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Important notice to people selling digital products on eBay

Hi Guys

eBay has done it again.

Yesterday they announced a massive change to digital download listings that will completely overhaul the way those of us selling eBooks do business.

From March 31, eBooks and other digital download products can no longer be listed in auction format. Instead, they must be listed as a Classified ad.

Okay, fine, you might say. Except for when we tell you that selling via Classified ads means no feedback.

Because Classified transactions take place outside of eBay, the feedback option is nullified. And this is one big ‘uh-oh’ for any seller trying to build a good reputation or achieve powerseller status. 

For many of you, this announcement is going to come as a nasty shock.

But before you let the doom and gloom sink in, remember that survival in business means adaptation. Also from what I’ve seen over the years, every so called ‘shock’ in eBay, Google or any other online income source usually helps some people while hurting others.

You can use this situation to your advantage as many eBay sellers will not know what to do and will give up following this latest announcement.

Luckily for you, as a member of Sky High Auctions you’re up to date on what to do.

My first suggestion is that you list your eBooks as classified ads. You won’t be able to earn feedback points, but you’ll still get the most important thing from your eBook sales… qualified leads!

Now as far as feedback is concerned, you can still sell your eBooks (or other digital items) on CD or DVD, if you list them on eBay as a physical product.

While this does mean that you can’t automate this part of your business entirely, the upsides more than make up for it.

For starters, up-sell opportunities are now going to be tripled. Yes, tripled. Physical items are taken way more seriously by customers, so there’s going to be more chance of your other offers being viewed and actioned. And don’t let’s forget that this is actually the most important part of selling digital items anyway!

I suggest that you sell your physical product cd’s for $7 + shipping and handling (which should be pretty cheap). That equate to a similar profit after costs are taken into account, as to selling ebooks. And you should get quite a few leads out of this.

You can still sell some of your physical products at higher prices (e.g. a 5 cd pack on self hypnosis for $30+ etc), but in general, as taught in the Sky High Auctions lessons, you’ll want to sell this kind of package on the backend, after selling someone a lower priced product. These leads are invaluable.

For those of you doing big digital product business and worried about the time required to burn and ship CDs, you can outsource this to www.disk.com or you can check out a solution offered by our friend Dave: he teaches you how to create an auto-run CD and get someone to burn and drop ship them for you! Nice one Dave – we like anything that gets other people to do our work for us.

You can find Dave’s awesome Quick & Easy Info Product Creation Guide.

There’s no doubt about it: this is a pretty big shake up for all of us digital product sellers. But we’re very excited about the solutions we’ve put in place and can only wait with baited breath to see how the results pan out in our bottom line over the coming weeks.

11 Responses to “Important notice to people selling digital products on eBay”

  1. auction selling Says:

    Its good to see the announcement from ebay placing the digital download products out of auction format into classified ad.

  2. frank Says:

    yes that really a petty.

    I just started my first ebook
    “businees” at ebay.

    And sold 4 ebooks……

    but I was going to publish
    an audio cd anyhow.

    so lets just move on.

    greetings
    frank
    germany

  3. Rich Says:

    Can you still sell digital products in your eBay store?

  4. sc Says:

    thanks for the advise Jimmy.
    good solution if you are in USA. very bad news to us not in USA.

    good point if you use paypal because you can track deliver of the physycal cd, and be protected against fraud chargeback.
    bad news if i pretend to sell an ebook, high costs of international shipping, even more than the nominal price, and more complications with local IRS due is now a physical product, taxable by law.

  5. mariann Says:

    wahhhhaaaaaaaaa…..(oh, crap!)

  6. Stephanie Says:

    This would really stink if your whole business is ebooks. I understand why they are doing it, because so much of ebay is mucked up with ebooks when you search for things but i think it was fine having them in a seperate information product category. Now my question is does this apply to store listings too I assume…

  7. Reiner Says:

    Hmmm,

    I guess it gives at least those of us a great headache who are not located in the US or Europe, as shipping takes too long and may become too expensive. We’ll see. Thanks for the update though. You are quite right, there are always opportunities when change happens.

  8. jim Says:

    Hi thansk for the update and suggestions.

    I also heard that eBay is no longer using commission junction for the affliate program is this true

  9. Margaret Briley Says:

    I think this is a good idea. As many people would
    rather purchase a cd or dvd than download an e-book.I hope it has a good response. Like anything, given time it should appeal more.

  10. Harjit Irani Says:

    I should say to seek an oppurtunity in this. Let us see what the gurus come up with and then duplicate them for success.

  11. maree Says:

    thanks for the update. I do know alot of sellers use cheap e books to bump up their feedback, so I guess ebay had to stop that somehow. Now sellers have to really earn their feedback honestly.
    damn….

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