ebay

eBay Gives The Green Light To SMART Marketers

As eBays arcane rules and regulations make things ever more complicated for buyers and sellers alike, isn’t it funny to hear when they do something that actually hurts them, not the sellers?

This is the announcement in case you’ve missed it:-

“Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived). To preserve the integrity of the Feedback system, effective March 31 all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically must be listed using the Classified Ads format.”

I think that’s fantastic news for digital goods sellers certainly.

Now all you have to do is run one carefully worded classified ad to get any amount of traffic and email subscribers.

It also means that eBay will lose a small fortune on listing fees.

I think that maybe what they’ve done is add 2 and 2 together and got to 4 without understanding the motivation of many sharp minded ebook sellers.

According to that announcement, eBay are saying they believe that they need to do something about the feedback system being manipulated.  Well this move won’t achieve that.

It’s just as easy for anyone to open a hundred dummy eBay accounts and “sell” non-existent physical goods for a dollar to any of the other accounts without going through PayPal.

I’ve seen scammers do this.  Hundreds of feedback from clearly made up accounts all owned by the same person.

No.  That’s not the reason.

eBay are trying to clean up again.

They did it a couple of years ago with the diet pills et al, stopping certain goods from being listed as a home page item.

They believe that all the ebooks are giving eBay a bad name, and so they’re cleaning up shop without having thought it through.

Because of the high price of listing fees for classified items, they believe that ebook sellers will steer clear of listing in that way.

I predict that the sharper ebook sellers will use classifieds and save money.

And are you ready for a flood of ads for ClickBank products?

How about this?

A classified listing for a quit smoking report for free.  Just enter your name and email address to get your special report.  Don’t forget to confirm.

Once you’ve subscribed, you get your report which has affiliate links inside it, and then each day for the next week you get information on various ClickBank promoted products in the form of a review.

After the first week, you get another product each week related to quitting smoking, again in the form of a review.  They’re all set up as autoresponder messages.

If one classified listing generates 100 leads, you’re going to get at least one sale for something sooner or later, and your listing fee is paid for.

Even if it only generates 10 leads, you’re still going to get a sale eventually.

As soon as all those ebooks disappear, the smart eBay marketer is in the money.

Here’s the eBay announcement if you want a laugh.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803.shtml#2008-03-24125416

Watch this blog for an announcement coming soon that will make you VERY happy indeed if you’re a digital download seller.

😉

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business