{"id":70,"date":"2008-03-25T11:10:19","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T11:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsmsblog.com\/digital-items-banned-on-ebay\/"},"modified":"2008-03-25T11:10:19","modified_gmt":"2008-03-25T11:10:19","slug":"digital-items-banned-on-ebay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/digital-items-banned-on-ebay\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Items Banned On eBay"},"content":{"rendered":"<style><\/style>\n<p>Please note this is a rushed post as I felt you needed to know of this new  eBay policy ASAP. Therefore I will be providing more information as the week goes  on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I woke up this morning to find a ton of emails in my inbox plus my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ninetydaypowerseller.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">members  only forum<\/a> regarding this new policy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ebay.com\/aw\/core\/200803241300132.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www2.ebay.com\/aw\/core\/200803.shtml#2008-03-24125416<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is also\u00a0a ton of activity on eBay&#8217;s discussion boards.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/forums.ebay.com\/db2\/thread.jspa?threadID=1000671814&amp;start=0\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/forums.ebay.com\/db2\/thread.jspa?threadID=1000671814&amp;start=0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So as of 31st March 2008 anyone selling digital items will be in violation of  eBay&#8217;s policies.<\/p>\n<p>Now this does not only affect eBook sellers. This affects anyone selling  items delivered digitally.<\/p>\n<p>This can include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>eBooks<\/li>\n<li>Audio\/mp3<\/li>\n<li>Digital Videos<\/li>\n<li>Websites<\/li>\n<li>Domain Names<\/li>\n<li>Graphic Design Services<\/li>\n<li>Photo Services<\/li>\n<li>And any other service delivered electronically.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now you may have noticed I have never ever bad mouthed eBay and I have no  intentions of starting now.<\/p>\n<p>There is just no point, I would much rather look for the positives that can  be taken from this new policy.<\/p>\n<p>And let me tell you the positives actually outweigh the negatives.<\/p>\n<p>There is only one negative issue I can find so far and that is your eBook  business can no longer be automated. You will need to make your items physical.  And the best way to do this is to burn your eBooks to CD Rom and send it via regular mail.  This is not as hard as it sounds once you set up a system to burn and ship CD&#8217;s.  This task can even be outsourced if you wish.<\/p>\n<p>John&#8230; Your joking. I can&#8217;t do that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Oh yes you can, and let me tell you it&#8217;s not as bad as it sounds. Let me  explain.<\/p>\n<p>By selling physical items you are no longer restricted by eBay&#8217;s digital item  policy.<\/p>\n<p>For starters you are no longer restricted to the &#8216;buy now&#8217; option. This  means you can list auctions.<\/p>\n<p>You also may be able to list in other categories other than Everything Else  &gt; Information Products (I am waiting for a reply from eBay and will confirm  this soon)<\/p>\n<p>The up-sell opportunities are truly\u00a0massive. Remember, you are mailing a  physical item to your customers so you have a lot more chance of your further  &#8216;offers&#8217; being viewed. And this is what selling eBooks on eBay is all  about.<\/p>\n<p>UK users can list on ebay.co.uk again, no more having to list on ebay.com  to avoid the digital item policy.<\/p>\n<p>The chance of selling multiple items will increase dramatically. By  offering\u00a0extra items\u00a0for no extra shipping means you will sell more. All you  have to do is add all purchases to the same CD rom.<\/p>\n<p>Higher perceived value. Because your customer is getting something in the  mail you can put your prices up. Just look at the price of any home study course  delivered via regular mail.<\/p>\n<p>These are just ideas off the top of my head. I will have more but I felt I  needed to get this post &#8216;out there&#8217; before doom and gloom sets in.<\/p>\n<p>Remember! People who want to succeed will not look at the negatives, they  will look for the positives and at the moment I feel the positives far outweigh  the negatives.<\/p>\n<p>This is\u00a0a massive policy change for you and I\u00a0but we can make this work in  our favor.<\/p>\n<p>I expect to make more posts regarding this over the course of the week as I am waiting for a response to a few questions I put to eBay PowerSeller support.  Please feel free to share your comments, thoughts, ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please note this is a rushed post as I felt you needed to know of this new eBay policy ASAP. Therefore I will be providing more information as the week&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2rQRH-18","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnthornhill.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}