Question
What do you think of this? The "vintage lego men" video is good. Some of them are a bit much, especially if you are trying to sell the item. It's more entertainment/showbiz than selling on several of them.
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200704....07-04-16180612
***Starting Today: Link to Video To Describe Your Listing***
April 16, 2007 | 06:12PM PST/PT
Jim Ambach
Hi everyone...this is Jim Ambach with the Seller Experience team. Online video has become increasingly popular among internet users, and is quickly becoming a standard on many sites. It's proven to be an effective way of capturing people's attention by being entertaining, as well as informative.
Over the past couple of years, it's also become easier for people to create and host their own videos. Video can often help you tell an engaging story and share information more effectively than plain text.
For these reasons, we think the time is right to bring the video experience to eBay! I'm pleased to announce that starting today, sellers will be able to link from their listings to videos that describe their items.
Curious? Check out some examples
To kick off this new opportunity to promote your items -- and help get your creative ideas flowing -- we worked with a few film-makers (who are also eBay members) to produce videos for items they had to sell. Each listing example uses a video to tell a story about their item in a fun, interesting way.
We hope these videos help inspire you to come up with ways you can use video to market your listings. Check out our examples:
Buy Pete's Awesome Martin Guitar
Trevor's Dancing Saturn Car
Copy Room Stapler
Vintage Lego Men
You Will Love G4
Buy Abbey's Bike
How to include video in your listing
We've made adding video to your listings as simple as possible, while still retaining standards that will help keep the site safe.
First, when you create your video, please follow our simple policy requirements.
Next, upload your video to one of five approved video hosting sites: YouTube, Google, MySpace, Microsoft, or AOL. We've selected these sites for their combination of popularity, ease of use, and the protection they offer against harmful programs being used inside the videos.
Finally, include the link to the video in your item description (videos cannot be embedded within listings), and you should be all set.
Here's to some great videos!
Sincerely,
Jim Ambach
Vice President, Seller Experience
Answer
As a buyer, as long as it is linked and not emedded, that's fine. I'm not sure I'd be really keen on clicking a link however...
I'm not selling at the moment, and can't think of anything I've sold in the past where this could be useful. I'm sure there are times though, depending on the product. I did buy an old tin top a few years ago. Turns out it works perfectly, but I could see how a video showing it spinning might have helped sell it. The top has a Tulip inside it that opens when you spin it, and a ballerina is inside the flower.
Answer
Video is increasingly popular and I've spent quite a lot of time on youtube myself. I think it will be great for higher ticket items like cars, certain antiques, furniture, although not everyone has the bandwidth necessary to see them. If people don't write descriptions and have pictures as if they didn't have video, they may lose sales. But for what I sell? No.
Answer
I have used video on a couple of auctions, one a synthesizer and the other a desireable projector. The video didn't automatically pop up, potential bidders had to click on a "start" button. I think it helped to up the bid amount. It's unfortunate that in the not so far future ebay will make me pay an extra buck or 2 every time I want to use a video.
Answer
As long as you can "link to it, if you want to" I think it could be good for items that have action or sound or to relieve the burden of many, many pictures that are needed for a few items. The main requirement would be that the potential selling price would make it worth while to take the time to prepare a video. I agree it would still be important to thoroughly prepare the written listing with details in case someone doesn't want or can't link to the video. Good point about maybe not wanting to just click on any link.
What's going to kill it will be the videos that get "cute". Example is the one about the car. It may be entertaining but it wouldn't help me a bit with deciding if I wanted to buy the car as you can't really "see" anything. Another is the guitar one which is borderline disgusting to watch and "is" disgusting if you were going to consider buying that item.