EBay bans auction listings of digital downloads
By Jonathan Schlaffer
It may be a little late in coming but giant auction site eBay has finally banned auction style sales of digital-only goods. This includes software, content in PDF format, eBooks, MP3 files and anything else that can be delivered via email or a download link.
According to eBay those items can no longer be auction or fixed price listings. Instead, they must be placed under eBay Classified Ads. And even then the only category is "Everything Else."
EBay says,
"The reason for this change is the concern about Feedback manipulation (or artificially padding a member’s feedback score). Since Classified Ad format listings are not transactional, no feedback is exchanged between buyers and sellers and no feedback manipulation can occur.
Brian Burke, eBay’s director of Trust and Safety and Feedback system manager said,
"Most items that require digital delivery, once created, can be very easily replicated. This ease of replication creates the opportunity for sellers to list thousands of the same item in an attempt to manipulate the Feedback system."
I agree that banning the sale of certain digital items like software is a good thing. There are those on eBay who were trying to sell copies of the GIMP (which is opensource and freeware) as well as Paint.NET (freeware) and several other software titles that were either cheaper directly from the developer, opensource or freeware.
For other items such as eBooks, PDF and others, it may not be such a good thing. Perhaps just banning the sales of digital downloads for software would have been a good start and then re-evaluating that position after a trial period.
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April 4th, 2008
This is a very disappointing move. I’ve bought digital goods frequently on eBay and have consistently enjoyed a good experience. A couple of months ago I purchased a 2 year license to Kaspersky Anti Virus at a fraction of the cost I would have spent renewing from the source.
I’ve also purchased numerous eBooks through the site and find it a good way to compensate authors for their work.
I’ll be actively looking for good alternatives to eBay for these sorts of transactions. eBay is choosing to ignore an active segment of customers to its own detriment.
April 6th, 2008
I would like to go on record as saying that this new policy ABSOLUTELY STINKS. I have built my business upon providing quality digital products in the form of computer video tutorials and ebooks. I have many thousands of satisfied customers. I have only been selling on eBay now for a few months, but I have over a hundred very happy customers with almost all positive feedback. This new policy is only going to hurt the many legitimate vendors who sell digital goods.
Richard Rost
599CD Computer Training
http://www.599cd.com
April 11th, 2008
Hello, I just saw this on eBay. Maybe there is a solution. But I rather save my $16, so maybe I won’t sell on ebay anymore.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260228929350&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=016
Good luck
April 12th, 2008
Lots of us digital downloads ebay shop owners have built very large businesses on ebay and suddenly we will be evicted as it were. Some of us ebay shop owners have got together and starting an auction mainly for digital goods and we intend to run it FREE. Please come and join us.
http://bristol-auctions.com
April 15th, 2008
This policy stinks! Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water! I see a legit digital product. I am not out to gain feedback, in fact I could care less. I was/am an honest seller who’s customers have been nothing but happy. Wouldn’t a better policy have been to just disable feedback for digital products. This would have allowed honest sellers to keep selling and at the same time take away the motivation for the less than honest. I suggested this to ebay and they said thanks, but we don’t take suggestions. Never had a problem taking my money over the years, but I guess my suggestions they can do without.
April 24th, 2008
We are really disappointed in Ebay too, the obvious way to stop people manipulating feedback is to either make digital items have a minimum price, or to remove feedback for digital items as suggested above.
These changes combined with their “best match” search feature have made it a LOT harder for smaller sellers to sell on ebay. The best match rules do not bring up listings automatically by ending time, but by ebays new algorithm which gives preference to larger companies on ebay, and makes it increasingly harder for newcomers to ebay to sell one off items or small scale retailers – unless they really do their keyword research, and are basically experts in ebays erratic listing policies, and search algorithms.
Many smaller sellers sales have dropped by as much as 90% in the last month due to these changes, and to give 1000s of “digital” sellers (some of which have been trading on ebay as their full time income for several years) 1 week’s notice before they had to cease trading imo was a disgusting unfair act. I can’t wait until some of the smaller auction sites grow and give some competition to ebay!