Marketing Archives - Page 12 of 15

NASCAR TV on Ustream

I’m not sure how happy the Speed Channel and networks that broadcast NASCAR races would be about this. But until they start streaming the races in a similar format to MLB.tv, this is a nifty Ustream workaround for those of us stuck in offices during qualifying or races:

http://www.ustream.tv/flash/live/133638 Online Video provided by Ustream

Pay attention networks… people want to do things like watch NASCAR races or football games or soccer games. Hulu is excellent for dramas and sitcoms, but there’s huge opportunity here for content producers in the sports and live events content creation business!

Google Gears and Delicious Now Support Firefox 3

Thanks to Content Robot‘s @danarockel for the tip that Google Gears now works with Firefox 3.

If you’re a big user of Google Docs, Google Reader, Zoho or RememberTheMilk, the Gears integration allows you to work in these apps while offline. Hopefully, we’ll see GMail and Google Calendar integrated with Gears very soon. When that happens, I’m basically 100% in the cloud since I still rely on a few desktop apps for getting work done while on a plane.

If you’re using Firefox 3 (and you should be since it’s much speedier and less of a resource hog), head over to the Google Gears page to grab the update.

If you use Delicious for bookmarks, they’ve also updated their browser plugin to work with Firefox 3. I just installed the new plugin and it’s got a pretty nifty new network feature so that you can see activity from your Delicious contacts and network.

So, if you’re using Delicious, feel free to add me to your network so that we can share bookmarks.

Embargoes and The Rest of Us

Although I did win “Best Blogger” at the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle awards this year, I am by no means an A Lister. I live in North Carolina, I don’t blog 20 hours a day and I’ve never been on the Gillmor Gang (although Gillmor did comment on one of my posts a while back, which was neat).

So, I was a little surprised last month when I unknowingly broke an embargo regarding Disqus’ integration of Seesmic…

Disqus Now Has Seesmic Integration at CostPerNews: “Now, you can enable video comments through Seesmic integration with Disqus.”

I’m reminded of this because I was goofing around on Summize this morning and came across this back-and-forth between Robert Scoble and CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern:

Truth be told, I stumbled upon the new feature that morning while approving a comment and just before heading out on a flight. I thought it was curious, so I did what any blue-blooded American with a blog would do… I blogged it. I was almost late for my flight, but I thought it was a neat new feature that I wanted to share with my small yet devoted audience here.

When I landed later that day, I had a number of emails flood into the BlackBerry asking why I “went early” with the story and broke the embargo. I felt bad at first, but then I realized that I had blogged about a feature that was already there… how was that breaking anything?

If I had been aware of such an embargo, I would have definitely not posted the story until the approved time (I’ve honored dozens of them here) and really don’t see the need or gain from being able to yell “FIRST!” on TechMeme at this point (this blog has been around for a while, is comfortable in its little niche and is not meant to be on TechMeme anyway).

Moral of the story… if you’re a tech provider / merchant and you’re going to put a-listers under an embargo, don’t release the feature early so that z-listers like myself can see and blog about it.

Belated apologies to Robert, Allen, TechCrunch, etc for jumping the gun of a race I didn’t know I was running.

Amazon Kindle

Finally getting one in the mail…

I can’t wait.

I’ll give it a video review as soon as I get it in my hands!

Motive Interactive Videos (Chris Rodeno)

We’re doing a few videos highlighting the awesome staff of Motive Interactive this week.

Here’s the first featuring affiliate manager Chris Rodeno:

More to come…

AvantLink Throwing Email and Search Affiliates Under the Bus

AvantLink has a post on their blog addressing the now effective (as of June 1) New York state “affiliate tax.”

While most of the post does a good job of laying out the issue with practical examples, this part at the end of the post caught me by surprise:

New York Sales Tax, Merchants and their Affiliate Programs · AvantLink’s Affiliate Marketing Blog: “To prevent falling into the scenario of Example 2 we propose adding the following terms to your Merchant program terms:

‘New York State Affiliates may not solicit New York State residents by using flyers, newsletters, telephone calls, e-mails, PPC ads, or any other type of Internet marketing techniques besides web site advertising links.’”

That’s well and good for some affiliates who still just do banners, but I’d argue that many (if not most) affiliates doing more than $50 a month now utilize some sort of PPC or email component as a part of their campaigns or traffic generation. To amend merchant terms saying that affiliates can only use banners seems more than heavy handed and follows the same draconian logic as employed in the actual NY state law.

If you look at the “Top 10 Affiliate Programs” from last month, at least 7 (probably 9) of them rely (some heavily) on PPC and email. To lop off those channels of traffic generation within a network doesn’t solve the NY problem.

Affiliate marketing has become a much larger umbrella than just banner ad placements on static html websites. In addressing this issue, we need to make sure we’re letting both merchants and NY state know that.

What am I missing here?

[Update] Gary from AvantLink adds this in the comments on their blog post:

4Gary M on Jun 3, 2008 at 6:30 am:

Our recommendation does not disallow email marketing and PPC altogether. Rather, email and PPC targeted at New York residents.

While that’s a good point and clarification of the suggested terms, I still don’t think it’s a fix for many/most affiliates doing business in NY state or with their residents. Geo-targeting is an expensive proposition and this seems to be putting yet more responsibility on the affiliate and further alleviating the merchant from responsibility or diligence.

Is the NY State Affiliate Tax That Big of Deal?

There has been much hand wringing in the world of affiliate marketing over the so-called New York state “affiliate tax.” However, as Trust points out on ABW, it doesn’t seem that 99% of merchants running affiliate programs care much…

How Are Merchants Finding Out About This? – ABestWeb Affiliate Marketing Forum: “Looking at this list and I only see about 40 merchants (so far) which is maybe at most 1% – 2% of merchants with affiliate programs who have dropped NY affiliates. So was wondering if we have a whole bunch more coming and if all the merchants know about this or what. Or if it’s going to be an overall small percentage that drop affiliates.”

Is that a symptom of poor communication by New York state legal authorities, legal counsels, affiliates…or is this really not that big of deal?

There have been a plethora (literally) of blog posts in the affiliate-blog-osphere about the issue ranging from Shawn Collins and Linda Buquet‘s respective reporting to ReveNews coverage to Peter Bordes at Relevantly Speaking chiming in to our discussions on GeekCast to even networks like ShareASale offering strong and well thought-out advice for merchants.

However, merchants really don’t seem to be paying too much attention to all of this.

Once again, I defer to Trust on ABW:

I guess I was expecting a whole slew of new drop notices today, haven’t seen anybody post anything new. In the end if it winds up only being about 1% – 2% then that’s really not much at all. I guess we’ll have to wait to see how this turns out but at this point not as bad as I thought it would be. Time will tell.

Is this just the latest Froogle?

I’m not so sure. I do think there is a considerable need for affiliate marketers to educate and inform merchants about the viability and importance of the performance channel in terms of their bottom line, but “affiliate marketing” as we know it is SO wide ranging and dispersed at this point that it would take Microsoft creating their own loyalty program to get us to organize… oh, wait.

In other words, our conception of “affiliate marketing” (in my opinion) is rapidly evolving away from just the network/affiliate model that has served us well (and badly) for the last decade. “We” are moving into video, lead gen, offline, mobile, widgets, social media, search and all sorts of places that we didn’t envision a decade ago. I would venture to say that at least 75% of the people doing affiliate marketing don’t even know they are doing affiliate marketing.

I’m not arguing for a name change or anything of that nature. However, I do want us to realize that while the NY affiliate tax has certainly caused its share of fear and loathing, we need to realize that this industry has fractured and continues to move away from anything resembling an industry. Coming up with an organized group to represent its needs and views may be as difficult as getting merchants to address the NY state issue.

So here’s my take: Merchants are letting legal figure this out (if they even need to). We should be proactive but realize that interstate commerce is a very complicated subject and requires highly skilled lawyers (and such) to grok. I doubt if NY state’s tax will survive the appeal process based on my understanding of what’s happening, but I’m no lawyer.

In the meantime, it looks to be business as usual.

What’s Your Whuffie?

One of the things I put at the top of the priorities list during my first week at Motive Interactive was to make sure we owned our online reputation in terms of subscribing to the various vanity feeds (Technorati, Twitter Track (still down at the moment), Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes for YouTube and Flickr tags, etc) as well as making sure we popped up with favorable items when you search for “Motive Interactive” on Google.

It’s common sense, but SO many marketers and networks overlook this very foundational step in their reputation and brand management.

For instance, if you search “sam harrelson” on Google, my web activity (all of it really favorable) dominates up to the very last listing on page 10 when another Sam Harrelson from Washington State shows up as a part of a political donation site (ironically enough, he donated $1500 in ’05 to a House race in New Jersey… the home state of my political arch-nemesis, Shawn Collins). You have to go to page 26 to find another Sam Harrelson mentioned.

But the key is that your rankings look interesting, unique and relate to your mission in life/work/career/whatever. Video, audio and pics are essential for that.

That’s not a huge deal since people rarely get to page 26, but if you are trying to build your company or personal brand and grow a positive reputation, you surely need to make sure you are ranking well for your own name since going to Google has become the new indicator of “Whuffie.”

Just something to keep in mind and yet another reason to get involved in the social web.

Motive Interactive

I’m in San Diego for the week as I begin my first full week as the Director of Performance Marketing at Motive Interactive.

You’ve probably heard of Motive Interactive if you’re in the affiliate space but probably not exactly sure who they are, what they do or how they stand out from the crowd of CPA and affiliate networks that have been in full bloom for the past five or so years.

That’s what I’m here to change (as well as grow the network of course).

I got my start in the world of affiliate/performance marketing years ago with an email firm (SubscriberBASE) that eventually morphed into a CPA network (AdDrive), so I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the pure CPA world. Along with that, I’ve always been a firm believer that one day a network would bridge the gap (chasm?) between the CPA world and the pure rev share world and thereby get the best of both for publishers and affiliates. A few networks have tried it, but no one has been successful. I’ve got the opportunity to do that here at Motive. So, when this position was offered to me, I couldn’t turn it down.

So what makes Motive stand out from the crowd?

Let me show you.

Tomorrow (Thursday May 29), I’m doing demos for a few larger affiliates as well as folks who might be interested in what Motive is doing and why I would be crazy enough to get back into the turbulent world of CPA networks while I preach social media marketing. I’m here all day and night and I’d love to show the affiliate managers here the power of blogging by saying “Oh yeah, I’m giving this person a walk through because I blogged to see if anyone would like a walkthrough.”

Not only is this a demo and walkthrough of the network, but we’re launching Advent2.0 (Advent is the technology behind the Motive network) later in June and I’d love to have your input as to what you would like to see, what tweaks we could make to improve things and what sorts of offers you’d like to see in a network.

All that said, give me a call/txt (803.413.6834), send me an email (sharrelson@motiveinteractive.com or any of my other 97 email addy’s), send me a direct Tweet (samharrelson), send me a Facebook message, comment here… you get the point… and let’s set up a quick 5, 10, 30 or whatever time slot and chat. It’s not a pitch as much as an explanation.

I’d love to show you what we’re up to, where we see the industry heading and why you should be interested in Motive. Good things are happening here, trust me.

Seriously, I’d love to show you around. Get in touch.

(Special thanks to Linda Buquet! BTW, If you’re not following her coverage of the NY state affiliate tax, you’re missing out.)

Pondering the Cloud

I’ve long been an explorer and proponent of “the cloud.”

However, I’ve recently begin to not only rethink that dedication and allegiance to remote server data storage for all of my email, docs, calendars, pics, spreadsheets, notes and feed reading (all through Google btw), but to also pull back and start relying on desktop applications like Mail.app and NetNewsWire and iCal on my Mac.

I’m even missing working on Ubuntu full time these days. If you’ve been following me here on CPN over the past few years, you know that I was a devoted user of Ubuntu as my sole operating system. I got away from that when I bought this MacBook Pro last November, but I’ve recently been playing with the new release of Ubuntu called Hardy Heron and I must say that it’s incredible and makes me ponder switching back to my open source ways.

I have always been a rebellious spirit, so when I read things like this, my inclination to rage against the machine kicks in again…

BBC NEWS | Technology | Storm warning for cloud computing: “The issue was recently highlighted by reports that the Canadian government has a policy of not allowing public sector IT projects to use US-based hosting services because of concerns over data protection.

Under the US Patriot Act the FBI and other agencies can demand to see content stored on any computer, even if it being hosted on behalf of another sovereign state.

If your data hosting company gets a National Security Letter then not only do they have to hand over the information, they are forbidden from telling you or anyone else – apart from their lawyer – about it.

The Canadians are rather concerned about this, and rightly so. According to the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that helped the Internet Archive successfully challenge an NSL, more than 200,000 were issued between 2003 and 2006, and the chances are that Google, Microsoft and Amazon were on the recipient list. “

So, who knows… I may be making the Big Switch back to Ubuntu even though I do love the adaptability and applications that this Mac affords. It’s a splendid machine… but it feels soul-less. When I was on Ubuntu, I was constantly enjoying the benefits and the challenges… the surprise compatibilities and the frustrating inconsistencies.

There’s something to be said about freedom in software and freedom from oppressive governments that circumvent constitutions in the name of protecting that freedom.

Linkshare Teams with the DMA on NY Affiliate Tax

Affiliate networks are beginning to get more active (or at least more vocal) on the New York state affiliate tax issue.

CJ has weighed in with a general call for due diligence, ShareASale has been more proactive and involved with the issue both on their blog and in the ABW forum. Then during the GeekCast podcast yesterday, Shawn Collins discussed Linkshare’s partnership with the DMA over the issue.

Here is the email Linkshare is sending out to publishers today:

LinkShare has issued the following invitation to a teleconference on the New York State sales tax change and affiliate marketing:

On April 9, 2008, New York State passed a law mandating that any retailer that (1) meets a certain sales volume from sales to New York customers and (2) has an affiliate program with New York based publishers that refer customers to the retailer and are paid on a commission basis must charge and collect New York sales tax on all sales shipped to New York.

We have been actively working with, and providing support to, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to clarify this law. The Direct Marketing Association is the leading global trade association for businesses that use direct marketing tools and techniques. LinkShare is proud to be their partner. As this issue continues to develop, we are committed to making available the insights of authoritative partners like the DMA to help inform and guide you.

To this end, we are pleased to invite you to be LinkShare’s guest for the DMA’s conference call on this issue, featuring DMA Tax Counsel George Isaacson this Thursday, May 22, 11AM to 12Noon Eastern. He will provide an overview of the bill and the DMA’s interpretation of it. There will also be an opportunity for Q&A.

To join the call (Thursday, May 22, 11AM to 12Noon Eastern), email government@the-dma.org to receive personalized dial in information. Please let them know you are a member of the LinkShare Network.

Of course, while the DMA provides an authoritative source for information, since every business has a unique situation, we urge all our partners to seek out individual independent tax and legal advice. The New York Department of Taxation and Revenue‘s Technical Service Bulletin (TSB) and DMA’s analysis of it are available on our site at http://www.linkshare.com/advertisers/ny_state_tax/

For details, please contact:

Mark Kirschner
LinkShare
646-943-8359
mkirschner@linkshare.com

Dan Dent
Blanc & Otus Public Relations for LinkShare
617.451.7351
ddent@blancandotus.com

I’ll be on the call (from a hammock on Hilton Head Island, SC while my monkey butler brings me drinks…) and will share my thoughts here tomorrow afternoon.

What Happened to Affiliate Bloggers?

Last Spring, it seemed as if the world of affiliate marketing would be saturated with bloggers. BUMPzee was riding high and everyone was trading links, trackbacks, comments and bumps.

It was the short lived golden age of affiliate blogging.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still some great places to read about affiliate marketing such as Shawn Collin’s AffiliateTip Blog, Scott Jangro’s blog, Linda Buquet’s 5 Star Blog, Mark’s 45n5 blog, Zac Johnson’s blog, ReveNews as well as many others that I’m surely leaving out. There are some great new blogs such as Trisha Lyn’s blog, but things don’t feel the same.

However, last year it wasn’t uncommon to get 10-15 “bumps” on a thought provoking post from BUMPzee that made you feel as if something unique was happening in the affiliate blogging space.

And it wasn’t uncommon to see many new and interesting blogs popping up addressing real affiliate marketing issues. Maybe it was BUMPzee’s influence? Maybe it was the market boom last year?

It just doesn’t feel the same.

What happened?

Disqus API Plugin To Be Updated Soon

Last week, Scott Jangro wrote a great piece comparing the Disqus API and Javascript plugins for blog integration.

