Attempting to be Professional

I have been told that one needs a photo box, or light box, to take great professional photos. I have read various advice blogs and articles that claim that photos taken in one these boxes are a must when listing on Etsy. I totally believed them. And I believed that the method for making one was as easy as the directions implied. Here is the one that I made:

The box is lit from the top, or sides, with the intent of providing enough direct light to minimize shadows and eliminate the need for flash, which I'm told washes out the colors. It took me over an hour to make my attempt at a photo box, (I blame it on the box cutters I was using). What is more frustrating is that using this box hasn't seemed to change my photos for the better at all. Well, I suppose a couple of them look better, but none of the other ones do.

I'm probably using the wrong light bulb, and I'm sure that it would help if I had more than just one inadequate desk lamp. I tried taking some photos last night (because one woman swears that taking photos in one of these at night will still look as though it was taken during the day- they didn't). They came out really blue looking and dark. So I decided I needed more daylight to make it work, and packed everything away until today.

I was so hopeful about this that I sat down to re-take my photos today, in the early afternoon because I also read somewhere that photos look best when taken in morning or afternoon light. I took 90 photos (multiple shots of some items) to ensure that at least one photo of each item would look decent. Then my lamp broke before I had even put a dent in photographing my entire inventory, (in its defense, it is old). I gave up trying to fix it and uploaded my photos instead. I am not happy with any of them. They all still look rather dark with too many shadows. And I'm still have a difficult time getting the colors to come through correctly. They are looking washed-out and dull, and for the most part, purples are still appearing more blue. I'm blaming my camera for this one because they look exactly the same on my computer as they do when I review them on me camera. Take a look at how they are turning out (after some slight editing):

These colors should be hot pink and lime green, but they are rather dull. And the background is not white at all.

This is SUPPOSED to be a bold, almost fire engine, red!

Does this look like a deep royal purple to you?

What am I doing wrong?! Anyone know how to fix this? Tips? Tricks? Anything?