Digital Downloadable Goods...your questions answered

Digital Downloadable Goods...your questions answered

Posted by Laura on March 27, 2008 at 03:47 PM in Trust & Safety Corner | Permalink

Brian Burke, eBay's Director in Trust & Safety who manages the Feedback system, recently announced that Digital Downloadable Goods must be listed using the Classified Ad listing format effective March 31st.  This policy affects items like eBooks, MP3 files, content in PDF format, recipes, etc. -- anything that is "shipped" to a customer via email or download link. These items cannot be listed any longer as auction-style or fixed price listings.

The Classified Ad format is a lead-generation tool which gives sellers an "ad" that shows up in default Search results for 30 days. Currently, the only accepted category is Everything Else > