Ebay lays the Smackdown on the sale of Digital Items

I for one think this will be a good change. Sorry for people who made a legit income selling digital products on eBay, but I was getting tired of browsing for something like computer parts, and having 50% of the resulting listing being info products on how I can buy computer parts. A lot of eBook peddlers have gone too far, and this is what happens.

On the other hand, I think eBay should have gone down another route to control this. Simply create a separate category tree for digital products, and punish sellers that don’t abide by the rules.

But this is only my 2 cents… What do you think?

What about selling domain names?

I read on the Tucows blog that domain name sales are not banned based on the response they got from ebay support.

http://about.tucows.com/2008/03/25/ebay-to-delist-domain-name-auctions/

Anyone have the official word from ebay?

As for the moron above. If you were getting ebooks searching for computer parts then you obviously don’t know how to refine your search. You also don’t realize there are people who appreciate that information. It’s your ridiculous and elitist attitude that allows businesses like Ebay to destroy lives and industries. Just because you happen to not like or appreciate something does not mean it should be banned (does Nazi come to mind?)

Be careful what you wish for, for soon it may be you who offends.

Just for the record I don’t even sell on Ebay but have purchased lots of this stuff.

Now for the real argument:

It is amazing the logic Mr. Burke at ebay uses. He states, and I quote “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)”.

As far as the reproduction costs go, I would like to hear his response to the fact that the drug companies reproduce their products for practically nothing after PAYING A FORTUNE FOR R&D!

And as for feedback manipulation. The opportunity for bad feedback is still there even if you sell something for 1 cent. And the seller is actually paying for feedback since the listing was not free.

It would be nice to know the real motivation why Ebay seems to want to destroy an entire industry when there are many ways to remedy their supposed problem.

One such method would be to simply discount feedback that came from items selling under a particular threshold, or not allow feedback at all under a certain price.

I do think Ebay will come to their senses and adjust this policy so it can filter out all of the policy violaters without destroying lives and businesses. I have seen some negative posts about this ebook and that ebook ruining the industry because they don’e like the content or some other reason. The fact is, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure and just because one individual can look at an ebook and think it is beneath him/her does not mean someone else does not derive a great benefit from it.

Let’s work to get Ebay to be realistic, humane, and simply use good business sense and straighten this out.

My 2 cents worth,
B Carlton

Dam, I was just starting to get a good income from eBay selling Domain names.. I feel helpless I guess…

@ B Carlton

You’re calling other people here “morons” while YOU think that eBay shouldn’t be allowed to change their business model b/c it’ll “destroy lives and industries?”

Huh?

Where do you think that ebook niche would be right now if ebay was never created? Just b/c others have figured out a way to make money or build businesses around ebay doesn’t mean that ebay can’t change their model. As an entrepreneur, it’s YOUR responsibility to know the risks of your business. If 100% of your sales come from ebay, you need ask yourself if you think your income risk is diversified appropriately. The same goes for thin sites with 100% of traffic/revenue coming from Google…if Google makes an algo tweak and your traffic goes to zero, that’s your problem. If you build a quality site/product, defensible traffic sources shouldn’t be hard to come by.

Garrett,

It seems you must be 18 or very naive. Ebay has done everything they can including the kitchen sink to lure entrepreneurs into their lair. And then to not even give them notice but let them find out a week or less before they are finished is simply irresponsible at the very least. I think they way they have advertised, marketed and lured businesses to do business through them (especially paypal) a class action suit is in order.

Get Real

And just for your information Garrett, I don’t even do business through Ebay. and I have made my living from search engines for over 10 years. You are trying to compare apples and watermelons.

These Ebay entrepreneurs were marketed to and not even given a notice. This is another knee-jerk reaction by (more than likely) another pointy-nose geeeky executive with little business sense (probably like you) WHO JUST CANNOT STAND anyone else making money.

This should be one for the little guy.

I for one already see a way around this. How about if you sell a coupon for downloading an ebook?
I saw the lady that was selling some cornflake shaped like something (memory fails me right now as to what it was) and Ebay pulled their auction and said that food couldn’t be auctioned so she made a coupon – bingo – problem resolved.
Just a thought….

I think there is a good chance eBay will revise/update this policy to allow legitimate digital products …. but it may take some time before it happens.

Another option for selling digital products would be via ClickBank, a vast integrated network of sellers (digital products), buyers and affiliates.

Best wishes,
Adrian

anymore

Does this just apply to auctions or will people be allowed to sell ebooks through their eBay store?

