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Saturday 29 March 2008

My thoughts on eBay's decision to end digital downloads

Click Here For Flash Drives For Sale on Amazon USA



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This is mainly aimed at people just into or new to the concept of ebooks - or maybe you just brought a package with the idea of making a small fortune selling ebooks for a dollar a pop.

Firstly as many seasoned marketers have said to their credit - they weren't making money that way - they were using the ebay market place as a source of leads - hence why some ebooks started at a couple cents each - the idea was to get the customer in your eBay shop, on your list, attached to your newsletter or onto your website (it could also raise your feedback rather quicky as a side effect I guess too...)

So if you were just starting out on this road - you have probably actually saved a bit of cash by not setting up the shop and listing hundreds of info. products etc.

worth remebering that eBay haven't banned eBooks completely - just switched them over to a revenue stream that makes them more profit - i.e the classifieds.

Also worth remembering is that ebooks didn't begin with ebay! - so if you aren't interested in selling via classifieds there are other ways to sell your goods.

Selling on CD

I remember buying reports and ebook on floppy disk or via SAE through the paper!- things have moved on alot now - and I know alot of people are suggesting the sale of ebooks via CD or DVD - which is one way of making the product a 'phyical product' - so in theory if you stick all your ebooks on a CD you are selling ebooks - which are basically individual software applications bundled together as a CD.

You are allowed to sell Software on eBay if it's on a data storage device of some sort - it just mean's - oh horror! - you may just have to put your prices up abit - as you have to factor in the price of postage and packaging, any CD sleeve, artwork (if your the creative sort) and time burning your disks etc. - the advantage of this method is there are 1000's of bits of software out there to create a front end to your CD - so it will auto-run (start up on opening)and have menu options/ navigation etc..

Side Note: you may still get the same amount of complaints if customers aren't happy with the quality of the ebooks - I sold low priced software on CD for a bit and had loads of complaints - this is a problem when people expect more for less - if you are buying public domain software repackaged - don't expect high end snazz - BIG TIP: when I put up the price of the software I got LESS complaints!!!!!!!!

- The software is put together is really put together for the customers convience rather than spending hours of their own time searching through the net for it - but hey that's another story - all I'm saying is - be prepared for a percentage of grumpy people wanting their cash back if they don't like:

"uncle bob's guide to mowing the lawn using nail sissors" :P


Okay final note for now, FLASH DRIVES - that is where I am looking - I've been looking in that direction for at least a year or more (to be honest) - so why aren't web marketer's putting ebooks on them ? - their cute, little, hang around your neck...better than a CD in my opinion.

So the customization software I'd be looking for is: the type that can 'auto run' a flash drive (of course!) - so the customer on getting their ebooks on their pen drive (flash drive) - pops it into the PC and can browse via a menu - like the CD version - the customer can then pick and choose which ebooks they want to read or promote or give away, bin - or whatever.

Saying that, most people know what a 'little yellow folder' is when they open up a zip drive (pen drive, flash drive - all the same gizmo) so an organized structure for the customer to pick and choose their ebooks - would maybe improove the percieved value of the product.

eBay have maybe raised the bar for quality of product in this area - so I'm not complaining.

I just prefer flash drives to CD's myself - and they are a handy little item in themselves - so in theory a customer could tranasfer the content onto a CD and use the drive for something else like emergency back up of essential documents or photos - I always lose photos in a hard drive failure - less likely to if I've got a memory stick lying about I can just pop in the back of my PC.

You could even bundle all your premium website products on the drive so they have an off-line catalogue of all your latest stuff - instead of banners - I suggest putting links to collection points - i.e places like myspace or facebook profiles - that are highly unlikely to change URL over the next few years - nothing worse than an info product with dead links and broken banners - yucky.

Storage Future:

Another thing to look at: - can those little memory cards for camera's be used to store text aswell as images anyone ? - one way to get the ebook into bed with the customer literally - could be via a storage device like that with enough power to run an LCD screen the size of a digital photo - so you could preview photos and text documents in bed - Amazon I know have a gadget abit like that but I'm thinking one of these big photo companies that make digital camera's could find a way of converting text documents to images and uploading them onto a simple display screen - ebooks could be delivered in memory cards then - and you can buy a blank memory card with 1GB of space for under a fiver at Tesco.

If the future is digital (who said that ?) then these little chips could be indroduced with magazines rather like the current CD or DVD is given away......

I'll shut up now or I'll go on ad infinium....flash drives are handy enough for now.


Click Here For Flash Drives For Sale on Amazon USA



Click Here For Flash Drives For Sale on Amazon UK

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