By Donna Knight
In March 2008, popular online auction site, Ebay.com announced that sellers selling digital products with automatic download will no longer be allowed to list their products in auction-style listings. They will only be able to list them in classified ads. Ouch!
The only way you can sell digital products using auction style listings is if you are going to ship the product to the customer.
The disadvantages of selling digital products by classified ad listings are:
- Classified ads are a lot more expensive at $9.95 per ad.
- There is no feedback for ad listings.
- More time-consuming to ship products than to have an automated pay and download system.
- Classified ad sellers cannot qualify for power seller status.
The reasoning given for this upsetting change was that too many digital product sellers were using auctions to manipulate the feedback system. For example, sellers could list products for a penny. While they would lose money, they could gain lots of feedback doing this.
My prediction is that many digital product sellers will go out of business or leave eBay in search of someplace else, probably more expensive, to sell their digital wares.
My guess is that eBay didn’t make much money from sellers selling very cheap digital products anyways, so it probably won’t hurt this billion-dollar company that much if all these cheapo product sellers leave.
As an ebook reseller, I have mixed feelings about this. I never liked the fact that people buy expensive ebooks then turn around and sell them for $1; however, I do not think that this move by eBay is justified. They could have set a minimum price for feedback or something similar. This change on eBay will definitely hurt a lot of the little guys and render a lot of books about selling on eBay outdated.