reach for your favourite glass cleaner, please check the lens cleaning instructions for your camera. If you can't find any then ask. If you are still unsure, then I would suggest you get some good quality camera lens cleaning tissue and follow the directions. If you have a half-decent camera shop near you, they will not only be very likely to carry this, but they will be happy to show you how to use it.
2. Camera mounting. Don't hold your camera freehand. Have it fixed to something so that it does not move during the exposure. Camera shake is impossible to remove in post-production. Tripods are good (except Dave's). If you must hold your camera in hand, try to have your hands resting against something solid.
3. Lighting. This is the single most important aspect of photography. As has already been demonstrated, on camera flash is a bad idea. In fact any kind of flash can be problematic as you won't know what shadows or reflections you are going to get until after the shot is taken. If you can, have set illumination - from the side or at least off-axis from the camera lens. Diffused light from something like a softbox can work well. If you must use a flash, then do it off-camera unless the subject is a completely matt and non-reflective finish. To get an idea of what reflections a flash might give, get a bright torch and hold it in front of the flash pointing in the same direction as the flash. Move the torch until any reflections are the least problematic and then set the flash in the same position and orientation. Repeat for each flash. Do a test shot to check for flash flare and for overall lighting of the subject. Adjust if necessary. Rinse and repeat.
4. Direct viewing. Being able to see what you are about to photograph will aid setting up immensely. If you are using a smartphone, that's pretty much a given - as it is with many digital cameras - UNLESS the camera is placed in such a position where the viewfinder is not readily accessible. In such cases, having an external monitor will make your life easier.
5. Reflections. If you are taking photos which include any specular surfaces or even just shiny ones, just be mindful of what reflections you might pick up. You might not provide x-rated material (that featured in some ebay listings a while back) but you might end up with some distracting bright spots that have nothing to do with the subject. Once I had a dark subject with a shiny surface that showed some coloured patches that simply didn't exist on the subject. The patches turned out to be from a coloured sticker that was on the front of my camera body, reflected off the subject. Once I identified that, I was able to locate other bright spots which were from other shiny parts of my camera. My solution involved a couple of old black woolen socks being sacrificed for the cause.
6. Focus. If you can, it is best to have the ability to focus manually or to be able to 'lock' the focus to a set point. This way, YOU can make the judgement as to where the best focus point is.
7. Depth of field. This is getting into the nitty gritty of photography, but it is simply a term which describes the range of distances where a subject appears to be in focus. While only one distance is actually in focus, some objects that are a bit closer to the camera as well as some a bit further away from the camera can still look like they are in focus because their 'blurriness' is not enough for our eyes to notice. What is interesting about this is, the smaller the lens aperture, the greater this range (or depth-of-field) becomes. There is a trade-off, however. For the same amount of light to fall onto the sensor, as you reduce the aperture, you will have to increase the exposure time. This gives you increased susceptibility to movement of the camera. With a hand-held camera, this can become a problem very quickly, but if the camera is fixed - as in being mounted on a tripod for example - then this becomes almost a non-issue. If your subject is flat then all this isn't a big issue, but if you have a PCB with a couple of tall caps on it, then you might want to investigate this a bit further. Please note that the depth-of-field is a function of the physical aperture size of your lens. An electronic 'equivalent' will not give you any benefit.
8. Resolution. Remember that you can always reduce the resolution of an image in post production, but you can never increase it - so seriously consider the resolution you want for your original image.
9. Zoom. There are 3 ways to get a subject to fill the image space.
(a) Move the camera and/or the subject.
(b) Use Optical zoom
(c) Use Digital zoom
Moving the camera/subject is a rather obvious option, but it is one which applies to every camera. Sometimes this is either awkward or not practical, but there are times when it might be worth the effort.
