No it’s not April and this is not an April fools day joke

As you know I sell copies of the E W portal which offers secure protection for Digital for digital downloads both from your website and ebay.

I was told this morning that ebay will be banning digital downloads from 31st March 2008, details can be read at

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

There is also a ton of activity on eBay’s discussion boards.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000671814&start=80

So as of 31st March 2008 anyone selling digital items will be in violation of eBay’s policies.

. This affects anyone selling items delivered digitally.

This can include:

• eBooks
• Audio/mp3
• Digital Videos
• Websites
• Domain Names
• Graphic Design Services
• Photo Services
• And any other service delivered electronically.

Although this will now limit the sale of E W Portal as people will only be able to use the software with their websites and not ebay there are still positives as every cloud has a silver lining

Some of the more experienced marketers may remember the days of info products that came on floppy disks then cd’s which is in fact how I started and used too make some extra pin money. Then came along digital downloads and prices dropped as people sold the items cheaper purely because they could automate their business

Have you guessed where I am going yet?

As I see it the only negative is that anyone selling digital downloads can no longer automate there business. You will need to make your items physical. And the best way to do this is to burn your eBooks or other digital items 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’s. This task can even be outsourced if you wish.

By selling physical items you are no longer restricted by eBay’s digital item policy.

For starters you are no longer restricted to the ‘buy now’ option. This means you can list auctions.

You also may be able to list in other categories other than Everything Else > Information Products (I am waiting for a reply from eBay and will confirm this soon)

The up-sell opportunities are truly massive. Remember, you are mailing a physical item to your customers so you have a lot more chance of your further ‘offers’ being viewed.

UK users can list on ebay.co.uk again, no more having to list on ebay.com to avoid the digital item policy.

The chance of selling multiple items will increase dramatically as you can offer extra items and no extra shipping as you simply burn it to the same CD or DVD

Because your customers are now getting a physical item you can put your prices up. All you have to do is make the CD case look nice along with the CD and the price goes up. Don’t take my word for look at the price of any home study course delivered via regular mail. In fact I know one internet marketer who brought a course on ebay for £9.99 and basically turned it into a cd and sold it for £39

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.

This is a massive policy change for you and I but we can make this work in our favor.

I hope to bring you more news on this soon but I still see my sites such as www.UKNetIdeas.com and www.1stChoiceSoftware.com having a future

In the meantime please feel free to post your comments and feedback

Derek

[tag]ebay, ban, digital items[/tag]