eBooks

Anyone sell eBooks on eBay? I'm not talking about the 'get rich quick' stuff, but more informational eBooks or other digital material?

I've read a few things about people doing really well with some kind of reference (maybe something like, 'How to pick a new dog') and listing it for a few dollars on eBay. Has anyone tried this?

No. But I know a women here in Sweden that make a living on it.

I have been doing this for about 2 years. I actually sell access to a website that contains over 6,000 ebooks along with wholesale list.

Hey Trrek, Informational products are very good sellers. Just do a 'completed listing' search on ebay under 'informational products' and you will see a ton of stuff.
I know one lady who sales a short ebook on making hair bows for about $30 and sells about 10 a day. I know another guy who sell a guide on raising fresh water fish for your aquarium for $40 and sells about 60 to 70 per week. Not bad money, especially since you are selling the same product over and over again and only having to create it once. suppose you purchased an ebook with resell rights for $10 and sold just one copy a day, everyday. You only had to pay for the one copy, so everything after that is pretty much profit, excluding your listing fees. And if you price the item to cover that, then your pretty much covered.
To if you yourself, have a particular interest or hobby, you can easily create your own ebook and sell it. Then also, if you have one that sells pretty well, then you can sell that with resell rights for a slighter higher cost.
Also once you get several of your own ebooks out there, you can offer one or several of your books as a bonus for free to the buyer and ask them to become an affiliate for you selling the bonus books and split the profit with them for the ones they sell, simply by just hosting the book file and providing them with the download url for the bonus book. That way all they have to do is advertise or list the book on ebay, and when it sells, you get a percentage and your affiliate gets a percentage.
There are several software packages that will create the affiliate id numbers and links to automatically pay your affiliate when the sale takes place.
If you just want to go it alone, you still need to consider setting up a small website to store you ebook files, so that they can be automatically delivered when purchased. We live in an age where customers want their information as soon as they pay for it. You can get software that will take care of that for you too, such as 'my digital delivery', it's only about $14 and simple to use. But if you don't want to use that, then you all you have to do is use the 'item requires instant payment' option on the ebay sell form. when you select that, and digitial delivery, all you have to do is enter the download url into the box on the sell form and ebay will send the url to the customer just a soon as they pay. They will also store a copy of the download url for the customer under the 'items won' heading on their 'my ebay' page. That way if something happens and the customer need to download again, they don't have to email you and ask for it, they just go to their my ebay page and get it.
If you don't want to bother with a website a first, you can deliver your ebooks manually using your email. To do this you will need some type of software that will put your ebook (if you created it) into some type of reader. Adobe Reader is the most popular, but there are several. Most computers come with adobe reader. I use Pdf995. It cost about $20 and will put any ebook you create on you word processor, such as ms-word, into an adobe reader format. You can get other pdf software packages for free, I just happen to like 995 because it allows you to put encrypted copy production and digitial signatures on your ebook, that prevents anyone from stealing your work. But the free stuff works just as well.
Another thing if you want to give this a try. You don't have to be Mark Twain, to write an ebook. There is software available that will practically write it for you. Such as 'Instant Artical Wizard 2.0'. With software such as that you pretty much just have to put in the subject heading, Such as 'Golf' and it will do the rest. Pretty amazing stuff really. It will actually create an ebook in about ten minutes.
I do know that gaming guides are very good sellers. Heck, why not get paid to play your video games? Or if you are good at a particular hobby such as golf or fishing, you might want to think about writing a short ebook on things like that. 'How to reduce 5 strokes off of your golf game', things like that!
Anyway, hope this was helpful. If there is anything that I can help you with just let me know...gulfy13

Wow, gulfy13, thanks so much for the input! I probably will have questions 'tomorrow' (it's 3:20 AM here) when I am more awake. But it sounds like a fun idea, and I do have a few things I know I can write about (I'm a college instructor, so I will try to tie my interests into something that will interest the general population).

But thanks!

Hey trrekb, Here is an example of what I am talking about. Go to ebay and using the 'advanced search' button located at the top of any page, type in this item number:
120116471318. It's the closed auction listing of a guy who is selling a guide on converting your gas burning auto to burn propane. He sold 26 of these guide at $9.99 on just this one listing. Not bad money for something that he copied from the public domain on the net..

