eBay Banned the Sell of Digital Products

Yesterday when I started my work day at 8am, I looked first to my emails; usually I read 5-6 and delete the rest of them.

One title caught my attention "Digital Items Banned On eBay", I looked to find the author... it was John Thornhill, the king of Digital Products, a person I know, trust, learn from. I decide to read it! This one wasn't a spam for sure!

I discovered that starting Mar. 31 the Digital Items will be banned on eBay. OK! But why such a short notice?

My opinion is: eBay is doing now what Google did in June 2006. They try to clean up the junk, and stop the abuse and manipulation of feedbacks. But, as in 2006, a lot of good people a suffering as well.

Let's see what exactly they a banning:

- e-Books

- Digital audio recordings: interviews, seminars

- Digital photos

- Digital Videos

- Affiliate Marketing Services: squeeze pages, pre-sale pages, landing pages

- Websites Design Services

- Domain Names Services

- Graphic Design Services

- Specific eBay items as: Digital Sewing and Knitting Patterns, Digital Recipes etc

- And any other service delivered instantly electronically, it is a long list, it really is!

Lets see why people like to sell on eBay digital products even though some of them are selling at a really peculiar price, example same e-Books a selling from $0.01 to $0.99, must be some good reason to sell at such a low price:

- People love instant delivery, you pay now, 2 minutes later you download the product, and it is yours.

- Some publications, e-Books in particular, a stuffed with affiliate links and the seller is not making money with that particular product but in time he is selling a lot of profitable products via affiliate links, his visibility is higher, his opt-in list is growing.

- Any product which is listed on eBay is taking advantage of the eBay traffic, eBay's huge customer base.

- In some instances, you take advantage of eBay traffic and in addition you advertise you business as back-end and make a lot of money in the process. A perfect example are classify ads.

- In all cases in which you start selling an item at a low price and as soon as the flow of events send you outside of eBay you can offer powerful items as OTO (One Time Offer), it really is a good business tactic for you. Example: the thank your page you get after you buy an e-Book can be monetize in any way you want because at this point you are outside of eBay. You can use Google AdSense, OTO, membership subscription, the sky is the limit.

I hope you have now a clear picture of the manipulation which can be done starting with an innocent $0.99 sell on eBay.

I also want you to understand my position. I am an eBayer, buyer and seller, I am an Education Specialist Trained by eBay, and I am an affiliate marketer and a writer for Digital Products. I understand the reasons behind the scene on eBay part, I am not position myself on the eBay bashing wagon now.

My concerns are that a huge quantity of good people will suffer as well, and I don't know why eBay did this in such a hurry, they announced on 24th March that in 31st the banning will start. Google in 2006 was even worth, they did it over night.

The other face of the coin is that all the time when a new rule affects a lot of people, some good progress will surface and all of us will benefit from it.

Up till now just 2 ideas appear:

1) We can use Classify Ads for Digital products on eBay. This translates in using the eBay traffic to advertise something you sell outside of eBay. This method is expensive, but the junk digital products will automatically be out of the picture and the good products will stay as legitimate product line.

2) We can put our digital Products, which usualy are in PDF format on CD-ROMs and sell them as physical items. This involves more work and expenses on the part of sellers but again the weeds will go away. This is not a perfect solution as well but is workable.

I am sure other methods will be created and I think we have to remain in the positive side, I see this as a great opportunity for people that understand marketing. We have to use our creativity, and Internet Opportunities will remain in high demands.

The instany delivery tools a part of Internet Marketers use now, MyDD (My Digital Dispatch) for instant delivery, it is a tool with a lot of potential, I am sure this one will play a big role in future.

I'll keep you posted with information related with this topic.