Ebay and Digital Products–is this the end?
Hello again…..
If you have by chance not been by your computer or not reading any emails you are getting from other marketers or haven’t visited your favorite forum the past couple of days, then you have missed the annoucement that ebay is going to be prohibiting the selling of downloadable digital products (read ebooks) as of March 31.
Read it here:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803241300132.html
Read the ebay forum thread here:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000671814&start=0
What does this mean to you? Me? Well, if you are selling ebooks on ebay, as of March 31, you will no longer be able to.
What are your options going to be? Well, from what I can gather from reading forums and the actual ebay policy, you have two choices; you can sell the ebooks by putting them on a physical cd and then shipping them to your customer, or by directing traffic to your website with classified ads and then selling your ebooks there.
That sort of leaves me in a quandry….if you have been following my progress, you remember that I have been planning on setting up an ebay store to sell ebooks and then use a system to get customers to optin to a mailing list and then go from there. It also makes some of the books that are offered at 5 Star Ebooks obsolete since they are dealing with how to build feedback and build a mailing list using digital product sales using ebay.
Well, the good part about the change in policy is that I won’t have to open up a store (at least for now) to sell my collection of ebooks and I will save myself about $30 per month.
The bad part? I may have to try to figure out how to make the classified ads work on ebay for a traffic source to 5 Star Ebooks.
Another good part? At least now, some of the better books that are listed for sale on the site, I can raise the price on. I think the policy change at ebay will have a ripple effect on the pricing of ebooks. Although it will take more work to drive traffic to the site, you will be able to charge a higher price for the books because they won’t be competing on ebay anymore.
Another bad part? I really don’t know if I want to be listing an ebook on ebay, sell it, have to burn it to a cd, go to the post office and mail it…..yes, there have been several marketers who have been touting a service that will do all of this for you. The question I have about this service is–what about the back end? How can you put extra bonuses on the cd for your customer? You know, value added service. If I can find an answer to this question, maybe I will consider it.
In the meantime…..back to focusing on the real business at hand…driving traffic to the site, building a list and probably the biggest reason I am doing this, generating an income from it.
Last but not least, I am working on my very first information product. This is an ebook targeted at a specific niche that I think will be a good seller given the state of the US economy right now. I am doing this with the help of a mentor and coach and with any luck, will be ready to go in the next couple of weeks.
Until next time,
Here’s to your success.
Ron
Ron,
You’ll probably hear this same basic message throughout the forums, however I’ve yet to find anyone who really has a solid plan of how they’re going to deal with this slap in the face by eBay.
Basically, I understand why eBay made this move. I just think the way they sprung it on us was, well… infuriating.
We can do what we can to persuade them to repeal the decision, but I doubt they will. But what I think we really need to focus on is evolving.
I’m an Internet Marketing Coach and I have a soft spot for everybody who is busting their butts to sell stuff on eBay. I started a lot of my newbie students out on eBay. And have since taught them to build a more solid business model, and work on multiple revenue streams.
Probably the most important takeaway I can give you right now, is that if you’ve been selling on eBay for a while, you’ve already got one of your greatest assets.
A LIST OF BUYERS. As we all know, a list of buyers is exponentially more valuable than a list of prospects.
I propose that we all extract the names, emails, and product purchase details out to our bulk mailers. Then, setup a “coming soon” page website with an optin form. Work on making the new site a respectable looking shopping cart behind the scenes. While building a buzz with our list about our upcoming website launch.
I expect to have a nice big pay day in a few weeks when I relaunch the information products part of my business on a new site.
Thanks for listening.