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Adding Videos To Your eBay Auctions

From: Barry S Gilbert
Date: Wednesday November 19, 2008

Adding videos to your auctions is actually easier than adding audio, and works better.

The first consideration is deciding if it's even worth the time and effort. Basically sometimes videos add to the selling price, sometimes they don't.

Here's a list of the uses for video I have found that increase eBay bids:

If you are selling something that has movement. For example I've been selling old windup toys and putting videos in my auctions of the toys in action. In some cases I am getting prices 3 times higher than other sellers.

If you are selling a car or motorcycle. Especially if the car has a great sounding exhaust system. A video of you walking around the car then starting it up and revving the engine gets bidders excited.

If you are selling something that is hard to explain or requires a long sales letter using a video summary to explain the auction increases sales. This is especially true with multiple items sold with buy it now. A video summary allows people who are in a hurry to get the information they need quickly without reading the sales letter.

You can also use videos for testimonials, but you'd have to figure out how to get your buyers to record and then send you a video.

No matter what you sell, any time you can use a video to illustrate features or emphasize condition, you should get higher prices.

The question is will the 10 minutes spent making a short video result in enough extra profit? In the cases I mentioned above the answer will usually be yes.

One other thing I will try in the future is laying all my sales items out and doing a short video with me explaining each item. Then I'll put this video in all my auctions with a link below the player to my other auctions.

I always lay out everything I sell before I start listing items so this would be pretty easy to test.

Let's talk about shooting the videos.

I've been using my cheap Nikon Coolpix camera. I have a removable card for it so I can shoot a video and then upload it to Youtube right from my card reader.

The Nikon records in a Quicktime .MOV format, which I cannot edit with any of my programs. I spent an hour looking for a program so I could convert the MOV files to MPEG files, and found nothing that worked.

I did find lots of promises. Empty promises.

Based on this if you do NOT already have a camera that shoots video, don't buy one that uses MOV files.

Anyway, because I cannot edit my files, I just shoot simple videos and use them without editing. If I were able to edit them, I'd probably spend more time on them, and I don't know if that's really needed.

During the editing process, I'd delete my mistakes like I do in my audios, and probably add a title frame and an ending frame.

For the title frame I'd use a title like this:

"Click on this image to see this item in action"

For the ending screen, I'd put a message telling the person to bid now, and mentioning my other auctions.

Something like:

"After you bid on this item, see my other auctions"

Youtube will allow you to do basic editing of your videos after you upload them, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I looked at it, and decided it wasn't worth the effort of learning how to use their system.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am looking for benefits with as little work or effort spent learning how to do it.

I usually shoot two or three videos and then select the best one to move up to Youtube. I can do this because they are short. My shortest was 5 seconds, and my longest video was 150 seconds.

When you are shooting videos LIGHTING is important. I added a small fluorescent tube to the back of picture table to get better light.

Another tip is to set the compression level very high. In some of my videos I used lower compression ratios and ended up with jerky videos because Youtube compresses them again.

By recording in a higher compression, Youtube won't compress them as much and they look better.

The best way to learn how to do better videos is to just do it. Right now so few people are adding videos to their eBay auctions, that you can get away with being amateurish.

Once you've recorded a video you like, you need to upload it to Youtube. You'll need a Youtube account. That's free.

On Youtube main page, there is a link on the upper right that says sign up. Click on that and create an account.

Once you've signed up, the sign up button is not shown, instead the site shows you a welcome message.

After creating a Youtube account, go to the site, and click on UPLOAD. This is also in the upper right corner.

On the upload page, fill in a title, a simple description some keyword tags, and select a category. Then click on upload a video.

HINT - In the tags category put your eBay user name or another long string of unique letters as the first tag. This will cause Youtube to put your other videos at the bottom of the screen after your video plays. This will help you move visitors between your auctions.

On the upload page, select browse and then select the video on your computer. If you are using a video capture card and a card reader, you can point Youtube right at the file on the card. If you are using another method of getting your files from your camera to your computer, the video file will be on your hard drive.

Once you've selected your video, click on the UPLOAD VIDEO button. Youtube will take the video file right off your computer and put it online. This may take a few minutes if the file is large.

Once the video has been moved up, Youtube will refresh the page and a textbox will appear that says:

"Embed this video on your website. Copy and paste the code below to embed this video."

Just copy and paste the code into the HTML view of your auction. It has to be in the HTML view or it won't work in your auction.

Now you have a video in your auction.

A few hours after your videos are moved up to Youtube, you can select which still shot Youtube uses when the player loads. This is done by going into the my videos list, and clicking on the Edit Video Info button.

Select the still shot that shows an overall view or if you are doing titles select the title.

One thing I didn't cover is where to put the videos in your description. I've been putting them at the bottom of the auctions. I think that's the best place for them except if the video is a testimonial or used as a summary of a long sales letter.

Testimonials should go into the sales letter wherever need to make the points, and the summary should go at the top of the description.

I went through this process step by step last week during the coaching session. This isn't that hard and can have dramatic results.

Don't aim for perfection. Don't try to entertain. Just use videos that build interest in your items, and you'll do well.

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