Add A Descriptive Video To Your eBay Listings

There is really nothing better than a decent video to help explain further the great features of a product. If you sell online a video can be the difference between a purchase being made or not or a purchase made at a low or high price.

If you sell on eBay, eBid, etsy or some other venue why not consider adding a video to your item description. The video can be an addition to a couple of regular photos, like shown above, or a stand alone demonstration for your product.

The video can be as short as just leafing through a book, like above, to show the prolific amount of photographs, a few seconds at most, or it can be a few minutes in length to explain how an apple cider press you made in the woodshop is used.

Putting a video on eBay is not very hard and it is allowed if you follow their policies. You can check their policies by clicking on the 'Help" tab anywhere on the site and then typing in 'embedded video' in the search window.

Why 'embedded video'?

Because that is the only type eBay allows and only from a site that is on their 'Approved Sites' list. You can NOT just put a link in the description to a video you made, whether on your own site or some hosting server. That might violate their Links Policy in addition to their Video Policy. In any case, after the search you will find something like this.

If you have a Google account then you are a bit closer to being able to add the video. Google is on the approved list. Also, I understand that if a Google account is already held you can use your Google sign-in/log-on info to sign-in at youtube.com, another one of the approved sites under eBay's rules.

Youtube.com is easy. Youtube.com is free. youtube works great. Just follow youtube's instructions on how to upload a video after you click the 'Upload Video' button and the other options will be easy to choose from.

Once the video is uploaded to youtube.com, and you have chosen the various options, you will have access to the 'Embed Code' with the various options you have chosen incorporated in that code. In the photo below - on the right side - you can see two windows/boxes with entries in them( just click on photo for a larger image ). One is labeled URL the other Embed. The Embed is what you want. Of course that box only shows a small portion of the entire Embed code. The code is actual quite long and can be seen in the bottom photo ( it has been pasted in the eBay Item Description Window.

The code is what you will paste in the description area of your eBay item. You will note in the photo below that the code was pasted AFTER the HTML tab was checked. You will need to have that tab checked to change from the Standard way of entering information in the description area. The Embed code is afterall HTML so you need the correct tab or it won't work.

After you paste the Embed code you can click the 'Preview' button and see what your listing looks like. If you did it correctly you will end up with what appears at the top of this article, at least as the video is concerned. You can even 'play' the video while in the Preview' mode. If all appears good go ahead and finish your listing.