
Thanks to [Wordle](http://www.wordle.net/) for the inspiration!
Everyone likes presents at Christmas…especially unexpected ones!
Last week the eBay Developer Team contacted us out, like the Secret Santas they are, to say that we had won a special eBay prize. Yeh!
To celebrate the 8th anniversary of the eBay API platform some Third Party Services have been recognised for their involvement in the rather cool initiative, Project Echo, which vzaar will be a part of in 2009. So over the weekend we excitedly wondered what might be winging its way across the Atlantic to vzaar HQ – I for one couldn’t sleep last night.
And here is it, our very own office Magic 8 ball. Have a look at the video to see what we asked of it…

Our latest business to be featured on our blog takes us into the world of cables, modems and power leads – the kind of world that video loves. Mmmmm electricity!
Al at cablestar has been selling online since early 2003 and first came to vzaar earlier on this year. We let him take up the story:
I first met the vzaar team at one of Channel Advisor's Catalyst events having heard the concept of video in listings mentioned at an eBay University. We felt that it would be great to use video to promote our products and company, given that we sell to people who are quite technically minded. It’s such a simple idea – I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier!
Given the sheer range and volume of items we sell on our own website and on eBay, a shorter one off video that promoted our company, and designed to answer a few of the frequently asked questions we receive seemed the way to go. That way we could use the one asset a number of times and keep initial costs down. In addition, the video spokesperson we used has enabled us to quickly get across our core messages around prompt delivery time and customer refund policies. Our experience to date is that in some cases the customer doesn’t always read the copy on the page so we like the fact that we are also sharing that information more directly via video.
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Adding video to our listings was a bit of a step into the unknown but we are pleased with results to date. Customer feedback has been very positive and we feel that our buyers enjoy the fact that they can see real people packing their orders. They get a feel for the company and who sits behind the company logo.
I was initially worried about how we’d add the video to our many many lines of stock but given that it was just pasting in some embed code we were up and running in a matter of hours. The unbranded player sits nicely alongside our frooition template and we certainly plan to introduce the video on to other platforms, such as Amazon and Pixmania in the near future.
On eBay two of our Detailed Seller Ratings have increased by 0.1% in the last 6 months which helps as strong DSR’s means better sales! They have also helped to keep us ahead of the competition in search which goes some way to ensuring our fees are as low as possible. With video it all adds up!
So some great news emerging from the vzaar lab. This week we’ll be launching some new functionality that will give users more insight into their vzaar account. In short these include:
**Bandwidth Monitoring**
vzaar users will be able to see just how much bandwidth their videos are consuming on a monthly basis by logging into *My vzaar > My account* where you will see a summary a little like this:



Charities have for some years now been using eBay as a great venue for extending their brand profile and to also raise some much needed money along the way. It makes utter sense given the sheer number of buyers visiting eBay with money to spend.
For a while though I’ve had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the quality of the attempts to sell on eBay by some of the bigger high street charity names. Many have taken eBay too lightly in my opinion and not paid due attention to the commercial opportunities that the site offers. Well, thanks to Good Cause Auctions we are starting to see some professionalism hitting our PC screens!
Run by eBay advocates Julie Dawson and Mark Buckingham, Good Cause Auctions offer services from consultancy and support, to a fully integrated service comprising PR, campaign planning, design, auction management and logistics. Aimed at increasing awareness of a cause and building an extended or new base of support they really are the go to people if you are a charity looking to sell on eBay but perhaps don’t have the full resource to support it or to bring the idea to life. What’s more the company are firm believers in the value of video, especially for charities that want to show bidders how monies are spent, so it was natural for vzaar to hook up with them!
As an example check out their Shelter Men Only Aloud Christmas auction on eBay for your chance to have the BBC award winning choir sing in your local community.
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