eBay Dumps Ebook Vendors, And I’m In The Dumps About It

Well, isn’t this just a fine kettle of fish. eBay, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that digital goods being sold on their site offer no value to anyone, digital items are only bought and sold to manipulate feedback, and therefore, they must not be sold - except through eBay ads ($9.95 or so), where there is no participation in the eBay feedback system.

 You can see their announcement here: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803241300132.html

As you can see, the announcement was made yesterday afternoon, and it’s effective March 31. Nice notice!

There’s plenty of buzzing in forums about this, with suggestions that digital products be burned to CDs and offered as physical products being, so far, one of primary ways out of this fix for venders of ebooks. This is a viable option for higher priced books, and it may be that someone looking for information would be willing to spend the extra time and money it takes to get their product. It just seems to me, at least from my limited experience selling ebooks, that eBay is doing a disservice to their customers, both sellers and buyers.

The latest forum I visited also had plenty of “make lemonade from the lemons” comments on it. Well, bite me! Sure I’m working on backend and viral products, but the way of building that, of building a list so that I can diversify was all tied up in the ebook on eBay concept - a concept that has made a number of people quite financially comfortable, I might add.

On the upside, I can dump a whole bunch of ebooks from my hard drive that have to with this ebook eBay business.

I know that one of the reasons for this decision is that there are many venders selling their books for a penny, and they are primarily looking to build feedback. Apparently there are venders who will do this, build some good feedback, then move on to expensive product listings, which they don’t fulfill. Couldn’t eBay deal directly with that problem? They already shut down sites with penny books; they have to have the capability of ferreting out all the vendors selling penny books. Make it direct policy that digital products have to be sold for a minimum amount. They can’t honestly believe, in looking at their own site and the statistics of sellers who charge even $.99 that there can be any significant rapid accumulation of feedback. It takes a lot of time and energy to even list the damn books, much less get anyone to buy them. How is that feedback manipulation?

So, just as things are starting to take off in my eBay ebook sales business, it’s being shut down. Back to the drawing board in finding that one marketing method to focus on. Guess I’d better change the name of this blog, as well. But I know I’d better wait until I’m feeling a little less hostile towards eBay.

For now, I have to clean up the recommendations and resources pages to remove all the stuff about selling ebooks on Ebay. Also have to start doing some real work on SmilingPartners, where the entire first page has listings of those kinds of products. Check the site out in a few days to see the changes. Also, you only have a few days to find digital information products on eBay.