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Next Friday June 4th, Video Guy and myself will be joining a number of other businesses at the first Start To Sell Online seminar in Reading, Berkshire. The event is aimed at introducing traditional businesses to the world of selling online or for those who are already online but want to expand their operations.

vzaar are down on the agenda to talk about rich media and in particular how video can hep you sell online. Best to stick to what we know eh?!

What I really like is that after a 10 minutes Dragons Den style pitch, we get to meet each of the local businesses attending in what has been billed as a speed dating meets round table discussions. Should be interesting.

Other speakers include eBay, Royal Mail and Lloyds Banking Group and the whole event has been put together by the good man Chris Dawson of Tamebay fame and his cohort John Pemberton of Give Me Designer Clothes.

If you fancy coming along or would like to know more you can see details here

Ever wondered what dimension we encode our videos at or just how on earth do I add my video to my eBay listings via Turbo Lister? Well ponder no more as I’m pleased to say that we have spruced up the vzaar Help pages and added two new sections on Encoding and Embedding Guides.

The guides might prove particularly useful if you are new to both vzaar and the concept of adding video to your eBay listings or blog page. We have guides that cover the following tools and services:

eBay Tools - eBay's Sell Your Item Form - eBay’s Turbo Lister - eBay’s Blackthorne - eBay’s File Exchange - Auctiva - ChannelAdvisor - Seller Source Book - Spoonfeeder

Blogging Tools - Blogger.com - MoveableType.org - Typepad.com - Wordpress.org

All our help pages can be viewed in our Help Section

Earlier this month Lawrence Matthews, a vzaar user, contacted me with a problem. He could not add his vzaar videos he uploaded to his blog. He uses WordPress.com and wanted to simply add the video embed code we provide into his blog. At the time this was not possible or at least it was not working in this manner. So we then recreated the problem at vzaar HQ, and indeed the blog did not accept the vzaar video embed code. Given the size of the WordPress.com user base we wanted to fix this problem. I reached out and got in touch with the good people of WordPress.com and explained our plight. It took a few weeks, but today I have been enlightened that there is a way to add vzaar video to your WordPress.com blog. Hurrrah!! I tried it out this morning, first thing, and I was very impressed.

WordPress.com have teamed up with Vodpod to create a smart blogging video button that you can drag on to your tool bar. Here is how it works.

1. When you want to add video to your WordPress blog simply click on the “post To Wordpress” widget in your toolbar and it will open up a pop up window offering you a set of fields with details on your blog.
2. If you do this on the vzaar page of your chosen video Vodpod will automatically insert the video from your chosen vzaar page into the Post Video To Your Blog box. If not then…
3. Simply insert the video code into the top left field marked, Video Preview.

The eBay community have always been a very giving set of people. During my time at the company I was constantly impressed at the lengths strangers would go to help one another with advice, pointers or just encouragement. Sadly ever since eBay UK put a halt to the eBay University programme there has been a pronounced gap in the social calendar for eBay sellers to actually meet face to face. Whilst events like ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst offer certain sellers the chance to meet, socialise and share in experiences, the ball now appears to be firmly in the court of sellers themselves.

Thankfully various social networking tools now make the idea of organising and rounding up a few sellers a little less onerous that it used to be. There are Facebook Groups, Twitter Feeds and various online forums around which people can meet on and offline. Adding to that list is the new London eBay Seller Meetup. Loosely based around a monthly gathering, the MeetUp website allows any person to set up there own social event.

Last month vzaar was invited to come along and meet some of the eBay sellers in attendance at one of the newly set up eBay meets in London. Never one to turn down a beer, I met with ex eBay staffer and MeetUp organiser, Nathan O’Hanlon, who has done his best to create an evening that is both relaxed and welcoming.

Held on the third Thursday of every month the eBay London Meet Up gather upstairs at the Walkabout pub in Putney and its well worth dropping in if you fancy networking with fellow users of the auction platform. Here’s Nathan with a personal invite!

Although its in its early days Nathan has some lofty aims and I can see how quickly such an event could quite easily grow into a more powerful and educational voice. As with any of these meets you tend to get back what you put in so why not pop along? The next meeting for the London group is on Thursday 19th February and to sign up you can click here

Given that pretty much everyone knows someone who trades on eBay or has an ecommerce site we wanted to let you know of a competition we are running this month on vzaar.

