Friday, March 28, 2008
The Death of Digital Products on eBay?
eBay has announced that as of March 31st, they will no longer allow digital products that are sold by download to be offered on eBay UNLESS they are physicl products (on a CD) and advertised in the Classified Ads section. It costs $9.95 to place a classified ad on eBay.
The reason they give is that some dishonest sellers are placing one cent ebooks on eBay and quickly building positive feedback so that they can use other eBay services that require higher feedback levels.
If that was really the problem, they could have solved that by saying that no digital download product could be sold for less than $9.95. By dropping digital download products, eBay has killed off about 10,000 sellers, some of which sell only ebooks (and lots of them).
eBay says you can take your digital product and put it on a CD and sell it. What about handicapped people that cannot do this? What about people who buy your CD, pay for it, copy it, then return it and demand a refund? With digital downloads you can state "No Refunds" right in the listing. Since CDs are a physical product, you have to offer refunds according to eBay's TOS. (Terms Of Service).
Finally, does this really solve the problem? What if a dishonest seller listed a $5,000 course with 16 CDs and 4 manuals on eBay then had three friends "buy" it? In the listing it could say "Payment by certified cashiers check only". Now the financial transaction is not going through PayPal so eBay cannot verify that ANY money was paid. Bingo! Instant Power Seller with just three sales per month to "shill" friends!
There are only two possibilities as I see it.
1. eBay is not telling the whole story and has some other reason for this change. After all, they are loosing the listing fees and final value fees for over 40,000 sales per month with this move.
2. The person who made this decision is far, far, far to stupid to be working for any company and making management decisions. Especially a company like eBay.
You pick, I'll go along with either one (or both).
Personally, I plan to just switch to selling my digital products on CDs. On each CD will be a link to my web site where digital downloads are still possible and I do not have to pay eBay listing fees or final value fees.
What's you take? Leave a comment/feedback and I'll try to respond to each one.
eBayNut
The reason they give is that some dishonest sellers are placing one cent ebooks on eBay and quickly building positive feedback so that they can use other eBay services that require higher feedback levels.
If that was really the problem, they could have solved that by saying that no digital download product could be sold for less than $9.95. By dropping digital download products, eBay has killed off about 10,000 sellers, some of which sell only ebooks (and lots of them).
eBay says you can take your digital product and put it on a CD and sell it. What about handicapped people that cannot do this? What about people who buy your CD, pay for it, copy it, then return it and demand a refund? With digital downloads you can state "No Refunds" right in the listing. Since CDs are a physical product, you have to offer refunds according to eBay's TOS. (Terms Of Service).
Finally, does this really solve the problem? What if a dishonest seller listed a $5,000 course with 16 CDs and 4 manuals on eBay then had three friends "buy" it? In the listing it could say "Payment by certified cashiers check only". Now the financial transaction is not going through PayPal so eBay cannot verify that ANY money was paid. Bingo! Instant Power Seller with just three sales per month to "shill" friends!
There are only two possibilities as I see it.
1. eBay is not telling the whole story and has some other reason for this change. After all, they are loosing the listing fees and final value fees for over 40,000 sales per month with this move.
2. The person who made this decision is far, far, far to stupid to be working for any company and making management decisions. Especially a company like eBay.
You pick, I'll go along with either one (or both).
Personally, I plan to just switch to selling my digital products on CDs. On each CD will be a link to my web site where digital downloads are still possible and I do not have to pay eBay listing fees or final value fees.
What's you take? Leave a comment/feedback and I'll try to respond to each one.
eBayNut
Labels: Digital Delivery, eBay, Restraint of Trade, Stupid Decisions
