Creating Digital Products for Sale on eBay or Etsy

[Hayley]

Hi all

I just wanted to share with you all something I'm working on at the minute which is in very early stages.... but has some mileage I think.

I've been creating my own digital products which I'm selling on eBay. I don't mean digital products like an app (I wish!) but basically I'm creating business templates for people in the same profession as me to use in their jobs (1 and 2 page word documents) to help them for planning purposes.

I'm pricing them low at between £2 to £3 but the only fees I pay are listing fees, no postage. There's also my time involved in creating the product but once I've created one, it has the potential to sell over and over again. Almost passive income, except for the fact that I need to email the template over to the buyer once it's been purchased.

I'm selling around 2 templates per week, not a lot I know, but I'm thinking this could be scaled up into something much more either by increasing the quantity of products or by increasing the quality and therefore charging a higher price.

I've written a post about it on my blog in case you're interested plus some other ideas I've had: http://diseasecalleddebt.com/digital-products-ebay/

Has anyone tried anything similar?

 

[Jon]

Hi Hayley

Yes I have tried to go down this route before

Once I mentioned the content being emailed to the buyer or whatever eBay banned my account

have those rules now changed?

 

[Jon]

BTW your blog posts are posted automatically over here in the RSS subforum

 

[Hayley]

Thanks Jon!

I've never come across that before with eBay banning my account. I say in my description that I'll email the buyer and then I just use the details which are on the paypal invoice. Not had any problems yet with it...

There might be a way of emailing through eBay and sending as an attachment.

This could also be done on Etsy as they have a category for digital handmade products i.e. ready made web graphics.

 

[Jon]

yeah it was using the words email in the listing that got me banned

I will try and digup the banning emails which explain it better

 

[Jon]

this was how it begun

[font=arial, verdana]We appreciate that you chose eBay to list your listing(s). However, we have removed your (s) because it breaches our Digitally Delivered Goods policy.

170618682497 - Fallout 3 Game Save - PS3
170618682498 - Little Big Planet 100% Game Save - PS3
170618682500 - Gran Turismo 5 Prologue 100% Game Save
170618682502 - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 100% Game Save - PS3


Why did we remove your listing?

You listed a Digitally Deleviered Item. Listings that contain content that can be digitally downloaded or transferred are not permitted on eBay. You may relist this item provided you put it on physical media (CD, paper). It may be not copyrighted material and it should be available in the public domain.

In accordance with our User Agreement, items prohibited by law or by eBay policy are not allowed on eBay.

Sellers are not permitted to offer digitally delivered items for sale on eBay. This includes items such as eBooks, recipes in the electronic format, wallpaper for a computer, etc.

For more information on the eBay policy, please visit:


and then they ended up fully suspending my account
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[Hayley]

Thanks for clarifying the terms! Wow can't believe they suspended your account for that, especially if you're delivering a useful product.

It seems the seller is taking a risk in that case but I haven't had a problem so far (been doing this for a few months) and I've seen others doing the same with patterns, tutorials, guides and things like that.

I'll carry on until I'm notified otherwise I think!

There is always Etsy at least which you can do this with - especially graphic design elements.

 

[Jon]

there are warnings in place first as I kept breaching the agreement by re listing the items whenever they took them down

eBay is all over the place imo, if it lets companies like DS Domination openly advertise products on ebay that are then bought from Amazon they probably don't care anymore about listing digital items (this was back in 2009)

 

[Hayley]

I haven't had any warnings at all from them... very interesting. I'm not listing mine as digital downloads or anything like that, mine's actually under educational resources, because that's what these are.

I'll keep you posted in case I get any warnings or experience any problems when I start listing other products.