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The eBay digital product policy that went into effect on March 31st, has left me with a few of questions that I have been trying to get answers to.

I haven’t sold on eBay since they made the new policy, and will probably never go back, but I would like answers to my questions.

My two questions are:

Question 1.  I still see websites being sold on eBay auctions.  Are websites not considered digital download products?

So, about a month ago I sent eBay the following question:
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I have a question on your new digital product policy. I know of at least one eBay seller who is selling websites on eBay auctions and BIN.  I thought websites were included in the eBay digital product policy.  The seller does state the following in their FAQs:

“TERMS  – The domain name will be transferred to you through Websitenamewithheld.com once full payment has been received and cleared.  The website will be set up on a hosting server. No scripts will be transferred through email or download links. Once the site has been installed on your server you will have complete access to the site pages to make any changes.”

Since no download-able products are being sent to the customer, is this type of selling of digital products okay?  Can I sell websites as long as I don’t email the customers download links?  Instead I would provide the service of setting the sites up for the customer.

I look forward to your reply,
Mike Gates
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A few days ago I finally received the answer from eBay:

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Thank you for writing eBay in regard to clarification of our Digital Delivered Goods Policy..

Michael, you are permitted to sell Websites on eBay without having them in a Classified Ads Format. We would be happy to review a proposed listing and make sure it complies with eBay policies before you post it.

Here are two ways that we can do this:

- If you have Web hosting, please create an HTML-based listing template and upload it. Then send us the Web link for the template so we can review it.

- Or, reply to this email and paste the proposed title and item description in the body of the email. Please don’t send the information as an attachment. For security reasons, we can’t open attachments.

Thank you for your patience and understanding concerning this matter.

If you have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to reply to this email and let us know.
++++++++++++++++

That response tells me that I can sell websites on eBay, I just need to have them look over my initial listing to make sure I am doing everything correctly, according to their policies.

For me, that opens a whole new set of questions.  Can I sell services that are not digitally delivered on eBay – like website design, or personal graphic design, or any type of consulting.  It appears that to me that I could but only eBay knows for sure (maybe).

Question 2.  If I send my buyers a physical product, like a CD/DVD, can I also email them a download link after the purchase?

Personally, I won’t buy a downloadable type product off of eBay if I can’t get it right away.  I don’t want to wait for a physical product to be sent to me.

I will try to find the same product, or a similar product elsewhere so I can’t get it immediately.

I have yet to get this question answered by eBay.  But I have heard that sellers who also delivered a download link after purchase, in addition to sending a physical product, got in trouble.

So, my guess is if eBay finds out about your emailing a download link, you will get into trouble.

If you have a definitive answer to #2, please let me know.  If you have contradictory information regarding question #1, please let me know.

Mike

Wow, just when you think a company couldn’t make any worse of a decision than a decision they made earlier in the year.

I’m actually a little late on the latest eBay Feedback change.  I believe this change was announced in February, but didn’t start to take affect until May 27th.

I’m not selling on eBay anymore.  I closed my store, canceled my seller manager pro and deleted my listings due to the other great eBay change – the eBay Digital Product decision.
I just happened on this news and visited their Feedback forum .

Apparently, now sellers can no longer leave negative feedback for buyers – what???  Yes, buyers can leave negative feedback for sellers, but sellers can not leave negative feedback.

Sellers with 100% positive feedback for years, suddenly had their feedback reduced when buyers gave negative feedback for no apparent reason.  Unfortunately, sellers have no recourse on the negative feedback, other than to leave a comment on the negative feedback.

So, sellers can comment on negative feedback and try to explain it, but if you don’t take the time to read the comment you will never know the reason, valid or not.

Sellers who have had very few non-payment auctions in the past are suddenly seeing a huge increase in non-payments.  The new change seems to be bringing out a lot of buyer fraud, and slow to pay buyers.

Ebay states they will investigate buyer fraud and remove those members.  But, how long does that take?  How much of the sellers time is it going to take?

Great job ebay! You have made at least two major bone headed decisions so far this year. How many more can you make?

You continue to kick your sellers in the butt and expect them to take it time after time. If you don’t want sellers, or at least smaller sellers, why don’t you just say so.

I am going to enjoy watching sellers leaving by the droves and your stock prices dropping.  I have seen forums where Platinum Power Sellers have had enough and are moving their products elsewhere.

