Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper share tips on how to use eBay’s new listing tool to add video to your listings and how that can increase your sales.
How to add a video with ebay's new listing tool: https://youtu.be/Ps_nIti20Ks
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Rob & Melissa On Ebay’s New Listing Tool
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are excited to talk about eBay's new listing tool. Good, bad, indifferent. Stay tuned!
Rob: So guys, you might have access to eBay's new listing tool.
Melissa: It is still in beta, so not everybody has it.
But you did just start playing around with it. So you've had it for a little while.
Rob: Absolutely. And it is engineered toward pictures, sorry, videos. I keep saying pictures, it's engineered towards videos to be able to get videos onto your listings more easily. So that's what I think this whole update or listing tool that they're rolling out, is like I said, that's what I think it's really engineered toward which is really, really cool for flippers like us.
Melissa: Every platform loves videos already. So it kind of makes sense. So, what are some of the benefits of adding videos to your listings?
Rob: For us, we do higher profit items, and we do less sales in the year. So I'm on a higher profit item. It looks so much better when we actually have a video of that working, showing. And we sell used items too, so we don't sell new items, but it looks that much better if we have a video in the listing. So not only can they see the pictures, they can see that it works. I just picked up today a vintage, stereo system that we picked up from a yard sale for $5.
And it's going to sell between $600 and $700, but I'm going to be able to.
Melissa: You thought it was only gonna be like $150. Whenever you pick it up.
Rob: I had no idea what it was worth.
Melissa: He's like five bucks. You can't go wrong.
Rob: Absolutely not. We picked it up and I'm going to be able to actually take a video of the thing working like it's supposed to, I'm gonna hook a speaker up to it, showing that it's working properly, adjusting the bass adjusting the treble. Like I said, it's a vintage unit. It's an older unit and it's worth some good money, but that will put buyers at ease. Hey, he's not only got pictures of this thing, he's actually got a video of showing that it works and that will make your buyers come that much quicker and that will set you apart from your competition, your components that are out there
Component's not the right word, opponents. Thank you.
Melissa: But it's not really an opponent, I guess, competition.
Rob: Competition, so the other people that are selling similar items to you, this will set the bar. This will set you apart from them.
Melissa: With our business model of selling more higher dollar items people would like to see that before they press the buy button, they want to see that it works.
And then you also have that video to show eBay, if anything happens too because you already have that video in the listing, but then they will be more likely to spend their money if they can see it.
Rob: Yep.
Melissa: That it is working.
Rob: So we don't have a lot of videos. We hit, you have been able to use videos in the past, but you actually use a different tool.
So you had to upload your video to YouTube. And then you would have to take the link from YouTube, put it into a tool that would convert the video link to HTML. And then you'd have to go into your eBay listing, click the tab to go into HTML in the description portion, and the video would come up in the video portion of that.
It has been available to do it.
Melissa: But the problem is description. It's not in the first 12 pictures.
Rob: Thumbnails. Exactly. So it was in the description, which is not that big of a deal, but it's just a lot more labor intensive to do that. So it was a lot more steps, a lot more stuff could have gone wrong with that.
So now eBay's rolled it out. If you do have access, if you want to know if you have access to this beta testing right now on the listing. When you go to your listing, when you actually click into sell an item, you get into that item. The top right-hand corner of the listing itself will say, try our new, I think it's something like try our new listing tool or something like that.
You click on that and it converts everything over to the new platform for listing. It's all different.
Melissa: You have to do that per listing? Like you have to click try the new listing tool?
Rob: No, once you opt into it, it sets you up for anything listing from there. And if you don't like it, you can go and you can click out of it.
They also want your feedback, why you didn't like it or something like that. They're trying to try, it's beta testing. So they are still trying to figure everything out. But the tool itself is pretty cool. It is way more user-friendly. Before it was kind of clunky eBay's listing, their old way of doing it.
It was clunky. They had boxes and stuff like this. This is if you have access to it, you definitely have to try it. It just looks a lot more streamlined, sleek. It looks a lot easier to fill everything out. Now the bad portion is nobody likes change. You have to get used to change. That is really the only bad portion of this that I can see, is it's just when you're used to doing the same thing over and over,
Melissa: you get fast at it.
So now when it changes then you have to get used to the change.
Rob: Exactly. And some resellers, sell thousands of items and we do not. So, it's not that big of a deal for us to change over, especially with a feature like this that will absolutely sell more items and sell them quicker with that.
Melissa: What other ways would you use it?
I mean, yeah. I guess before we've done with the kids, I'm like, we have a toy that does a specific thing or turns on. So we'll do a video that shows that it actually works and turns on. We do a lot of appliances so we can show that those work.
Rob: Absolutely.
Melissa: Yeah. So can you think of other instances?
Rob: The other, the downfall of it is if you are it's I guess it's not really downfall, but if you are selling lots and lots of items, you're listing the lots and lot of side items, it's a little bit harder to get videos of all those items.
Melissa: It takes more time to get videos.
Rob: Exactly. And the other thing about videos is you don't want to take a video with a lot of clutter and the same thing for pictures. You want to have it set up where it's nice.
You don't have clutter. It looks like it's nice. Presentable.
Melissa: If you already have an area set up for pictures then adding a video shouldn't I mean, it would take an extra minute or less, a couple of seconds to do a video. But the space should still be clear. I would think if you're already taking good pictures.
Rob: But for us it's a larger item so. Like I did a video last week for a big, chiropractic bed. This thing is huge. It's probably like seven foot long. And then it goes up like this, and that's what I wanted to show in the video that it actually inverts up to, you know, whatever degrees it is. It comes like that it's not perfectly straight up, but I wanted to show that in the video.
That's a little bit more complicated because it is, it takes up a big space. You have to have the room to be able to do that for us. Now, if you are taking small pictures of items and you already have a great background, it's not that hard, snap it over to video and actually do it. And then it's so much easier because.
Well, it's easier and it takes a little bit more, the bad thing about the new program is it's not mobile friendly.
Melissa: So I was going to ask you that, can you use it on mobile?
Rob: You cannot use it on mobile yet. I'm sure it's coming.
Melissa: So it's an extra step.
Rob: It is one extra step that you have to go to the computer and do it. Now, the way that I do it, I'm doing everything on mobile. Getting it all done. I go to my desktop or my laptop. And that's it. It, well, no, it's already saved in drafts when you go into eBay. So you jump into eBay. The other cool feature about this is they let it link to your phone. So there is a thing right above where the description is.
You can click a button and it will actually go to your phone. Before you had to take the pictures on your phone. You had to, either, for us we're apple. So I don't know exactly how Android and Google stuff works. But for us you had to do an airdrop or send it over to your computer so you could do it. Now they have it, which you can't do with pictures, but I'm sorry, you can't do it with videos yet like this, but you can do pictures like this. So when you're listing the item on your computer, you can actually click the button to pull pictures from your device, your phone. And it actually goes, links to your phone.
You can pull the pictures right there, off the computer, but they're on your phone and doing it that way. So that's a really cool feature for people. And like I said, I don't, I can't vouch for how Android works. We don't have Android, we have laptops and our phones are apple. So they all link together really well.
And it's easy to pull stuff. So that's another cool feature about it, but it is still limited to a desktop laptop.
Melissa: I would think they'll get the mobile next.
Rob: And it's still in the beta. So you got to know they're going to roll out some other cool features with it. But I absolutely, I love it. I think it's awesome. Especially, like I said, for people who are selling higher dollar items, it gives your buyers that one more piece of security or that one more reassurance of, hey okay, I'm buying this, I'm putting the money out on this.
They're showing me that it works before I actually get it. So, videos are in my opinion are going to be the game-changers for resellers that use them. That use them to their advantage.
Exactly.
Melissa: I think that will be another thing that people won't do. So there'll be a lot of resellers that don't want to do it.
Don't want to mess with it, which is fine, but it might just give you that edge up on the next person. Because somebody might want to see the video and it comes to the second thumbnail. Right? So you have your first thumbnail picture. And then the second one is the video. So you can't control where it's at in your 12 pictures.
It goes automatically to your second picture.
