Digital Products & eBay

In early 2008, eBay make a shocking announcement that rocked the worlds of sellers around the world.  Countless people have made good incomes by selling digital products like eBooks and software on eBay.

But that all came crashing down when eBay made the announcement that they would no longer allow digital downloads in standard auction listings. There has been a lot of speculation over why eBay chose to ban digital listings.

Here are some of the possible reasons:

•    PayPal doesn’t offer buyer protection for digital items.  Perhaps eBay felt it should eliminate them in order to eliminate a lot of the hassles that came with buyers who were unhappy with the quality of items but weren’t covered by the buyer protection policies.
•    Buyers and sellers of cheap eBooks are often simply looking for quick, cheap feedback.  eBay discourages anything that gets people “undeserved” feedback, so eBay might have felt these digital auctions were a big source of this type of feedback.
•    A lot of digital items are notoriously low in quality.  Perhaps eBay simply didn’t want to deal with these items being in their system, as it could harm their reputation if they continued allowing these items to be sold.
•    Digital items are also very hard to monitor for copyright violations.  It could be that eBay felt that there was too much fraud with regards to digital products, and they may have decided the hassle just wasn’t worth it anymore.

Whatever their reasons, eBay certainly turned a lot of lives upside down.  Panic spread quickly among digital product sellers.  Many of them had been making most or all of their incomes with this method for a long time.

Others quickly saw opportunity.  They realized that there were ways to make money selling their digital products on eBay even with the new restrictions.  In fact, some sellers even realized they could make more money with the new restrictions than they made before!

Creative people soon realized that these new restrictions weren’t as detrimental as some people thought.  They quickly came up with new ideas for selling digital items.

eBay Classified

The first way people started making money selling digital products on eBay was through the use of eBay classifieds.  eBay actually still allows digital items to be sold through their classified ads system.

The eBay classified ads run for one month and cost less than $10 to post.  There are no other fees associated, and you don’t have to pay final value fees.  The classified ads are run along with the regular auction listings, so they get plenty of exposure.

Another great thing about eBay classifieds is the fact that you can link to a website.  You can’t link off the eBay website when you do a regular auction listing, but you can with classifieds!  This makes it easier to use eBay to build a list.

There is one drawback to the classified ads. Since they last for 30 days, they can take a long time before they start getting a lot of traffic. Since eBay searches are sorted by those ended soonest by default, the classified ads don’t generally show up until they’re almost ready to expire.

Some people say they don’t get much traffic to their eBay classified ads, but others claim to get a lot.  If you have a compelling title and thumbnail, you’ll probably get enough traffic to your listing to make the ad worth it.  Just be sure your ad copy is good, so that traffic will translate into visitors and sales.

The eBay classifieds can be used to advertise more than just eBooks and software.  You can also use these ads to send traffic to affiliate review sites or blogs, for example.  You could advertise services.  You could even use them to build your list by offering free downloads in exchange for an opt-in.

EBay classifieds are great, because you can use them for things you can’t do in normal auction listings.  So think outside the box and try classifieds in ways you couldn’t use your auctions before.

Shipping Physical CDs
A lot of people decided to start shipping their digital goods on CD to avoid having their auctions canceled by eBay.  Some people burn their own CDs and ship them, and others use a service like http://www.kunaki.com.

A few people reported that these auctions were canceled anyway.  Apparently the eBay staff has a hard time distinguishing digital downloads from shipped merchandise, probably due to the lack of shipping.  So if you’re going to sell your digital items on CD, you should be sure to include at least a small shipping charge, perhaps $1.00.

Also, some people have run into trouble selling their CDs if they state in the auction that the buyer can also download the item while waiting for the CD to arrive.  If you’re going to allow digital download, it’s best to send the link after the auction is over, and don’t mention it in the auction itself.  Consider it like an unadvertised bonus for your buyers.

Printing Your Digital Products
You can also print your digital products on your home computer and ship them as physical products.  There are several ways you can do this.

1.    You could just print the product out in black and white and staple or clip the pages together.  This is a cheaper option.
2.    You could print the pages in black and white or color, and then place them all inside a cheap binder of some sort.  For smaller documents, you can buy report covers that are clear plastic.  You place the papers inside, then slide a long piece of plastic down the edge to lock the papers in place.  For larger documents, you could use a hole-punch to punch three holes in the papers, and then put them inside a 3-ring binder.
3.    You could also print the pages in black and white or color, and then bind them with some sort of home binding system.  This is the most expensive option for printing yourself, but it would add value to the product.  Home binding systems typically cost a few hundred dollars.  They punch a lot of small, rectangular or round holes down the side of the paper, and then they wrap a plastic or wire binder through the holes to hold the paper together.

You could also take the document to a print shop or to a place like Kinko’s to have it copied.  It’s probably cheaper to have them printed at Kinko’s than to print them yourself, because Kinko’s probably gets their ink and paper a LOT cheaper than you could.

Many printing companies can also bind your book for you, so you should ask if that’s an option when you go in.  They may have several binding options available.  Remember to include printing and binding in your price.

Using a Self Publishing Service
You can use a self publishing service to print your book.  Sites like http://www.lulu.com can help you print your book out and even bind it just like a real book.  In fact, your product would be bound at a quality that would allow it to be sold on Amazon.com or in real bookstores!

I’ve actually seen books that were published at lulu.com in my local bookstore.  I’ve ordered a book from Amazon that turned out to be published through Lulu and I had no idea until it arrived!  They are published just like any other book.

Another great thing about using Lulu is the fact that they offer a special service that gets a real ISBN number for your book, and they can try to get you onto Amazon and possibly even into bookstores!  The service does cost a bit, but it’s VERY affordable considering the number of sales you could get if you make it onto Amazon.

Another great thing about using Lulu or other services to print a physical book is that it adds a lot of value to your product.  Most people (especially outside I.M.) believe that eBooks are junk.  Part of this mentality comes from the masses of people who have been selling crappy MRR eBooks on eBay for 99 cents.  People have come to believe that all eBooks are junk, but they believe physical books must be good in order to be published.

You don’t have to tell people that you’ve self-published the book.  They can just assume the book has been published through a “regular” publisher, just like I did with the book I ordered from Amazon.  You don’t even have to tell people the book is yours.  Just sell it like you would any standard book.

The great thing about publishing with Lulu is that you could also sell the book on Craigslist.  Although most posts for eBooks would be flagged as spam by people on Craigslist, you could easily sell one copy of your book at a time there with no problem!

Just post to the books section of your local Craigslist, and then email instructions on how to purchase it to anyone who responds to you.  In the ad you can say you only have one copy (just like any individual probably would have only one copy of a book they bought) but you can sell it as many times as you want to anyone who answers your ad.  This can be some nice extra income!