Ebay is becoming quite a joke.

I guess eBay doesn’t read their forums. If I were ebay I’d want to know what my customers are thinking. I would be highly concerned about forums with thousands of sellers posting negative comments and threatening to leave.

I would wonder how many are feeling the same way but would never post in a forum.

Either ebay doesn’t care, or think sellers who will leave are a small minority and won’t make a difference.

Personally, I left a few months ago and no longer sell or BUY from ebay. Sorry sellers, I won’t buy from ebay until ebay corrects some of the wrongs they have done to their sellers. How else can we get their attention?

Ebay decision makers must be “Rocket Scientists”.

It’s too bad that eBay has turned a good service into a joke.  I just can’t believe the decisions they have made the last few months.

Ebay has made a number of decisions over the years that have driven sellers away.  This is by far the most negative noise I have heard from eBay sellers.  Usually, you will find the positive types who will bring out the good side of eBay changes.  I haven’t found those people yet.

I think this may be the final blow to thousands of sellers, who will leave eBay for good.  How many sellers can eBay lose before they crash and burn?

Mike

After some hesitation, I decided to install the Flock browser. Why Flock?

Ed Dale of the 30 Day Challenge has made Flock the official browser of the 30 Day Challenge. Last year the 30 DC used the Firefox browser. Last year because of the 30 DC I went from Internet Explorer to Firefox.

I grew to love Firefox, and if you have used Firefox you know it is much better than IE. So, moving from Firefox to Flock made me a little uneasy – but I have done it!

Flock is built on the same platform as Firefox so I was hoping all of my favorite Firefox features would be in Flock.

The Flock installation went well, and it tries to import all of your bookmarks, and history. It did that well, but I was hoping it would also import my Firefox customized toolbars and my Firefox extensions. It didn’t import my toolbars or Firefox extensions which was disappointing.

I had to go through and install my favorite extensions and toolbars into Flock. The good news is, it appears most of the Firefox extensions also work in Flock.

So what makes Flock different than Firefox? Flock calls itself the Social Web Browser, and it is! After watching the introductory videos, I was impressed with what you can easily do with Flock.

If you’re curious about Flock, you can watch the post install videos to get an idea of what Flock is all about.

http://www.flock.com/getting-started/1.2.1/en-US/

What I have found, so far, that is really great about Flock is how you can use it to monitor your Web 2.0 account. Flock integrates with some of the most popular Web 2.0 platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg and Del.icio.us.

Was your Web 2.0 service account is integrated with Flock, it allows you to easily check those accounts from you browser sidebar.

I am somewhat disappointed that Flock has not included FriendFeed, but hopefully they will add it soon.

One thing that really disappoints me about Flock, is that it doesn’t appear to have the Session Manager that Firefox had. The Firefox Session Manager was my favorite feature of Firefox.

After doing a Google search, there appears to be extensions for Flock that perform the same function as the Firefox session manager. It appears some have been having some problems with this extension, so I will wait on this and hope I can find a good session manager for Flock.

For the most part, I do like Flock. Firefox was starting to give me some problems. It seemed to periodically just start eating up memory and would go “out to lunch” sometimes. I would have to go into task manager and shut it down, or reboot to free up resources.

So far, Flock is using less memory and seems to function very well. For me, it seems to be more responsive than Firefox.

So Flock, give me a session manager and I will be the happiest of Flock users Until then, I will have to use both browsers.

I look forward to leaning more about what Flock can do in my Web 2.0 world. If you are interested in learning more about how Flock can help you, or learn more about the Web 2.0 world, I suggest you get signed up with the 30 Day Challenge.

If you are a beginning online marketer, you will love the 30 DC. If you already have a lot if IM experience, I guarantee you will learn some things you need to know. In any case the only thing it will cost you is time.

Plus, I want you to be part of my 30 DC team. I want to help you, or maybe you can help me

I don’t really care how much, or how little, internet marketing experience you have, since we all have unique gifts and talents we can bring into the team.

Just get signed up for the 30 DC here, and then let me know you want to be part of the team. So, here is what you need to do:

1. Sign Up for the 30 Day Challenge

2. Let me know you want to be part of the team by adding a comment to this post.

3. Get signed up with Twitter

4. Follow me on Twitter

5. Let me know if you need help by using my Helpdesk – be sure to choose the 30 Day Challenge department.

I look forward to working with you and getting to know you!