Rob: But it does do the thumbnail. Now the other cool part about this is it's not, it's very, very user-friendly. If you say you did put it from your phone, you airdropped it over, you got it over into your downloads, the video that you took on your phone, it's drag and drop.
So all you do is pull up the download. Click on the picture, drag it into this huge box where all the thumbnails are, you drag it into there, it highlights it, it pulls it in, does the buffer and gets it ready. There is another downfall to it is, which I'm sure this will go quicker. My second video that I actually did, it went a lot quicker uploading it to, eBay. They're having to go in and, which is good on their part. They have to review it before they'll make it live. And they say it takes typically 24 to 48 hours to review, but it could take up to seven days depending on I guess, their workload or their capacity.
Melissa: The longest has been 24 hours, right?
Rob: Two days, 48 hours. Yeah, the first one definitely was two days. Second one, I think it did do it in under 24 hours. So, I'm sure.
Melissa: So your listing is still live it just doesn't have the video in there yet.
Rob: Exactly. So that is another little bit of a downfall, but it's not really eBay is just trying to make sure that they're monitoring.
Nobody's doing crazy stuff with videos. So but very cool feature to actually drag drop it in there. It loads it automatically, it has it in there. So yeah, really, really cool feature on that. And I think they just recently changed something. The one that I did last night, I did it from my phone.
I saved it. I went to the computer, uploaded the video. Got it in there, the video saved and it actually got uploaded. I mean, it got uploaded and eBay approved it. And then today I went into actually revise it from my phone. And it allowed me to do it. Actually let me go in with the video clip in there and revise it typically before the phone and the laptop don't interchange.
Like if you do something on a laptop, it tells you, yeah, you're going to lose everything once you pull it up and revise it in the phone. Now this, let me do it. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if they're working on stuff to make them.
Melissa: They're working with their technology is getting a lot better, to sync stuff..
Rob: Exactly. So really, really cool feature. So in my opinion, there are a couple downfalls, but nothing compared to what the pros are on this, the pros are going to be amazing for resellers like us, that we can actually just show our items are working.
There probably will be a couple of bugs in the beginning.
Melissa: Cause there always is. So maybe expect those that's why they do the beta. So, but yeah, check it out and let us know what you think of it. Yeah, let us know.
Rob: And we are going to put a video, a video link. I have not done it yet. By the time this goes live, it should be done on the podcast.
Melissa: So the link will be in the show notes.
So that's accountability for you to get it done so we can put that link in the show notes. So you can actually see the how to, and he's going to do like a screen of how to actually put the video into the listing.
Rob: And then I have actual live videos in my eBay store. So I'll click over and show you what it looks like.
Once the videos are live, you can actually see it's in the thumbnails, which is really, really cool. And yeah, like I said, I think this is a great feature. I'm super excited for the rollout of this and them to actually work out the bugs and get the sucker working really, really nicely, because it will only benefit resellers like us.
So it really will only benefit anybody. Anybody who chooses to take part of this, it should only be that much easier to get people to trust you or people to see that your items are working properly. So yeah, we're very, very excited about this tool and we definitely will use it a lot more, than a lot less for sure.
I mean, it's one of those things that I want to start utilizing on everything that I list. I want to be able to take a video of it, not a super long video, but a short clip, you know, 45 seconds. And I don't know. Well, I don't know how long they will allow you to do it, but everything I've done right now has been under a minute, like 45, 50 seconds.
And they haven't had any issues with it. So, I don't know if they have stipulation and I'm sure they do at some point over, under a minute. It might be. I'm pretty sure they do have something on that.
Melissa: Because they can only host so many videos. You can imagine.
Rob: When we find that out, we'll keep you guys posted.
But this overall, I believe this is going to be an amazing tool that eBay has rolled out. And definitely if you have access to the beta, jump in there, try it, see what you guys think and let us know. What's your feeling about it too? Because like I said, it's good for us.
Melissa: Yeah, DM us on Instagram.
That's a great way to get in touch with us. It's @fleamrktflipper, but F L E A M R K T flipper. DM us or if you're listening to this on the blog posts, then just comment below and let us know. We want to know if you like any good things you love about it, any things that maybe you don't love about it.
Give us a shout.
Rob: For sure. You guys rock. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you soon.
See ya!