Selling Digital Products On Ebay

[Matthew Sherborne]

There's been a major announcement about selling digital products on Ebay. This new rule will effect how digital products are sold. No longer can sellers list digital products on the general marketplace. Now you're required to sell via the Ebay Classifieds section.

Here's the quote from Ebay Announcements...

"Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived). To preserve the integrity of the Feedback system, effective March 31 all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically must be listed using the Classified Ads format.

Using the Classified Ads format, sellers receive a 30-day ad at a fixed price. This solution enables sellers to continue to market their digital goods on eBay; however, because Classified Ad listings are a lead generation tool and do not result in transactions that go through eBay, Feedback cannot be exchanged between buyer and seller.

Sellers who wish to continue to offer digital goods can do so by selecting the Everything Else>Information Products category in the Sell Your Item form and choosing the Classified Ads format (not auction-style or fixed price). For more information about the Classified Ads format, please read Advertising with Classified Ads."



You can also read about it here:

March 2008

Ebay sellers will now either have to take out a classified ad and sell via their own site. Or offer their products on a CD or DVD and ship them a physical product. Regardless of which this new rule will have a profound effect on digital selling on Ebay.

Digital products can be downloadable:

PDF ebooks
EXE eboks
pictures
website templates
audio books
ebay auction templates
wholesale lists
video tutorials
website scripts
and a lot more...

Do you have any thoughts on this new development? It will definitely put a halt to many ebook sellers currently using Ebay to make an online income.

[NoTrouble]

Ebay keeps changing there policy every chance they get to milk more profits out of their sellers. They have seen a tremedous drop in visitors to their site over the last couple of years due in large part to the popularity of Craigslist. My guess is they are trying to enter and complete in the online classifieds market.

I think this may do some good in the long run for digital product owners like you Matt. I saw your Cash for Content book on ebay for $1.00 which I'm sure you don't approve of. Maybe this will get the sellers of resale rights products out of the sellers depression. Where all resale rights products end up costing a buck no matter what their value is.

In the short term I agree with you that this will put a lot of people out of business. It's one of the main reasons you should think about diversifying in multiple streams of online income and not depend on a single website for your business.

[gimme4free]

There is still so many on there, how are they going to stop this? They can't even get rid of piracy from their site!!!