EBay sucks anyway. Is there a good alternative to EBay that anyone is aware of? EBay has some asinine fees imo.

Hi All,

For those of you that want to continue selling digital items in auction format please feel free to list them on my site zillabid.com

You can check it out here: http://zillabid.com/

I will give you $5 in your account just for registering so you can start listing items right away. Listing fees start at 10 cents and you can list your items for up to 30 days auction for no additional charge. Which is great if you sell multiples of the same item.

I too was selling digital items items on ebay and just got screwed.
Personally, I don’t feel like having to burn everything to cd to comply with ebay rules. I also don’t want to pay $9.95 for a classified ad to sell items that only cost 99 cents or a couple bucks.

So if you need an alternative place to sell your items please check out ZILLABID.COM We will be happy to welcome you to our community and we welcome any suggestions for the site.

Thanks,
TK

It might be a good thing….. Weeding out your weaker competitors but a little more work to do if you wanna sell on eBay. You can package your ebooks in a cd or dvd or even send them a piece of paper with the download link.

Bad news Guys, I got this mail.. from eBay for my support request… Seems Websites and Domain names are also included.

Dear Nirosha,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to our new policy regarding
digitally delivered goods.

At this time all items that are digitally delivered including websites
and domain names are included in this new policy.

I would highly recommend you keep up to date on this policy as there could be some changes.

eBay guidelines are modified periodically to ensure that we stay up to
date with the Community as it evolves. We recommend that you review our
policies from time to time so you’ll always have the very latest
information.

Technology supplier search engine Conjungo has been launched to help ease search times for companies looking for suppliers of technologies. Conjungo is the only place online where technology vendors can list their entire channel in an easily searchable format. This helps buyers find local or specialist resellers. http://www.conjungo.com

It’s a ridiculous and frankly mean spirited move by eBay. I agree that there are many alternatives for lead generation, but the policy seems to assume that digital products are only used for that purpose and don’t have any intrinsic value. In a lot of cases, that’s certainly true, but there are also high quality digital items that people have built their business around. Such people have just been well and truly screwed, with next to no notice. There were alternative ways of addressing the problem that wouldn’t have shafted sellers of quality products, eg introducing a minimum value for digital products.

I have a feeling that the ban will be reversed in time, but that a stricter system than currently exists will replace it.

E- bay E bay E bay, Personally i f iwas selling any digital products i would not care

all u have to do is e mail the buyer the download after sale but put it on the

auction as if you were going to mail it. e bay has no way of enforcing this. One

more thing, i find it very ironic that somebody like tubemastery the guy who

posted on u tube money maiking marketing, if you log on to his site he is selling

his techniques starting at $67 so if u r making tons of money why the hell r u

here trying to get people to buy your $67 scam. I don’t mind people promoting

themselves but don’t lie take an example from ZILLABID he was honest. Lastly i

am fed up with e bay i am hoping there is somebody else who can give them

competition so that they can stop being obnoxious. I have a site

http://www.newgardenshop.com that is an affiliate with e bay and i think they r just

ripping me off i get good traffic but the sales from e bay don’t add up and i know

a lot of people buy the stuff through my site. If any of you know another site

Please respond.

I think this policy is worthy of recognition.

Digital products are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived).

regarding websites: despite I might agree wtih the motivations that lead to this…IT JUST PLAIN SUCKS, feedback is eerything on ebay, and if someone goes and read your feedback, positive about website sales, will be more appreciated than for a used guitar worth $30

I think eBay could have worked around this in a better way. eBay could launch a separate sub-domain for digital products and eBooks, just like they have autos.ebay.com for cars, they could create digital.ebay.com and/or ebooks.ebay.com

My 2.5 cents worth!

A lot of people made a lot of money from that.

This is going to open up the market for more money tyo be made as any of you digital goods, for example, You can now turn your products in printed manuals and Courses, as a added bonus you can turn you product in to audio, as this has a higher perceived value.

This is going to open up the market for more money to be made as any of you digital goods, for example, You can now turn your products in printed manuals and Courses, as a added bonus you can turn you product in to audio, as this has a higher perceived value.

Plus bigger backend opportunity.

GREAT TIMES AHEAD!

Not everyone is willing to take time to convert their digital stuff into physical, there’s an issue of fulfillment too. Those who are willing, will surely do well.

Hm… this is both a good and a bad change, I guess.

