Ebay lays the Smackdown on the sale of Digital Items

If you’ve ever been on ebay you’ll no doubt have seen this:

or this:

Or the thousands of other Digital Products that are being sold every day.

Ebay has introduced new guidelines that from the 31st March 2008 ban the sale of any Digital Products from normal listings that can be downloaded right away, they must now be advertised under the Classified Ad format (which is useless imo).

Using the Classified Ads format, sellers receive a 30-day ad at a fixed price. This solution enables sellers to continue to market their digital goods on eBay; however, because Classified Ad listings are a lead generation tool and do not result in transactions that go through eBay, Feedback cannot be exchanged between buyer and seller.

This change will include anything that can be downloaded or transferred electronically, i.e.

eBooksMP3’sDigital VideosWebsitesDomain NamesGraphic Design ServicesPhoto ServicesAnd any other service that can be delivered electronically

This change is going to put a lot of people who depend on selling digital products on ebay for a solid income in serious trouble. Naturally there’s probably ways around this change, like physically shipping products, but that’s a pain if you’re used to everything being automated.

However I also think that the change is a good thing for Ebay. I’ve seen too many people get ripped off with Domain Names & Website packages just because they didn’t know any better.

No doubt we’re going to see a large influx of people into the Affiliate Marketing & CPA realm, there’s plenty of reading on this blog