Most people would just scratch their heads and say “so what?” but there are some pretty big implications for the behavior of the commenting plugin and how search engines see blog comments, etc.

“Search engines cannot see the comments rendered with the Javascript plugin. They do see the comments displayed via the API version of the plugin.

The Javascript implementation does have its benefits. In addition to ease of integration and feature updates, the fact that comment text is unavailable to search engines means that comment spam is rendered completely ineffective. There are other ways to accomplish this, and for now, I’m uncomfortable with using a full Javascript implementation.”

Plus, the Javascript plugin has all the new features that Disqus has been rolling out compared to the API plugin which has been seemingly neglected lately.

However, according to a tweet from Disqus’ Daniel Ha, that looks like things will be changing soon.

I look forward to switching over to the API plugin myself!

FeedFront Issue 1 Shipping Soon

Missy Ward and Shawn Collins of the https://www.fusionquest.com/cgi-bin/main/hotlinks.cgi?aflt=afc1&client=affsum Affiliate Summit have put together an “offline” publication that looks like it’s going to be a great read based on the talent assembled for the articles.

I contributed a piece describing the best ways to get things done in affiliate marketing using web2.0 tools:

FeedFront Articles in Issue 1 : FeedFront: “Issues will be mailed in June 2008. Here are the articles in the first issue:

* Editors Note: Missy Ward & Shawn Collins
* Five Ways to Evaluate a Merchant’s Landing Page: Dan Murray
* Pros & Cons of Utilizing Multiple Networks: Brian Littleton
* Twitter Grabs Attention: Lisa Picarille
* GTD in Affiliate Marketing with Web 2.0: Sam Harrelson
* Affiliate Marketers Give Back: Missy Ward
* Online Video Advertising: Tim Carter
* Nobody Would Use a Search Engine with Paid Results: Dan Gray
* Building Profitable Customer Relationships by Following These Simple Email Axioms: Tom Kulzer
* Are You the Next Super Affiliate Blogger?: Zac Johnson
* Ad Networks, Vertical Ad Networks, and Affiliate Networks: Peter Figueredo
* Affiliate Manager Compensation: Shawn Collins
* My 3 Favorite Blogs You May Not Visit: Wil Reynolds
* My 3 Favorite Tools You May Not be Using: Wil Reynolds
* Get Off Your Butt and Start Making Videos: Jim Kukral “

You can get a subscription to FeedFront here.

Alcohol: Cause of And Solution To All Good Mashups

A wise man once said, “Alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” If we extend that metaphor to tech, it looks like BeerMenus.com is doing some interesting things with a mashup of local beer menus, Google Maps, dynamic search and RSS:

Bruisin’ Ales Beer Blog: “We love this! In NYC, two disgruntled corporate guys (and brothers) launched a new site, Beermenus.com. Will and Eric Stephens’ site is dedicated to providing beer menus of restaurants in the NYC metro area—’a growing compendium that lists 263 beer menus and 1,386 different beers from pubs around Manhattan and, now, Brooklyn.’ As the popularity of beer continues to grow, this could easily expand into something for big beer cities across the country. “

Right now, this is primarily for the NYC metro area (yet another reason NY is the greatest city in the world), but I hope it expands to include more regions and areas (and develops a mobile app or site).

These sorts of sites could easily add affiliate marketing to the mix and make a ton of money. Hopefully they’ll do that so that the service can expand.

Magnify Publisher Simplifies Blogging

Magnify.net is releasing a very exciting new WordPress and MovableType plugin aimed at making it easier for bloggers to find and include images and videos into posts.

Basically, the plugin integrates easily and nicely into either a WordPress or MoveableType install and allows for a blogger to include a keyword relevant image or video to be embedded in a post within a few seconds.

As most bloggers know, finding relevant images or video content for a post can consume a great deal of time and often lead to frustration. So, the Magnify Publisher program definitely solves a much maligned problem.

Magnify Publisher searches through popular video sources such as YouTube, Metacafe, Veoh, Blip.tv, Google Video, AOL Video, RedLasso and a number of others. At the moment, Flickr is the only available image search source but Magnify CEO Steve Rosenbaum tells me that this will soon be expanded.

