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Even Google, the King of the internet Jungle, in their quest cannot find what it’s looking for.

Back in the news is YouTube’s woe’s and shortcomings as a business. According to the Wall Street Journal article, pressure is back on as Eric Schmidt, Google CEO voices his dissatisfaction with the lack of cash being generated. As a result plans to begin accepting “pre-roll and “post-roll” ads are rumoured which will run before and after on Youtube video’s.

If this plan does go ahead the viewers reaction will be no different, as I suspect, to the reaction received when they tried this a few years back. Youtube was founded on free & ad free content. That’s why we watch it. For me, as soon as I see an ad I’m a gone. I have a very low tolerance for ads on internet video, and this is a cultural thing most of us share. It simply boils down to the precedent of ,free content with no ad’s, originally set when YouTube opened up in 2005. The vzaar founding principle is that the video is the ad and this is why we don’t offer pre roll and post roll ads.

Google recognise that their UGC content is not monetise-able as advertisers won’t touch it with a barge poll. Therefore, according to the Wall Street article, Google will only sell ads against YouTube clips approved by media companies and other partners. Interestingly, this represents about 4% of the total content on their site . Earlier this month, Youtube announced that is serving more than 1 billion page views a day. What they have not disclosed is of that “safe” 4% how much activity or views are they getting in relation to the “unsafe” UGC content. Whatever it is I am sure it will decline once ads are served.

I do find their predicament interesting and I am sure one day they will figure out a solution as they cannot just keep losing money forever….or can they?

Got any bright ideas or comments on how they can or should look to generate revenue?

I’d love to hear your views.

contact me

This week eBay UK announced that it would no longer be possible to list BINs (Buy it Now) at £1 or less. For many sellers, especially those who list a huge amount of inventory using SIF for less than 99p, this will mean a change to how they list their items. Sellers who list a lot of low value items will be impacted. Categories likely to be hit include Crafts, Book, Stamps and Collectables.

For instance, it has been a long advised practice for sellers to list the bulk of their lines at 99p and less in their eBay Shops and direct buyers to their full selection using Auctions and BINs. These listings on the core site would effectively act as signposts.

From 24th September, as a result of these changes, listing items at less than 99p won’t be permissible. But all is not lost. Here are some ideas from vzaar:

- If you sell fixed price items under 99p a pop, consider batching them up so that the purchase price (taking into account margins) exceeds a quid.

- Bundle in postage costs. Buyers love Free P&P. So include the postage costs with your sales to ensure that the BIN price exceeds 99p.

Maybe you have other bright ideas? Let me know.

After an extremely stressful 5 hour session battling with html, I'm pleased to announce that the Help section of vzaar is now up to date with lots of new FAQ's. Having probably been the vzaar employee that you first encounter if you have ever had a problem on vzaar, I've trawled through all your old emails requesting help and support to collect the most... well, the most frequently asked questions and updated the Help section accordingly.

So two things I considered while compiling these:

Firstly - How hard it is to strike a tone in the broad space that sits between authoritative tech speak and patronizing nursery school teacher. Your (the audience's) knowledge varies greatly and one has to respond accordingly to that knowledges - but the FAQ's have to appeal to everyone. Customers I've spoken to have ranged from developers to my favourite lady that wanted to know why her video always appeared upside down (solved with the response "Which way round do you hold your camera when you film your items?...") I hope I've struck a tone that's right, gives enough deatils to answer the questions, but not too much that it confuses the issue.

The second thought that I pondered over while trawling through the annals of customer support was... Does anyone actually ever READ the help section? Disappointingly I think not. My continued watchful eye over the customer support inbox will probably go to prove this. The reason why I think that? Because I'm terrible at looking through FAQ's myself. It's like not being able to find your wallet, grabbing all your pockets in a dramatic manner and declaring to your friend what a disaster it is. Said friend comes to your aid and calmly locates your wallet almost immediately. Much easier that way round. I do it all the time. Maybe if everyone knew the blood, sweat and tears that went into the extensive list of FAQ's (yes I dislike typing in html THAT much) they'd have a rummage through there first... but probably not. I wouldn't.

Have you seen vzaar being used in the new celeb auction on eBay? 20th Century Fox and eBay are collaborating over a charity auction for 27dresses – a new movie coming out at the end of the month.

They’ve got 27 lovely celebs to donate a dress of theirs for auction – all the proceeds of which go to charity – the Lavender Trust.

The auctions are going really well, with numerous dresses already having been sold – Kylie’s Geri’s and Amy’s to mention a few and more to come – Mariah’s, Beverly’s, Naomi’s and Loraine’s still to come.

Check out the trailer for the movie.

Looks like a cracker and just up my street.... but then again I'm the only female in the office!

So last night Will from Arena Flowers Arena Flowers kindly popped round to share his extensive knowledge of Google Adwords with me. Firstly I’d like to say an enormous thank you for your help Will, I really appreciated it. You are indeed a Google Adwords guru. I knew it was a rather complex topic and of fundamental importance to the majority of businesses, but I had NO idea...

Needless to say I will endeavour to make vzaar’s mark on Google without accidentally blowing £100,000 on our credit card from clicking the wrong keyword. I will keep you updated with my experience and let you know of any disasters/successes I have. However, if you don’t hear from me in the next week it’s only because my brain has exploded. Have a good weekend All.

Not even 24 hours since my last blog and I’m already at it again.

Auctioning4u is one of the eBay UK’s largest businesses. Moritz Voltz has donated a Fulham Football Shirt signed by him and his fellow team mates to Auctioning4u -the proceeds from this sale will go to the charities, Kick for Life and The Princes Trust.

They have used our video in their eBay listings, but have also cleverly taken advantage of how easy it is to embed out vzaar videos elsewhere, by promoting it on some Fulham FC blogs, like here.

We wish them the best of luck in raising as much as they can for these fine charities.

There’s only one F in Fulham!

Hello! Thank you for that kind welcome Chief!...Crikey - nowhere to go but down

It's a pleasure to be a part of the vzaar team - well when I say team, it turns out that I am actually the first official vzaar employee! I'm getting a plaque made.

My role here is that of Online Herald (as my new vzaar speech bubble will testify) which means that I will, among other things, be shouting from the rooftops about how wonderful video is at selling things and how vzaar is the way forward. So I am chomping at the bit and loosening my vocal cords as we speak for vzaar's offical launch - vDay.

Other important things to know about me are: Sagittarius, national average height, a highly competitive tennis player lacking in any natural talent and the best cocktail I ever had was a Porn Star Martini from the LAB Bar.

More intersting facts to follow I'm sure you'll all be pleased to hear!