Earlier this year eBay published an announcement to all sellers that had many users up in arms. The change in policy affected selling ebooks and software within eBay’s standard auction categories.

eBay no longer allows digital downloads (including resale rights, master resale rights and even private label rights books) to be sold and collected by the purchases. This affected more sellers than most would guess (unless you’re already in this arena as a marketer of ebooks) and many have lost hundreds of dollars of monthly income as a result in the change in policy.

Website giant eBay seldom explains their actions - similar in fact to their April 2008 decision to move their affiliate program in house and away from Commission Junction - so the online marketer has no recourse but to speculate the reason for the change. Forums have been buzzing about resale rights products and one off sales of ebooks and some of the possible reasons for the change are listed below.

• Overnight Power Seller Status - An internet ‘technique’ for credibility - buyers and sellers of cheap ebooks gain quick, cheap feedback - potentially reaching power seller status in a week’s time. eBay discourages any action that gains such status so quickly so discontinuation of digital goods might have been their way of nullifying the technique.
• A large percentage of ebooks and software sold on ebay are low in quality and value. Support for the products are minimal to none and likelly have been the lion’s share of refund and third-party negotiations. Customer service is never profitable and it has been speculated that eBay simply didn’t want to deal with these items in their system, anymore.
• eBay partner PayPal stopped offering buyer protection for digital items quite some time ago. Therefore eBay was left with the negotiations between unhappy buyers and unscrupulous sellers. Eliminating all digital products (even the high quality ebooks and software) helps eBay to eliminate all the hassle that come with low quality items.

The Solution for eBook Buyers and Sellers - eBay Classified

One of the first avenues for marketers to make money selling digital products on eBay was via eBay classifieds. Today, eBay still allows digital products to be sold through this venue.

eBay classified ads run for one month and cost less than $10 to post. No other fees are tacked on and the standard auction posting “final value fee” is non-existant. Furthermore, classified ads run along with the regular auction listings, and still capitalize on eBay’s massive share of traffic.

Some common complaints from eBay sellers are that listings in classifieds take a long time before they start gaining any serious traffic. This is the result of the standard search results throughout eBay - sorted to display ending soonest first by default - the classified ads don’t generally show up until they’re almost ready to close.

While some say they don’t get much traffic to their eBay classified ads, others claim to get a lot. With a catchy title and thumbnail graphic, you’ll likely get enough traffic to your listing to make the ad worthwhile. With an attention to pristine copy you could be using your ad to gain both sales and subscribers.

I will write more advanced techniques using eBay classifieds for selling ebooks and software (namely those with resale rights) in a later post.

There are a number of ways to make money with resale, master resale, private label or source code rights products.

If you’re uncertain of the meanings of each of those terms, grab the FREE report “6 Techniques to Sell More of Your Resale Rights Products” by jumping in on the news on the right sidebar.

Today I’m going to talk about the variety of ways to repackage, resell or re-use the content you receive when you buy a private label rights product. Choose any one of these options (following) and you’ll find that where you once had a sea of competitors, you now have none.

These work exceptionally well if you’re building an online business - and not just trying to make a fast buck and then move on…. [...read the rest of this article...]

If you have an ebook you’d like to sell with resale rights, or you’re thinking of writing an ebook to sell with rights, consider and address these ten questions in your resller’s manual.

You must address and answer each one of these questions/answers to ensure the success with your product and minimize emails from your resellers, protect your reputation and ensure the success of your resellers.

If you don’t lay out the ground rules from the beginning (i.e. at the sales letter stage, before purchase), don’t count on every one of your resellers to have the courtesy to ask before they start making their own decisions about marketing your product.

For example, if you don’t specify up front your conditions regarding [...read the rest of this article...]

The past few days I’ve been doing some research, surfing around and reading other’s horror stories with buying resale rights to either ebooks or software.

Caveat Emptor on Resale Rights Products

My job, after all, is to give it to you straight on all the products available for resellers on this site, before you click that order button and part with your hard earned money.

Not to scare you off, but to help educate you on finding quality resale rights products, I decided it would be helpful to share some of the scams and slimy [...read the rest of this article...]

I’ve been asked a few times by email and contact on the site, why any author should sell rights to their product and give up control of how that product is marketed, sold, exchanged. There are actually a number of really great reasons to do so. I’ll be posting the reasons this week, starting today…

“Why should I sell rights to my product? Why not just take on affiliates?”

If you’re an author and you’re wondering why you’d give up some of the control of your product by selling resale rights (as opposed to taking on an army of affiliates), there are a few considerations and determinations to make. Neither way of marketing your product is right nor wrong, one can be just as lucrative as another, it’s all a matter [...read the rest of this article...]