Comments on: Ebay lays the Smackdown on the sale of Digital Items

By: Jason Hart - Copywriter

Jason Hart - Copywriter — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:33:46 +0000

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.

By: eBook Compilers eBook Covers Resell Rights

eBook Compilers eBook Covers Resell Rights — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:18:16 +0000

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.

By: Bob Lange re: digital products

Bob Lange re: digital products — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:39:14 +0000

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

By: john haskins

john haskins — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:20:07 +0000

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.

By: Paul Tomlinson

Paul Tomlinson — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:41:44 +0000

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.

By: Trae Williams

Trae Williams — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:18:26 +0000

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

By: Matt houldsworth (Earning from affiliates)

Matt houldsworth (Earning from affiliates) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:19:23 +0000

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.

By: john haskins

john haskins — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:19:34 +0000

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)

By: David Filltner

David Filltner — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:02:12 +0000

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.

By: Monty

Monty — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:21:01 +0000

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.

By: Jack A.

Jack A. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:24:06 +0000

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

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:12:38 +0000

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.

By: clickbank shopping

clickbank shopping — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:52:47 +0000

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.

By: chris

chris — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:10:38 +0000

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

By: chris

chris — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:05:45 +0000

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

By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:57:53 +0000

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.)

By: How to make money online

How to make money online — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:00:56 +0000

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

By: Samuel

Samuel — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:04:42 +0000

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.

By: Ray Johnson

Ray Johnson — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:31:27 +0000

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!

By: Ray Johnson

Ray Johnson — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:26:20 +0000

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.

By: logosamurai

logosamurai — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:12:52 +0000

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

By: Free Domain Hosting

Free Domain Hosting — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:08:53 +0000

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!

By: Buy Used iPhone

Buy Used iPhone — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:55:06 +0000

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

By: Last Take

Last Take — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:27:34 +0000

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).

By: kayz

kayz — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:26:09 +0000

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.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:08:08 +0000

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.

By: qqqq

qqqq — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:53:11 +0000

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

By: Niro

Niro — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:07:31 +0000

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.

By: Samuel

Samuel — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:43:22 +0000

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.

By: TK

TK — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:49:15 +0000

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