Ebay Bans Digital Delivery
By admin | March 26, 2008
Internet Marketing Alert: In a new policy shift eBay has banned the sales of digital downloads from its site, instead restricting users to the Classified Ad format, whichwill cost $9.95 for a 30-day listing. This effects 1,000’s of sellers who make some or all of their income from sales of ebooks, auction templates, ecards, music animations, reports, guides, software etc.
Fom ebays own user policy:What is eBay’s policy for selling digitally delivered goods and items?
The policy for the US is as follows. Digital items are restricted on eBay. In order to list digital items, the seller must comply with the following requirements:
- Any digitally delivered item may not be pornographic in nature
- The seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner
- The seller’s item may not include software that harms the buyer’s machine (e.g., a virus) or uses it for malicious or unauthorized purposes (e.g., sending spam emails or spreading a virus) or violates the buyer’s privacy (e.g., spyware, cookies) (per the HTML and JavaScript policy - http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-javascript.html )
- To help verify the identity of sellers listing digital downloadable items, eBay requires that sellers be PayPal Verified (www.paypal.com/verify)
Listings of digital items that violate any of these requirements are in violation of this policy.
The word is that this policy is “Out The Window”. The new policy completely Outlaws the sale of Digital Delivery Items. The move was made to combat Fraud and the Manipilation of the Feedback System.
Needless to say ebay users are up in arms, but my guess is that the change will stand. So ebay Marketers will have to adapt and adjust their selling style to continut to tap into the Greatest Source of Traffic on the internet today, ebay!
Topics: Internet Marketing, ebay |
6 Comments »
« Search Engine Optimization and Google PageRank | Home | More Ebay Digital Delivery News »
[…] Read More => […]
It is a little disappointing, but at the same time it is a good thing that eBay is doing this. This will help weed out the people who were trying to sabotage hinest buyers and steal their hard earned money. It is true that people can still go on and try to sell cd’s for pennies to manipulate the system but very few scammers are going to go through all of that just to build up their feedback. The perceived value of ebooks will also go up now because people are getting a physical product, thus refund requests will be lower. I hope you dont mind, I posted a whole blog of tips to adapt to the change and make it work for the sellers here: http://theebookblueprint.com/blog/
Although some look at this as a terrible change, there are quite a few benefits, including the fact that those that do decide to go with the flow can sell their items as physical products, thus increasing the buyers perceived value of that product. Not to mention that refund requests will lower. I hope you dont mind, I have a list of solutions to this problem posted here:
http://theebookblueprint.com/blog/
Send e-mail to bburke@ebay.com. I sent this e-mail:
Mr. Burke,
I understand the reason behind your new policy, and I myself am appalled at some of the things that get sold this way, however what about the ones of us who actually have digital items that we are selling that we actually spent a lot of time developing? What about people who sell random penny items in an envelope with the chance you might get something good? It’s true that digital items can be easily reproduced and re-sold, but what about those of us who are not using it to pad our feedback scores, but as a legitimate way to sell items that we spent time creating? I am a mom who uses eBay sales to supplement my income, and the sales from my own self created digital items was one way for me to make some extra cash. This for me is a pay off for the time that I already did put into creating the items that I sell. The pre-assembled games do not sell as well, and do not bring in as much money when they do sell, because the cost of assembling them and the time it takes to do so is cost prohibitive. The games I make are good for children with autism and other learning disabilities. Also, many people are looking for something cute that they can assemble themselves to help their kids who have these problems. This new policy is not good business for buyers or sellers, and is contrary to a free market.
There is a good market for these items. There are at least a couple of sellers who are powersellers and make their living exclusively selling digitally downloaded items with games like mine, or instructions on creating children’s crafts or accessories. These sellers will no longer be able to sell their work, even though they are legitimate sellers and have been selling these for a long time. This would put moms like us out of business! Please reconsider this policy, or at least make an option available for those of us who are selling legitimate goods! Is it possible to make it so that digital delivery goods could have a minimum sale price? This would weed out all of the penny sellers who are basically buying feedback with ridiculously low listing prices. They will not be able to collect feedback in volume if they are required to have a minimum listing price of 3 dollars on a digital item for the simple reason that they will not sell as many, and if they do sell them, at least e-bay will be making money and the number of items they sell would be significantly reduced, making the feedback padding issue go away.
Please reconsider!
anji_s ebayer since 1998
To combat this I have started my own auction at Digital Auctions .us. I was put off myself.
If anyone is interested my prices are lower, digital sellers have 2 days after payment to send downloads, and more.
Hi guys, just wanted to share this real quick. I saw this on eBay. Maybe there is a solution. But I rather save my $16, so maybe I won’t sell on ebay anymore.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260228625188&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=016
Good luck