Can You Sell Information Products Without eBay?

Of course you can but ignoring the world’s largest marketplace would be a mistake if you want to put your products in front of millions of visitors every day, visitors looking for information of all types. The advantages of selling information products on eBay are attractive to both sellers and buyers for different reasons. Sellers have the luxury of targeted traffic, pinpointed at and looking for, their products. Buyers have an endless list of targeted products to choose from, based on their keyword searches. It’s a win win situation!
The first hurdle you face, if you are going to sell your products on eBay, is selecting which category you will be selling under, or which niche to target. The eBay home page has a long category list to focus both buyers and sellers to make it easier for everyone to find what they are looking for.
As an eBay seller, you have to select the keywords buyers are most likely to use when searching for the products you are trying to sell and then list your products in the correct category. If you didn’t write the information product you are listing for sale, for instance, if the product creator has given you resell rights, don’t make the mistake of just picking a category and listing it there without reading it first.
There are good reasons for this. First of all, you need to be able to answer questions if your potential buyers ask you for any clarification. Secondly, buyers looking for your products will not find them if they are in the wrong category. Also, buyers expecting a Cd-Rom information product, on a specific subject, will be asking for their money back if your products are not listed in the correct category. You need to read or use and get to know what you are selling and you will stay out of trouble with your customers and eBay.
You may like to consider broadening your presence on eBay by opening a store in addition to your auction and buy it now listings. If you have an eBay store, you can take advantage of good discounts on all your auctions and run them longer than the normal 10 days. After your auctions are over, or someone uses the “Buy Now” button to purchase, you can attempt to increase your upsells by sending them to a your eBay store to check out your other products.
Sales pages on eBay have to be as well-designed and professional looking as any other webpage online. You should include colorful, clear pictures of your products to make them stand out from the crowd of listings for products similar to yours. Your sales description copy has to be well-written and feature the benefits your customers will receive when they buy the product.
A strong call to action that makes your customers bid or buy right now should be included. Make sure the bonuses you are giving your buyers are related to your products, this will add value to the items that you want them to buy.
You can add interest and appeal to your auction by paying a premium price and getting included on eBay’s featured listing option. Listing upgrades will allow the use of graphics and icons to draw the browser’s eye to your products and increase the clicks on your page. The premium price you pay for these upgrades puts your auction in a prominent place on the search results page.
A few months ago, eBay changed its policy and no longer allowed the selling of products that could be downloaded, ebooks, reports, software, articles, videos, etc. This put a large dent in the immediate income most information sellers were enjoying.
What changed on eBay was the delivery process for the information product sale. Marketers could still sell their virtual products, but delivery had to be accomplished via offline services, like mail services. Marketers then started using Cd-Rom’s to send their products to their customers.
Marketing to your customer doesn’t end with the sale and delivery of your products. What you want is a loyal, returning customer who buys other products from you on a regular basis. Use thank you emails and consider sending them an occasional free report or PLR product once in a while just for being a customer.

After your first sale to a customer, your only job is customer service and above all, you must look after them!

Having looked at the discussion boards on eBay and read the plethora of objections and complaints concerning the recent changes at eBay Uk  , I thought I’d better check my calculations to make sure my future eBay plans are viable!

At the moment, I plan on listing 15 items per day @ 15p per listing x 30 days and I have a basic shop at subscription cost of £6.00 per month. That comes to a total of £73.50 per month.

Under the new pricing, listing without a shop: 15 items per day @ 40p per listing over 30 days comes to a staggering £180.00 !

With a Basic Shop : 15 items per day @ 20p per listing x 30 days plus the new basic shop price of £14.99 per month subscription adds up to £104.99! This is a massive price increase and I can fully understand the knee jerk reaction of some of the shopkeepers / sellers that are posting on the eBay discussion boards!

However, if I choose to go for the featured shop it looks a lot better : 15 items per day @ 5p per listing x 30 days plus the featured shop subscription of £49.99 adds up to a total of £72.49!

So basically my costs for listing and having an eBay shop will roughly remain the same but I will have the advantages of featured shop including telephone support and my shop listings showing up in the main ebay searches and as of 24th September Gallery Fees will remain free!

The only drawback for me from the changes is that they have taken away the option for your listings to be visible in the U.S and Canada. The way round this is to list an Auction with Buy It Now where the option for International Visibility will still be available.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the changes and my plans for eBay look viable, although I can understand that other sellers are upset over them. But I’m sure, once the ‘red mist’ has disappeared, the majority of them will see that the changes are not all bad!
Colin