Selling Digital Products WITHOUT Breaking eBay’s Rules

We used to recommend that new eBay sellers sell digital products such as eBooks to build up a good feedback rating.

It was easy to do — buyers would get instant product — you would quickly get established as a seller and boost your feedback scores.

eBay changed the rules and now electronic products can only be listed using eBay’s Classified Ads, which cost $9.95/month and don’t qualify for feedback.

But there is a way you can still selling digital products on eBay… converting them to a CD and selling them as physical products.

Of course you lose many of the advantages of selling downloadable products (such as no shipping fees, no inventory to handle, etc.), but this strategy is still a great way to boost your detailed seller ratings and get started on eBay.

Plus, now that there are way fewer digital products available on eBay, so it’s likely you can command a higher price for things like eBooks on CD.

This strategy isn’t likely to make you loads of money — in fact, you might only break even or perhaps make a small loss. But it can be a great way to generate leads, establish relationships with customers, and keep them coming back for more… so you’ll be much more profitable in the long run!

So how do you go about putting your digital products onto CD and selling them on eBay?

1. Decide how you’ll sell digital products on CD

First you need to decide how you’re going to use digital products on CD in your eBay business.

Will they be your main product? Or will you offer them as a bonus with something else? Perhaps you could use them to generate leads for future sales. Or you could use them as an "upsell" — an extra product that you can add to an order for a few dollars.

It’s also important to research existing digital products on CD being sold on eBay. When you’re looking at what’s already out there, ask yourself these three crucial questions:

• Is the item scarce? The problem with eBay’s old policy of allowing people to sell eBooks and other digital products was that it seemed like EVERYONE did it! That meant there were thousands of similar digital products for sale, often for just a few cents each.

  But the good news now is that there aren’t many digital products on CD for sale, which means you’re likely to encounter much less competition.

• Is the item desirable? Do people want to buy your digital product on CD? Or can they easily instantly download something similar elsewhere? Desirability is linked to scarcity, because an item’s scarcity often makes it more desirable.

• Is the item in demand? Do people NEED your digital product? Are you selling authoritative information they can’t get anywhere else? Patterns, product manuals, scrapbooking templates and other unique and hard-to-find items translate well to CD, because people will overlook the slight inconvenience of waiting for a CD to get them.

Click here to find out what’s hot on eBay.

To research what’s already available for sale, click here.

2. Find a CD duplication service

Burning digital products to CD can be a tedious and time-consuming process — so why not get the job done quickly and cheaply by a professional company?

This can be well worth it if you sell a lot of CDs — because you can negotiate better rates for larger orders. Plus, some CD duplication companies can also take care of your fulfillment.

Here’s what you need to know BEFORE you select a CD duplication service:

• What format you require (audio CD, data CD, or DVD)
• How your CDs will be packaged (options include plastic cases, paper envelopes, cardboard sleeves, and clamshells)
• What text or graphics you need printed on your CDs and packaging
• How many copies you need
• Whether your order is a one-off job — or you’ll need more copies in the future
• How quickly you need your CDs produced
• Whether the duplication company complies with International (ISO) quality standards

So what can you expect to pay?

Well, prices tend to depend on the size of your order, but here’s an example of typical prices for different quantities of standard 74-minute/650MB CDs with text logos and covers with one side of printed text:

• 10 units: Total cost: $46; Cost per disc: $4.60
• 100 units: Total cost: $148; Cost per disc: $1.48
• 1,000 units: Total cost: $1,090; Cost per disc: $1.09

Duplium (http://www.duplium.com/) is a good option for North American sellers — or you can search Google for a suitable company in your area.

3. Build your own website and sell your digital items OFF eBay

If you still want to sell your digital items as downloads rather than on CD, but you’re worried you won’t sell enough using eBay’s Classified Ads, you should consider setting up your own website.

You’ll need your own domain name, such as www.mysite.com, and a web hosting package that gives you some virtual "space" on the Internet to store your website. When choosing your domain name, keep it related to your business, and consider using words that reflect your eBay user ID or eBay Store name.

Visit www.marketingtips.com/webhost to learn more about registering a domain name and purchasing web hosting for your first site. Then you have to build your site. Here are the three easiest ways to go about it:

• Bebiz: The best option for setting up a simple — but effective — money-making website is our own BeBiz program (http://www.bebiz.com/). BeBiz is an easy-to-use interactive program that guides you every step of the way as you create your own Internet business — and it’s ideal for building a website to sell digital products. It also includes full video tutorials that walk you through each step — removing every single barrier standing between you and your own successful online business. A huge advantage of BeBiz is that it goes beyond just setting up a website and shows you how to attract the search engines so you can get lots of traffic.
• Free website templates: For a simple one-page website, search Google for "free website templates" and choose something that reflects your business. Then just fill it in.
• Create a blog: Blogs are easy to create and maintain, and they can be really useful for selling and/or promoting your eBay business. Google’s Blogger service (www.blogger.com/) makes it easy to create a blog that’s simple to update with information about the products and services you offer. And it’s free!

Your own website can be great for boosting your eBay business as well as giving you an extra outlet to sell your products.

By linking to your eBay listings or eBay Store from your website, you can get more people to look at your items AND improve their search engine ranking.

Plus, if you sign up as an eBay affiliate in the eBay Partner Network, you can actually get paid by eBay for driving traffic to eBay listings!

The days of selling digital products through regular eBay listings may be long gone — but these new strategies can help you build relationships with customers, prove yourself as a reliable seller, boost your DSRs, and make you more profitable in the long run!

And digital products are still one of the most profitable things to sell on your own website — so you should definitely check out how http://www.bebiz.com/ can help you create another stream of income outside eBay!

 

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