eBooks and eBay
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.
Tags: buy, cheap, classifieds, ebay, money, resale, Resale Rights by Market, sales, sell, selling, timeRelated Articles