How to Sell an eBook on eBay THE RIGHT WAY!

These are questions my readers often ask me: How can I sell eBooks on eBay? What’s the right way to sell eBooks on eBay? Is it still allowed? Is selling eBooks on eBay a profitable business idea? In this post I’ll try to answer all these questions in detail.

So, to begin with – Can you still sell eBooks on eBay? Yes, you can, if you follow eBay guidelines.

And with eBooks, there are different rules for eBay.com and eBay.co.uk websites:

On eBay.com (USA website), you can sell eBooks AND deliver them digitally as long as you follow these rules:

• List your eBooks in the Everything Else > Information Products category using the Classified Ad format.

As you may know, a classified ads format on eBay.com won’t get you as many views as normal listings, the sale won’t actually happen on eBay and you won’t earn any feedback.

If you want to list your item in a more suitable category and use auctions or Buy It Now listings, you can’t deliver your eBook in digital format – you have to burn it onto a CD or DVD or USB stick and post it out.

On eBay.co.uk (UK site), there is no Classified Ads format at all, but you can still sell eBooks there IF you burn your eBook onto a CD or DVD or USB stick and post it out .

To sum it up, to get the most out of eBay’s traffic, you have to turn your eBooks into a physical format and post them out. This basically ruins the whole idea of selling an eBook (electronic book) in the first place, right? Yes and no.

It depends on what you’re selling, really, because if the information you’re providing is valuable people will buy it and it will be cost effective for you to produce CDs and ship them out. If not, no one will buy your products anyway.

The days when you could purchase some random PLR (private label rights) eBooks and sell them on eBay easily are over. People are simply not looking for such low quality products on eBay. You’ll be lucky to get a few sales for a few quid each and after eBay and shipping fees you’ll be left with minimal or no profit at all.

Just go on eBay and search for some eBooks – you’ll see that most sellers struggle to sell them even at ridiculously low prices such as £0.99 or £1.99. They just don’t sell.

But it doesn’t mean info products don’t sell on eBay at all! Just take a look at these sellers:

Numbers look good, right?

Yes, because they sell video courses, DVDs and highly valuable manuals, not some cheap eBooks about dating or credit repair topics. Multimedia courses sell well on eBay and if you can create your own products, that’s even better! I’m talking about topics like:

• Learning software (Photoshop, Excel, Camtasia etc.)
• Learning musical instruments (Piano, Keyboard, Guitar etc.)
• Repair Manuals (cars, equipment, tools etc.)
• Dancing Lessons
• Dog Training
• DIY Tutorials
• Fitness programs
• And so on!

Mostly these will be DVDs in a price range of 5-20 pounds.

The most money is being made by people who are experts in the field themselves – they produce these products, put together video training material and sell on eBay (and not only eBay) for a healthy profit.

If you don’t want to produce your own info products, I recommend you look for wholesalers in the US. Training DVDs can quite often be purchased very cheaply in bulk, especially if they’re not new releases. What you can also do is contact people who sell their own DVDs on eBay.com and ask if they would be interested in a wholesale deal – for you to sell their items in the UK.

If you produce your own guides and want to get professional looking CDs and DVDs with no MOQ, I recommend checking out this company: Kunaki.com

The price for a professionally produced CD or DVD, with full colour printing and an insert costs just $1 per piece and there are no MOQs! Yes, you can even produce just one item at that cost. This also works perfectly if you want to use Kunaki as a dropshipper for your products (you simply make them when an order comes in and Kunaki will send them directly to your customer).

But if we go back to the original question of eBooks – the only way you can make it work on eBay is if you’re simply looking for new leads for your business. Then you can sell these eBooks cheaply, making no profit but getting valuable customer contacts in return.

For example, say you sell car paint scratch repair kits for professionals. You create an eBook called “How to Start Your Car Paint Scratch Repair Business!” and sell it for £0.99 on eBay.co.uk. You can advertise your products in the eBook and your eBook buyer will then hopefully buy them from you.

The same goes for dog training – if you sell electronic dog training collars, you could put together an eBook on the topic.

You can also then use these eBooks and offer them as a FREE bonus to people who buy related items from you – be it on eBay or your own online shop.

Lastly – if you only want to sell eBooks and not deal with shipments at all, you should go for the Amazon Kindle marketplace and nowhere else! Kindle popularity is growing at a phenomenal rate (I own one myself and use it on a regular basis), and in my opinion this is the way digital publishing will move from now on. Kindle is the way to go. 

Again, it will only work with valuable, high quality eBooks written by you or outsourced. Forget about PLR and cheap stuff – it doesn’t work any more  People want real, high quality content, not some thrown together 20 pages written by a non-native English writer.

To sum it up – quality wins again! If you put effort into something, it will work. If you’re looking for a quick money making scheme, the National Lottery is still your best bet!

Thanks,
Andrew