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www.ecommerce-guide.com/essentials/ebay/article.php/3733686
By Vangie Beal March 12, 2008 Vzaar's Chief Operating Officer Dan Wilson is a co-founder of eBay UK and also author of the best-selling book "Make Serious Money on eBay UK." He told ECommerce-Guide in a recent interview that making the video service easy to use — and specificially for eBay transactions — were top priorities, helped by the fact that the company is run by veteran eBayers. "In our trial period we had over 4,000 sellers using the service and their input and our experience made Vzaar video foolproof," he said. "A seller's time is important and we created this service to be a quick process and easy to use." And, so it appears to be. It's a simple three clicks to embed your Vzaar video and no knowledge of HTML is required. To add video to your listings, you only need to shoot the video using a cell phone, camcorder or the video function on your digital camera, and then upload the video to the Vzaar Web site. As an approved eBay video service, Vzaar automatically encodes the video and brings up your listings and you choose which listing the video is to be included in.
There is also an opportunity for cross and up-selling using this video service. One example cited by Wilson is a seller who listed a camera and then used the video service to promote accessories, bags and lenses and so on, in the camera listing being viewed. While watching live auctions on eBay in which the seller is using the Vzaar video service, one thing I noticed right off is that, when compared to other similar auction video services, Vzaar tends to keep the advertising low-key and presents it in an unobtrusive way. As shown in the screenshot below, you can see that the video player does have a company logo and links to the Vzaar Web site, but it's contained in a small branding space and doesn't interfere with either the seller's information or the video itself. It' really quite a discrete link, especially when compared to other video service offerings, such as Auctiva, which places both text and button image links under the embedded video on the eBay listings page. Meanwhile, the basic Vzaar service is free, which is always a good deal. You get up to 30 videos per month (up to 1GB total storage space) and each video can be two minutes long. A free account will store your videos for 90 days. If you like the service, two additional plans are offered that may very well be better suited to high-volume and Power Sellers. The Plus Service at $10 per month lets you store up to 300 videos in 1GB of storage space. The video length is also two minutes in this plan, but you do get some enhanced features. Shoppers can search listings by seller name or item ID, sellers can embed one video in multiple listings with a single click and the videos are stored for 180 days. The Pro Service runs at $20 per month and offers 300 videos and 2GB space, and the video length is increased to three minutes. The enhanced features from the Plus account are also included in the Pro service but your videos are stored for a year.For those new to selling on eBay with video, Vzaar also offers an extensive FAQ section and plenty of tips on their Web site to help the budding videographer create videos for their eBay listings. Eye on the Little Guy: SilkFair's Full-Featured ShopsNew Jersey-based SilkFair launched its new online marketplace, offering an elegant and well-designed interface. Features include seller must-haves such as video and a unique mapping system that tracks the origin of feedback.
Once merchants set up their SilkFair storefront, they will have their own URL for their Web store or they can forward their own domain name to their online store. When listing products, sellers can post up to four different images for each item, and up to two videos, which are automatically converted to Flash and indexed for immediate viewing by potential customers. Another unique feature being offered at SilkFair is a one-step shopping cart that will aggregate purchases from multiple vendors, letting a buyer check out with one page and one bill. The new SilkFair shops offer lots of customization features and listing options, and also provide comprehensive search features for buyers. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on SilkFair as an up-and-coming eBay alternative marketplace. Vangie Beal is a seasoned eBay seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and managing editor of Webopedia.com.
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