To be entered into a draw for a Nikon Coolpix 2500 digital camera, we simply ask that you recommend to us a friend, business or eBay seller that you think would be interested in hearing from vzaar. To learn more you can watch the video below from me (think I was having a bad hair day!) or simply click on the link below which will take you to a form where you can recommend up to 5 friends or associates.

The competition will stay open for a month and we will contact the winner by email on February 16th.

Good Luck!

Following on from our positive reception at eBay Live we were invited to join Dan Trunk of Auction-Tutor on his weekly podcast. Never one to turn down a chance to address the eBay masses, our man Dan Wilson put his hand up the highest and got the plumb role of joining the transatlantic interview at 11pm UK time! The topic of discussion for the Two Dannies was eBay and Video in your Listings which you can listen to by clicking on the button below.

For a small start-up opportunities to market your service are always gratefully received so a big thank you to Dan. We're really pleased that we got the chance to share the vzaar story with a host of eBay listeners and to make new friends in the eBay-sphere but sometimes, just sometimes, someone can say it better than you ever could so we leave it to Dan Trunk to summarise us...

Since vzaar started we've been creating contacts and building bridges with various people across the business industry with the aid of our trusty moo business cards. When handed over, they never fail to illicit a response like "oh they're neat," or "what a funky card!". We like that.

Our business cards (not actual size!)

And in actual size (with no obvious thing to scale next to)

In the US at eBay Live they went down a storm and so pockets stuffed with cards Adrian and I tagged along to the Moo.com annual street party last week (except it wasn't in a street) to say hello to a few folks. Free drinks and free food (check out the feeding frenzy) helped to bring lots of like minded fans together in the name of the world's oldest industry, printing, but to get a feel for the night watch our brief video here:

So eBay Live! is just around the corner (in case we haven't mentioned it much already...)

As many of us might be a long way from home and in much need of refreshment after the long and busy days in Chicago, vzaar has teamed up with Channel Advisor, Frooition and Tamebay to host some drinks on the Friday night.

We'll be at the Elephant and Castle Pub on Adams street and if you should find yourself thirsty in Chicago, please do pop by. We'll be there from 7.30pm and if you come and visit us at our stand at eBay live we might give you a little Moo card that will get you a free drink or two!

We hope you’ll be able to join us and we look forward to seeing you then!

Here at vzaar HQ we couldn't agree more with the man. It's all about refining your product to suit the needs of your customers and so having developed an approved service that supports eBay sellers we are keen to improve on what we have built to date. Call it our evolutionary plan.

To that end we've created a very short and ever so simple online survey that we'd like your views on. It is a short and snappy little survey so if you have 30 seconds spare and a coffee to hand then we'd love to hear what you think of the service to date.

You can participate in the survey here.

Many thanks

Since 2002 sellers from far and wide have been meeting at the annual shin dig that is eBay Live in celebration of all things, well, eBay. This year is no different except that for the first time the guys and gals from vzaar will be there excitedly telling the world about our video service.

So in three weeks time we'll be boarding a plane and flying to Chicago where the three day event is being held. Now, in my previous role at eBay I once manned the International Stand (I think it was a convenient way of making all the overseas staff look busy) and I'm not afraid to say that it was a exhilarating experience. 10,000 eBayers can create quite an atmosphere and in America, where people generally like to share in one another's success, Live acts as the perfect event for bringing all that bubbling to the surface. It promises to be a great few days.

So what does the vzaar kit list look like for three days in the Windy City?
- One rather large stand with vzaar branded all over it (Sneak peak below)

- 4 laptops and plenty of plugs
- A DVD full of video demos
- Team shirts. Black is in we hope
- A pocketful of business cards
- A wind breaker (just in case)
- A crate of Red Bull for keeping the energy levels up!

In fact we won't be the only Brits abroad come June 19th. Our good friends at Frooition, Channel Advisor UK and Tamebay will also be making the trip so look out for our evening drinks invite! In fact if you plan on attending eBay Live and want to meet with us then do drop us a line in advance.

Plus, without quite letting the cat out of the bag, we'll be uncorking a couple of bottles of champagne as we have something rather exciting to share with you all at Live. See you there!

Manchester. eBay. New Sellers. Talks. Tamebay. Panels. Powersellers. Parties. It was all happening this weekend at eBay’s last university of 2007.

I’d tell you all about it... but why bother...because I made you a video instead! It’s not Attenborough - but hopefully will give you an inkling of what went on or bring back joyful memories of the day if you were there.

Thank you eBay. Another splendid event.