Ive sold them for over a year no and have a succesful website sellingt hem. PM me if you want the link as i dont think im aloud to write it here. I used to do lessons for money but dont do it too often now i just help out here and their.

Thanks, Kingy,

Another way to look at selling ebooks on ebay is for the .01 special to get many people to buy the ebook and then create upsell items within the ebook.

I know this method works very well, plus you can build a large list from ebay buyers as well.

Yeah, I figure for the .01 thing you could always include affiliate links. Then again, I'd rather do that free with listings (I am going to do it eventually). I did just post my first eBook; it is a topic that I needed covered and couldn't find online. I searched everywhere. So finally I taught myself, then redid the process (it's a software user guide) and took screen shots. Nothing fancy, but I wrote it in a few hours and it cost me nothing to write. I will message you Kingy, thanks.

This is a good thread. I have always been particularly interested in selling ebooks on ebay. It would actually be nice to open a store and then deliver everything digitally so that I dont have to ship anything physically. I have also been thinking about becoming an affiliate with some software programs that are downloadable online, and offering them on my ebay store. I don't know how succesful that would be though, but yeah I'm working on this. I think that information products are huge online, and they will continue to grow. Finding something to resell is difficult though bc everyone on ebay is selling even some of the good e-book packages for like 99 cents. Seriously how are the rest of us supposed to make money on it? lol. Anyways I actually love to write and I have been thinking about writing my own book, that way nobody else has it and the competition wont be as fierce. It would take a while to write my own book bc I work full time and I go to school full time, but one day Im going to finish it and sell it on ebay. Finding a good 'wholesaler ' is so hard today. I figured I'll just make my own product and sell it.

Hey Dreamer, The reason that you see so many ebook packages listed at 99 cents is for several reasons. Some people just use the older stuff to build up their feedback quickly. But most use it as an enticement to get them to buy the package. Then somewhere within that package they will offer another product for a much higher price. It's called 'back-end', and it works really well. Staticstics show that a very high percentage of people who have just purchased a product will make a second purchase if you offer it to them right then.

If you notice alot of ebook packages, you will see that they are loaded with bonus items. The reason for this is the same. They offer you a free item, which is hard to turn down, then make you an offer on another product, somewhere within the bonus package. A very, very high percentage of people who shop online are impluse buyers, and that is another reason why 'back-ending' works so well.

Still another reason for the 99 cent auctions is to capture your email address. If you offer a decent package at 99 cents and sell quite a few, you can capture a ton of email addresses in a short period of time. Then you use that email list to send your new offers and products too. Again, once a person who has purchased from you before, and was happy with the product, will often be more willing to purchase from you again, as opposed to someone from whom they have never purchased from before.
Often times these bonuses will be a free news-letter which you just have to sign-up for. This way, it makes the email address an 'opt-in' address and therefore is not classified as spam, or spamming, since they requested. Then the author will send out short content newsletters to his list,with different and interesting subjects, that he knows his particular list is interested in,(that he built up quickly selling 99 cent ebooks)and somewhere on that news letter he will have an offer to buy one or several of his other products. Most often the average price of these will be in the $29.99 range. Plus on both the bonus items and especially the newsletter he will have links to his website, so you can potentially view all of his products and hopefully signup for his affiliate program, where he will let you sell his products and you each get a cut of the profits.

If you get a few dozen or a few hundred affiliates selling your products for you, and lets just say the product is selling for that $29.99 price, and you get $10.00 from each item those affiliates sell. Do you see how that could put alot of money into your pocket really fast?
And the great part about it is that you have someone else doing all the work, they are listing it, advertising it, promoting it, and you are getting paid for their work...So basically the original 99 cent item is just an advertisment that the BUYER paid for..You got paid for the original item (which was really just an advertisement to entice larger sales)you are going to get paid for your items from the affiliate that you built from that original listing, you are going to get paid from additional items from the email list you generated from that original listing, and from any sales from items sold on your website by visitors generated from that original listing....Not a bad deal huh?