If you haven’t already noticed there has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth recently due to eBays action to stop the sale of digital downloads as from today. It is almost a repeat of the Google slap where they effectively closed down thousands of online businesses due to a tightening up of their own policies to get rid of “spam” type junk web pages geared to Adsense. In eBay’s case they objected to the Feedback system being manipulated.
For digital booksellers on eBay this has obviously come as a shock as effectively their online stores have been closed. Some of the more enterprising marketers have just accepted it and got on with working to the new regulations.
John Thornhill the UK based owner of the Planet SMS ebook store has been looking at the problem and is now intending to convert his digital products to a physical CD. He has written an interesting report and produced an audio discussing the problem which can be downloaded from Here
John has commented on the fact that there will be some people who will try to cheat the system and find another way of selling downloadable products. Sooner or later eBay will find them out and shut them down. There is just no point in trying to cheat the system. A better approach, as suggested by John, is to look at as an opportunity as there will be a big hole left for “information” products which somebody has to fill.
The lesson you can learn from all this is to never have all your eggs in one basket.
In the long term it can only lead to better products and higher profits for the people able to create the products people want. So its not all doom and gloom.
