By the end of June 2008 I had more digital items listed on eBay UK than anyone else – 390. Three months previous to that I hadn’t even listed one single item; I was still trying to work out the process of how to do that. Through a lot of trial and error I had reached the top of the tree with no previous experience of this business. To make things more difficult for a “novice” like me following eBay’s decision to ban the sales of items via digital download there was almost no information out there. As our American friends like to say, it was a “whole new ball game”.

I actually measured the decline of eBay ebook sellers over this period – virtually 95%. Sure, one or two of the “old hands” published information on their blog about how to change your business model. This advice really boiled down to “put your ebook onto a CD-ROM” and sell that instead. Which was all fine and logical however……even those advising doing this couldn’t be sure it would succeed because they hadn’t tried it.

• Would buyers used to instant digital download be prepared to wait a few days to receive their CD-ROM in the post? Remember most buyers of ebooks via digital download were only interested in “buying” feedback
• How to present the CD-ROM? Did I need nice graphics? Should I use an “expensive” CD case or something cheaper?
• What price to sell at?
• Would buyers used to paying literally pennies for ebooks be prepared to pay pounds for the same thing?
• Would the profile of the buyer remain the same?

There were about 4 or 5 other serious sellers of ebooks, all far more experienced than me who were also getting to grips with the new system. I did something I would very strongly recommend to anyone entering any online business – I bought products from them. Not because I wanted or needed those products to sell myself or indeed because I had any interest in them.

No – I wanted to check their order and sales processes. I wanted to see how they were presenting their CDs. The outcome was actually quite interesting. One of the most successful ones was selling at prices 3 times higher than the others, the CD itself was simply put inside a plastic sleeve without a label and without a case. I’m not sure I would have trusted the British postal system to deliver my CDs without breaking them….

Another was using a high quality DVD case, yet another was using a cheap CD case. Some put graphics labels on their CDs, some didn’t. I guess everyone was like me – they were testing different methods to see which worked. Initially I used high quality DVD cases, when I switched to cheaper CD cases for my cheaper £1.97 products I didn’t notice a drop in sales, or in positive feedback.

I came to the conclusion that I could get away with a cheaper case for the cheaper products but it was better to use a DVD case with good graphics for the higher priced items. One thing I did notice – most of the other ebook sellers seemed to price everything at one price, whereas I included quite a few higher priced items up to £20. Given that the original digital download ebook sellers ONLY sold their ebooks to build their customer lists (their profit came with follow up sales) I guess they continued with the “list building only” mentality with the CD-ROMs.

That’s fine, I’d be the last person to criticise that, after all that was a successful business model. However what I noticed was that NO-ONE and I mean no-one ever mentioned that you could actually make a good profit from FRONT end sales. Search the blogs of the eBay “gurus” – you won’t find that mentioned there, have a look at their eBay shops and you’ll find virtually all their listings at the same low price.

Hmmm…..were the “gurus” missing a trick here? We’ll have a look at that in more detail tomorrow.