I just spent some time the last few days catching up on the news about this eBay policy change regarding the sale of digital products on their marketplace.

Essentially, starting March 31st, eBay will stop allowing the sale of Digital Products in their auction marketplace. While this is not a complete surprise, the speed that eBay have brought this in certainly is. They are giving people just 7 days notice.

For the full scoop, see:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200803.shtml#2008-03-24125416

This is going to hurt a lot of people who have successfully built their business on eBay over the years. This new policy is going to force several Six Figures businesses to
literally close shop. I don’t know what will happen to all thosewho have eBay stores.

Surely this will affect eBays income, i just wonder if they have thought this through.

There is some good news though, Digital products will be allowed in the classified ads section, but at $9.95 for 30 days for each ad, will it pay for itself, after all if you have 10 products that you promote through eBay to generate leads, it is going to cost almost $100. For someone who only makes $500 per month, that could be a lot.
One alternative is you could put your product onto CD and sell it that way, this may be a good thing as it will have a higher perceived value. Just remember that shipping costs are now factored into the search criteria for rankings on eBay.

But for those that can adapt, this change means a huge drop in competition, and some new opportunities opening up.

I noticed yesterday that there are already products appearing to enable digital products to be put onto CD, all monetized and set to autorun when inserted in a CD drive.

If you’re serious about using eBay to grow your business, whether you are using it for ebook sales or lead generation, your options are to use classified ads or distribute your product on CD.

If you can adapt then get ready for promising times ahead.