With the camera and subject in set positions, using zoom is a natural choice. But, if you have both optical and digital available, which one should you use? While you can use both, optical zoom should be your first choice because it changes the size of the image as it falls onto the sensor, giving the maximum resolution for the resultant picture. If your camera has the ability, changing lenses is another option - which can provide better quality. [Fixed focal length lenses are designed to provide the best quality at a single focal length whereas (optical) zoom lenses are designed to operate over a range of focal lengths, which can mean some compromise on image quality. This compromise is not something most people would be concerned about - in fact, I would venture to say that most people wouldn't even notice, especially as today's optics are generally pretty good. (Professional photographers certainly know - and it's one of the reasons they carry a range of lenses with them.)]
With digital zoom, some of the pixels from the sensor are discarded and the remaining ones scaled up** to fill the frame, resulting in lower quality. Thus, it is pretty much safe to say that just about any optical zoom will result in a better quality image than a digital zoom.
** Digital zoom can be performed in a camera with that ability or the equivalent can be done post-production in image processing software. The result is effectively the same, but there can be differences depending on the upscaling algorithm used (there are several).
10. Distortion - barrel. When doing close-up photography, you are more prone to barrel distortion. When it comes to subjects where there are long straight lines and/or rectangular shapes, this can be most disconcerting. While some photo editing software has corrective functions, it's always better to minimise this at the time of the shoot. The best answer to this is to have your camera as far away from the subject as possible and use your optical zoom to fill the frame.
11. Distortion - trapezoidal. If your camera is not square on to the subject, you can end up with rectangles that look more like trapezoids. In photographs of buildings (for example) it is called 'perspective'. The best solution is work out the plane of your subject, find the middle point and draw an imaginary line straight out from it at right angles. Place your camera so this imaginary line goes right up the middle of your lens and with the back plane of the camera parallel to the subject. For example, if you are photographing a PCB laying on a table using a smartphone, then hold the smartphone level (ie parallel to the table) with the lens directly over the middle of the PCB.
12. Shutter release. Try to have a means where you can release the shutter without touching the camera. The action of pressing (or even touching) the release button will cause some camera movement that may end up affecting your final shot. Use a cable release or other remote means if you have it - or if you have a smartphone like my Galaxy S4, you can set it up to take the shot when you say 'smile!'.
13. Colour accuracy. If this is not critical, then skip this subject and be thankful. However, if you want absolutely correct colours presented on the internet, I have only two words for you: FORGET IT! Firstly, the average camera is not going to capture colours with Pantone accuracy. Certainly, there are better cameras and there are colour profiles which can help you with it all, but there is a limiting factor over which you have absolutely NO control: the displays upon which your images will be presented. There are several factors involved here. The first is the display technology - CRT, plasma, LCD, OLED to name a few. The next is the specifics of the technologies - such as the phosphors for CRT and plasma and TN / IPS for LCD panels. Then there are the specific settings - you know - those people who's TV's have every caucasian looking like sunburned Oompa-Loompa's. Add to that the issues of ageing displays and unknown ambient lighting conditions and you must soon resign yourself to the fact that once your image hits the internet, its fate is unknown.
There are a couple of things I have found that have allowed me to produce reasonable results without breaking the bank or my spirit. The first is to set your White Balance. This is where your camera is calibrated to understand what a white subject looks like under the current lighting conditions. The process for setting the white balance on your camera may be automatic, manual, from a selection of pre-sets or non existent. If you're not sure about setting the white balance on your camera, then you can photograph something that is white and, using your photo editing software afterwards in post-production, work out what adjustments you need to make for it to become white on your RGB scale and then make those same adjustments on each photo.
The second suggestion I can make is to do any post production image processing on an IPS monitor. I have found it to result in images that seem to present with a more consistent colour rendition across a variety of displays.
14. Image editing. Aside from the basics such as cropping and resizing, be very careful about any 'enhancement' processing. It's far, far better to get the original image captured as close to the finished product as possible than to make even the simplest of tweaks. This is most definitely one of those areas where 'less' is 'more'. It speeds up post production significantly and reduces stress.
These are just some observations I have made in my efforts. There will, no doubt, be some details that some might not agree with, but the topics are valid and my solutions have been good enough for my current needs.
Edit: Spelling.
Edit: Added section on Zoom
Edit: Added upscaling comment
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