Selling Information Products On eBay Is Easy As 1,2,3
Part 1
Before the rule changes on eBay, you were able to sell digital items to your customers. A buyer would buy your item, pay via PayPal and if you were an advanced seller you would’ve had systems in place that would automatically send out an email with the download link to the product. It was a sellers dream for those that were involved in the eBay ebook business. Let me tell you why.
Your business would’ve been set up on autopilot, your listing would re list at a pre determined date and your digital products would be sent automatically. As soon as the buyer left feedback the system would automatically reply. All you had to do was just literally sit back and watch the money roll in. If you wanted to increase your income then you would add more products to your eBay shop. Setting up the system needed time and effort but after that it would’ve been easy to maintain by checking email, websites etc. eBay has now changed the rules and has stopped the sale of digital goods to prevent sellers from abusing the feedback system. There were many sellers selling items for $0.01 at a time just to build up feedback. Can you really take a seller seriously if he’s selling $0.01 digital items?
It’s a good thing eBay changed the rules because it changes a few things: 1. You can charge higher prices for physical items ie a CD. 2. It paves the way for honest sellers. eBay wants honest sellers apart from than those that manipulate the feedback system.
Part 2
No one said you can’t carry on selling digital goods, all you have to do now is just sell it as a physical item. What you need to do is put up a listing as normal but this time burn the digital item to a blank CD. Now that eBay has gotten rid of the fake eBay sellers that only do it for feedback it gives the honest sellers more space and potentially more room to make money.
This can be done in two ways. You either deliver the items yourself ie you have to supply the materials, burn it, decorate it, package it, deliver it or you can use a fulfillment company that does all of the above for you (you just have to supply the item and graphics etc).
Here are the pro and cons of each:
Yourself
Pros: You have full control of your business, the cost may be cheaper, you’re able to communicate with your customers easier.
Cons: Manual labour, repetitive, imagine your business when you got to burn 100 CD’s per day or more!
Fulfillment Company
Pros: Business on autopilot
Cons: It is out of your control, what if a worker doesn’t turn up, your items might get delivered late, and your feedback is at risk. Both of these methods have their pros and cons, you have to decide which one is best for you. If you ask me I would choose to control the business myself, that way you can’t blame anyone else but yourself which should get you working on your business.
Part 3
The advantage of selling a physical product is the perceived value is greater than if it was a digital download. For this part I’m going to talk about how you can increase multiple sales from the same buyer. Now that you’re selling digital information products via a CD you have much more opportunities to sell to you customers. There is a process behind this and if done right you will be able to market more products to the same buyer. It is much easier to sell to an existing customer or someone that trusts you than to find a new customer.
When burning the digital information to the CD instead of just burning the digital product they have purchased you should also recommend other products in the CD. For example if the person purchased a “how to improve your golf swing” ebook, you could also recommend a “how to choose the best golf club” ebook. A CD will hold up to 800 MB of data so you have more than enough space to add more products to promote. This is just one of the ways to increase sales. Another way to increase sales is to list in your eBay listing that if the buyer buys e.g. 3 or more products, you will post them the item free of charge.
A CD’s weight will stay the same whether you have 1 product or 100 products on it as it cost nothing extra to burn. So there you have it, just these simple tips will increase your sale.
Part 4
In this final and probably the most important, we will talk about how you’re going to keep your customers without losing them. When the buyer opens the CD for the first time, you should have a page where you give the buyer the opportunity to opt in to your mailing list. To do so you can do it by offering a free ebook, newsletter etc. The reason you do this is because if you had the contact details of your buyers it would be much easier to sell to them later on as you already have a previous customer. Again it is easier to sell to someone when they trust you and know that they’ve done business with you. The best email delivery service in my opinion is Aweber, they are the best in the business and crucial to your success.
They say “The money is in the list”, what this means is that if you have a bunch of customers / prospect that already have an interest in your products. Not only will you be able to promote your products but you will also be able to do it with other peoples products and earn a commission for each sale. The more people you get signing up to your mailing list the more money you will potentially make. This is also known as affiliate marketing.
To be able to do this you will need to sign up to a email delivery service so that you can’t be accused of spam as the customer/prospect “opted in”. As you keep selling your eBay goods and collecting email address, you’re taking the customers of eBay. Who knows how long eBay will be around.
All of this information is good but if you don’t have products to sell then how is this useful? John Thornhill is probably one of the best internet marketers on ebay. He sells ebooks all day long on there and has a package full of ebooks for resale so you too can make money on ebay. The package is called 90 Day Powerseller, his feedback count is 16430 and still counting! This guy knows his stuff.
I hope this is useful to you.
Michael Nguyen