Relax guys…. All you have to do is offer a hard copy of the ebook.. and put a link in your auction to your website (for further information and if you wish to purchase digitally) So you can still make your digital sales, in fact, you can do it without paying any auction fees (I suspect more people will go to your website to get the instant download, rather than wait for the snail mail in the auction.)

It appears that they haven’t stopped it. I still see these products being auctioned off.

Anon, from what I understand it is against the rules to put a link in your auction to a website.

I think it cleans up ebay a bit. else you can see a lot of ebooks and digital downloads with MRR rights sold by different people at different prices. Though its good for the buyer, it clutters the marketplace and some sellers cant make much money. Apart from the banning digital goods is real loss for some buyers from other countries. Because they cant find the item listed in their ebay version. Even if it is listed they cant download it and need to pay for shipping.

Hey Chris,

You are allowed to put a link in your auction as long as it contains further information about the product you are selling.

Hi guys, what an intense communication going on here. Just wanted to share this real quick. I saw this on eBay. Maybe there is a solution. But I rather save my $16, so maybe I won’t sell on ebay anymore.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260228625188&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=016

Good luck

How open should a market be?

What is the difference if an unscrupulous imdividual sells a non-existant DVD player or a downloadable series of videos on how to do such and such and neither is that persons propert (stolen DVD, no resell rights for the downloadable video product). Why target digital products? Less hanky panky with stolen goods?

Answer: In fact the digital products are back traceable and the stolen DVD player might not be (the DVD player owner won’t recognise his/her property most likely).

eBay does not want the hassle of authors banging at their door constantly.

The other side of the coin is that eBay is rejecting a part of the technology it was fashioned upon. This is the information age. The Global Village is now zeros and ones. It’s ironic that a second hand couch in great condition holds center stage and a digital product providing some kind of beneficial instruction (not always) is demoted to mail order status (classified ads).

Snake oil comes in many flavors so why isolate one as being unsavoury?

The solution is monitor the commerce and those who wish to make money unscrupulously by duping the consumer (aka crooks) should be prosecuted. The “bad guys” should be fined to a degree that their scams are never profitable, Steal a million, pay 5 million).

Needless to say ClickBank just increased its digital product market share.

Zipidee just announced their support for ebooks:http://www.zipidee.com. Try their site if you can’t (or don’t want to) sell on ebay anymore.

Well ebay has I think shot themselves in the foot with this. We will use other means to sell. There are thousands of us digital download shop owners and customers that will use another source to buy or sell our products. Some lucky auction site will emerge from this the bigger and in the end give real competition to ebay. (be nice if it were mine)

Although I can see why ebay have done this I am dissapointed that domain names will be included. I have picked up some cracking domain names on ebay for next to nothing sometimes, those domain names are now in use as affiliate projects.

If they are fixed price I guess that those bargains will not be as plentiful.

I was think about selling digital products on eBay…..there goes that idea.

Wow. For those of us that have an ebook in the making,
it makes you lose out on a vast audience. Although I’m sure
there are plenty of other sites that allow for ebook sales,
I imagine that the traffic is only a percentage of what
goes through Ebay.

Just forget ebay. Not much point in kidding yourself they will come to their senses. They own ebay, they set the rules. Nothing wrong with that. So it leaves us with no platform to sell our goods. Well that is how it was when I started.

If you want to make your living now in the net then do some work, build a site and market it. This will give you a much better living than ebay ever did.

I had a good living from this method 8 years ago. I then started selling on ebay at very good prices, then after some years the prices dropped and I was in trouble. So I rebuilt my websites and soon got back to better times.

This is not difficult to do. Just takes some hard work. If you would like some help to do this just contact me from one of my sites and I can help. A lot of my help will be free, so this is not me trying to get money from anyone.

Other than ebay does any one know if there any other good websites to list digital products for sale.

I thing ebay really needs to figure out a way to take these violators off the site while leaving the legitimate people alone. So many people get punished for other peoples wrong doings … its just wrong.

Hey guys for the record… eBay has not “totally” banned the sale of digital products. What they have banned is the sale of exclusively digitally downloaded products. What eBay wants is a physical product shipped out. As long as you ship out the digital product on a CD in a physical manner you are not in violation of eBay’s rules. I have been round and round with the legal department at eBay and this is what they want. You can still offer your customer a digital download of the product as long as a physical product is shipped out as well. I have been selling digital products on eBay since 1999 and have build a very successful business both online and offline that way. As long as one changes their business operations proceedures to comply with eBay’s rules one can continue to offer digital products in aution and fixed price listings as well as from their eBay store.