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If you are active in the online video scene, i.e. produce your own videos alone or with the help of sites like iMoondo this should be an easy leap.  

  

Especially, if you are also a seller on eBay the question becomes: Could adding videos to your profile and products bring you more credibility and sales? To find out, ask yourself:

1. How effective are your current classifieds?
2. Is it easy for you to produce your own videos?
3. Would you benefit from showing a video in your classifieds?
4. Would your profile be more persuasive with a video presentation?
5. How easy would it be to add video to each of your items on eBay?
6. Do you expect social networking sites to follow suit?
7. How soon will online classified ad sites include videos?
8. Should you jump in, prepare for, or dismiss this development as a gimmick?

I see video included in classifieds as a very positive development. While you certainly would not benefit from seeing a video about a baseball ticket you are purchasing (unless it links to a previous game in which your team pounded the living daylight out of their opponents), you would most definitely benefit from seeing a video about a piece of furniture, a vehicle, or some other more tangible product.

Much like virtual tours have allowed home buyers to be much more effective when searching for a property on real estate Web sites, the same could potentially be true for consumers of miscellaneous goods and services.Moreover, the challenges eBay is facing with less traffic and strikes by its sellers, this could be a great way for them to drive additional revenue. They could charge fees for hosting your videos or highlighting your items, service, and profile with them, as they do now with more “plain vanilla” listings. This would give you as a merchant and your visitors a more pleasant and hopefully informed shopping experience.

Enabling a better, more personalized look at you, as the merchant, is just as significant as researching the products the you are selling. After all, the feedback and ratings for sellers are so important for this online community.

Craig’s List is in a different proposition because of its lack of interest in fully monetizing the site; however it will be interesting to see if - more like when and how - they decide to leverage video as well. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are already hosting so much user generated video, they could easily build the web apps to integrate them with classifieds. Even better, they can have third party developers on their platforms create them.

The eBay and Craig’s Lists of the world should be concerned about the intentions of the social networking sites to branch into e-commerce. It would be a natural progression for them with a lot of profit potential for their users and themselves.