GMail Canned Responses: answer your email in two clicks

October 22, 2008

If you find yourself typing the same responses to emails time and time again (who doesn’t?) then GMail may have just made your life a little bit easier. Canned Responses allows you to save frequently used messages and paste them directly into your responses, all in a couple of clicks. If you’re using GMail, it should make life a lot easier than saving messages on your PC or in the drafts folder. Here’s a quick video on setting it up:

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 19 Comments 

Video for your eBay listings in less than 5 minutes

September 12, 2008

vzaar Is it really only a year since vzaar launched? Many happy returns to Ken, the big boss, and his super-talented, super-lovely team. They really are great news for anyone who wants to add video to their listings.

But vzaar’s greatest asset - as I’m sure they would be the first to say - is what their users are doing with video. Last week there were 10,000 listings on eBay with vzaar videos in them, from professionally produced glossies, to short films made on phone cameras. And it’s the latter group that always impress me: you don’t have to spend thousands on actors and lighting and studios, or hours on filming and editing and getting it perfect. Sometimes, just picking up the camera and spending two minutes filming is all you need…

Be demonstrative

It’s what eBay’s always been about: a person, selling their stuff. Don’t be afraid to get in front of the camera and talk about what you’re selling. You know it best, and you show your buyers you’re a real person.

Be an all-rounder

We all know the advantage of video is that you can show moving pictures; even if the thing you’re selling doesn’t move itself, an all-round view can show it off better than a dozen pictures.

Be simple

The bike starts: what more do you need to know!

Be imaginative

You don’t need a studio; you just need a little bit of imagination (and, possibly, an invisible subatomic particle that might not even exist).

And if you need a little more inspiration, here are Emma and Dan, with some thoughts on just how easy adding video to your own listings can be:

Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 20 Comments 

Skype debuts 4.0 beta

June 18, 2008

Oh dear! Everyone is raving about the new Skype V4.0 Beta but I appear to be the only one that doesn’t like it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the resizable video in HD, I love the multiple seperate chats all handled within the same screen, I love the orange dots to show who has updated a chat message. For those that want to undock chats into seperate windows there’s a not-very-obvious button in the top right to do so.

The thing I really hate about Skype V4.0 though, is the size of the screen. I used to run Skype at the side of my other application windows. If I was waiting for one particular person to come online I could keep half an eye on Skype. Not any more though, Skype 4 V.0’s window is just too large - why they haven’t made it so that you can minimise the right hand side when you have no open chats/calls is bizarrre.

To be fair though this is the first public beta and Skype have already committed to listen to feedback over the next few months. So please guys - make the window resizable. I love the functionality of Skype - just hate the lack of functionality of the new user interface.

There’s also some more good news, the new install fixed the broken state of the Skype Firefox add on from yesterday!

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 3 Comments 

vzaar make video insertion easier

May 19, 2008

vzaar have made some small but significant changes to make managing video inserts on eBay auctions even easier to manage.

One of the best is the ability to copy and paste the video embed code, so that it can easily be placed on auction templates or the sellers about me page. This is for power users who want to position the video at a precise spot within their template. It makes life very easy for sellers using a standard “About Me” video in all of their auctions as it can be inserted in their auction template and then the template used for all future listings.

A great enhancement is on auction relists, if the original auction used vzaar the same video now be automatically inserted into the reslisted auction without any intervention from the seller. This is especially useful for sellers that use automation to relist unsold items.

vzaar videos now recognise if a listing is fixed price or an auction. The video frame now displays “Bid Now” or “Buy Now” depending on the buyer behaviour available.

Another great tweek is as the auction enters the final 30 minutes the video player turns a strong red once the film ends, with visible encouragement for the buyer to place a bid.

Anything that encourages buyers to bid is good news, and I really like this feature, making bid button stand out in this way is a great move.

If you want to keep up to date with the latest changes and product enhancements at vzaar they’re now releasing them on Twitter. You can follow their tweets from their Twitter ID, goingonatvzaar

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 17 Comments 

Thank you Scot

April 23, 2008

This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

A couple of weeks ago we put out a plea for a US supplier who could obtain a couple of Flip Video cameras for Sue and myself. Evan of PeSA offered to help out but in the end Scot Wingo of ChannelAdvisor made things easy and offered to bring a couple over with him to the Catalyst conference this week.

Having got the cameras it only seemed fitting that the very first film should be of Scot, so here he is talking from Catalyst at Vinopolis:

Video is becoming increasingly important as a differentiator on eBay and the web in general so it was no surprise that vzaar were one of the Catalyst sponsors. They told us “vzaar had great fun at Catalyst connecting with PowerSellers and demonstrating to them how beneficial video can be for eBay listings. We were particularly pleased to partner with Monday’s presenters Red Letter Days who have just started to include experience videos on eBay in association with Channel Advisor”

We’ll be making good use of the Flip cameras so look out for more video on TameBay in the future. A huge “Thank you” to Scot from Sue and myself for bringing the cameras over for us!

Now if someone can start importing the Flip cameras there’s a ready made market for them… I could have sold mine about ten times the first evening (and yes Nick, I’ll try to remember to get you one when we’re in the US for eBay Live!)

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | 8 Comments 

vzaar gets a makeover

March 3, 2008

This post was written in March 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

vzaarAnyone that’s logged onto vzaar today will have noticed they’ve got a funky new website with an even funkier new logo. You might also have seen the newly skinned vzaar player in current eBay auctions which is now a smart charcoal grey but that’s just the sexy, pretty stuff. There’s a whole host of new functionality to make it easier to embed video into eBay listings.

Ex eBay employee Jamie, now the newest addition to the vzaar team, told us “To date this year eBay have really emphasised just how important buyer trust and seller integrity is for future success and to reflect that we’re seeing sellers increasingly use vzaar to quickly and easily add video to their eBay listings. As well as highlighting the qualities and finer details of their product we’re seeing sellers stepping the other side of the camera to present themselves and how they conduct business.”

Jamie went on to introduce the new vzaar Plus and Pro accounts that are specifically aimed at PowerSellers saying “With longer videos and more embeds per month our new Premium Packages are perfect for sellers who want to drive buyer trust and confidence across hundreds if not thousands of listings a month.”

What’s even better is with an upgrade comes better functionality, for instance the ability to embed a single video into multiple listings with one click - perfect if you make an “about me” video and want to attach it to all your listings. Other premium functionality includes the ability to search by item number or name, longer videos (up to three minutes instead of two), and more videos and more bandwidth per month.

The new vzaar Plus and Pro packages are perfect for PowerSellers and at just $100 and $200 (approx £50 / £100) per year are a bargain, you can even pay with PayPal. If you want to know more about how using video can assist you to sell more, and more easily on eBay, just send them an email and they’ll be happy to help.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 5 Comments 

Television ChannelAdvisor

January 31, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

There are outbreaks of video happening all over the place, and now ChannelAdvisor UK have released their first video newsletter. Enjoy…

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 6 Comments 

How to use video

January 17, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

I’m not sure how Dan and Emma have the cheek to call that work…

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured | 12 Comments