What’s Up With eBay?

I’ve mentioned in the last few posts how slow the ebook selling business seems to be on eBay, but I confess to not having really taken a close look to see what’s been happening – or rather not happening.

Well, I did yesterday. It ain’t pretty.

I bought a new book about using eBay classified ads to sell products and build a list. I’m not done with it, so I won’t review it here yet, but it did get me looking at eBay Pulse to see what information products are being sold. I searched completed listings and found ebooks that had been sold for pennies – with free shipping.

Excuse me. If you are complying with eBays rules prohibiting digital delivery, how can you be selling a CD and mailing it and making money from it all for a total sale of $.20? Hmmm, I don’t believe that can be done, do you?

Looking at the listings, I found several that flat out said they’d email the link for the book, lots that offered free shipping for “pick-up” and many that didn’t specify anything other than that you need Adobe to open and read the file.

Looks like eBay doesn’t really give a rat whether sellers are defying the digital delivery ban. This after ruining/sending away a number of vendors, causing a lot of worry and angst as the rest of us tried to figure out how we could change our businesses to be in compliance and still make a few cents.

I’m not sure what to do about this except to continue trying to find other ways to make money. I do think classified ads for products that can’t be sold for a few cents is one possibility, and I’ll be giving a review of the new book I bought in a few days.

In the meantime, I’ll be pulling a lot of my listings from my store and saving some pennies.

More later. Be well.