Here’s an example of the video search and embedding feature:

And here’s an example of the image search and embedding feature:

Perhaps most compelling is the ability to also directly and easily incorporate webcasts into a blog post. So, instead o recording a video on a webcam then uploading that video to YouTube then grabbing the embed code then embedding that code into a WordPress blog, a blogger can simply press a couple of buttons and instantly get their webcam video embedded into a post.

Here’s an example:

These are very innovative features from the Magnify team and definitely needed improvements to the current paradigm of blogging. When I spoke with Steve Rosenbuam today, he mentioned his ardent belief that popular blogs of the immediate future would be those that best blend the visual, video and text components of content creation rather than those that just focus on one specific medium.

Magnify’s Publisher plugin goes a long way in supporting his idea.

Disqus Now Has Seesmic Integration

Disqus continues to make blogging more enjoyable.

Now, you can enable video comments through Seesmic integration with Disqus. To turn this on, just head to the Configuration tab on the Disqus dashboard:

Give it a go in the comments if you’d like to test it out (you’ll see a “Record Video Comment” option).

I’m still not sold on the general concept of video commenting, but I know that some people prefer firing off a quick video rather than typing out a response. While I’d rather type out comments on most blogs, I do see tremendous value in encouraging people to participate in whatever way they feel comfortable.

Hats off to the Disqus (and Seesmic) team for making blogging fun again.

Magnify Goes Pro

Video aggregation and community site Magnify.net has launched a “Pro” offering for users wishing to replace the standard AdSense ads on the site with customized ads.

Social network creator Ning as well as other web2.0 properties have tested out this sort of thing before. For example, on Ning you can purchase a Pro account for $19.99 a month to replace their AdSense ads with your own ads.

However, Magnify.net is doing something a little different with the option to pay for custom ads based on pageviews in units of 5,000 ($24.95), 25,000 ($84.95) and 50,000 ($159.95). Users can also remove Channel Creation links ($5.95 monthly) and enable contests for a premium monthly fee ($125.00).

Google’s Friend Connect and Long Tail Marketing

This is interesting. Basically, sometime tonight you’ll be able to grab a snippet of code and install it on your site/blog allowing you to combine that site with your activities in various social networks…

Google Press Center: News Announcement: “Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.”

Here are some of the more “long tail” implications of Friend Connect:

“Google Friend Connect is about helping the ‘long tail’ of sites become more social,” said David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google. “Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality.”

And here are the immediate benefits possible:

Without requiring coding experience, Google Friend Connect gives site owners a way to attract and engage more people by giving visitors a way to connect with friends on their websites.

Drive traffic: people who discover interesting sites can bring their friends with them, and can opt-in to publish their activities on those sites back into their social network, attracting even more visitors.

Increase engagement: access to friends and OpenSocial applications provides more interesting content and richer social experiences.

Less work: any site can have social components without hiring a programming team or becoming a social network.

I see this as the culmination of the widget craze that swept the online world in 2007 and a way to start bringing in tangible benefits for website owners and bloggers. In other words, the more efficient back-and-forth between social networks and sites/blogs will only increase traffic and exposure for both (if the person behind them is interesting, relevant or adds something to the viewers’ lives).

Todd Crawford’s New Blog

Affiliate Marketing Legend award winner and all around good guy Todd Crawford has a new blog…

ToddTalks.com

Todd always has a unique perspective on things going back to his days with CJ, so definitely tune in and subscribe.

Selling on eBay with Video

http://www.vzaar.com/users/raak-jr/videos/5928.swf

vzaar is a year old service that allows for eBay sellers to incorporate video into their auctions (example in the video above).

vzaar :: About: “vzaar is an accredited eBay developer and approved video supplier for eBay sellers and the host of thousands of videos for thousands of eBay sellers. Built by eBay users for eBay users, vzaar enhances the eBay experience for both buyers and sellers. vzaar is a free service for casual sellers, with premium features available for more frequent users and PowerSellers.”

While I’m not sure that the service will catch on like wildfire, it certainly is compelling for sellers of products that are looking to give a more three dimensional representation of the object up for auction or for sellers looking to stand out above the pack in a crowded niche.

Duncan Riley posts about vzaar on his new (and subscription worthy) blog Inquisitr giving some details about pricing.