eBay Digital Products Ban

Truthfully, one of the main purposes of selling your digital products on eBay should be to generate new sales leads anyway. What I’m going to talk about today is using the eBay’s classified ads for lead generation.

Let’s start with the advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• The ads appear in eBay item searches along with your regular listings and even in your eBay store.
• It’s a fixed fee of $9.95 for each ad for 30 days of advertising.
• You can bundle similar items on the same ad.
• So it can be more cost effective than other advertising methods, depending on how many visitors your ad attracts.
• No listing fees or final value fees to pay to eBay.
• You can include certain links and optin forms on your ads (Super Ninja strategies and tricks on this below)
• Even with classified ads, you can still automate your sales/delivery process.

Disadvantages

• No feedback rating from the buyer on classified ads.
• All sales are handled totally outside of eBay which may put some buyers off because their purchase won’t be protected by eBay.
• Therefore establishing trust through your sales copy will be more important than before.
• Sales won’t count towards Powerseller status.
• The keywords you use in the title of your ad will be more important than ever for you to get your ad in front of visitors
• Obviously, it may be more expensive to run several ads every 30 days compared to the previous cost of listing multiple items.

OK, now on to my favorite part…

Super Ninja strategies for using the classified ads

As I said before, you can include an opt in form on your ad much like a forced opt in page. I know, for a lot of you this is a scary proposition. “What if they don’t want to give me their name and email address?” Well, if they are not willing to give you that, then it is highly unlikely that they will give you their payment information.

Do this right, and you’ll be able to quickly build a list of great leads that you can sell to again and again outside of eBay. But you must be cool to these people and really provide them value. It’s not cool to just send them offer after offer 2 or 3 times a day.

HOT TIP: If you can, make the submit button on the optin form use “Buy Now” button image.

I like the idea of using an optin form better than simply placing a paypal buy button or putting a link to your website even. Because once they submit their name and email, they can automatically be redirected to your website to buy. At that point you have an opportunity to upsell/cross sell using one time offers or any other method.

I suggest creating a bundle of related items, some of your best, and run a promotion using the classifieds (you might also burn them to disc and offer it in the standard listings). Position the offer so that it is irresistible to your ideal client. The reason for the great offer is to promote your new website (or perhaps you are running a clearance sale or something because of eBay’s new policy)

When they get to the buy now page on your website, tell them that the only way that you can afford to make this great offer is for people to help you spread the word. You need to have a form where they can enter the email addresses of at least two other people. Let them know that on the very next page they’ll be able to purchase and download the bundle instantly. This might be too aggressive for a first time buyer, if you don’t think you can pull it off, proceed to the upsell.

Make sure that there are cross sell or upsell items on the product page. Include recommended additional items in the product description. Just make sure that your upsell/cross sell items are easy to add to the cart.

Make sure that your check out process is easy. As I mentioned before, for a free shopping cart solution, I like the WordPress/WP-eCommerce route. I’m working on videos to show you how to get going with it. If you’d prefer to have one of my ninjas do it for you for free, check out my free Wordpress installation service.

In the email that follows up on their purchase, with the download link for the product they bought, include another free bonus item. They’ll click on the link in the email and arrive at a page that tells them more about the gift and runs them through a one time offer sequence. I can’t give you all the details on this right now, but I’m going to into detail on this (hopefully with video) in my newsletter.

“But Glen, I don’t have a mailing list tool.”

So obviously, to implement these strategies, you need a reliable, easy, & cost effective tool to capture visitor sign ups, and send unlimited follow ups and newsletters. (I took that verbiage right out of their headline, hehe) I highly recommend aweber.com, theirs is the tool that myself and most seasoned Internet marketers use. Listen to what the master of list building, Jimmy D. Brown has to say about them:

Coming soon: Beat the eBay slap - Sell digital products on CD/DVD

How are you going to use eBay to generate leads? Share your ideas and ask me questions in the comments below.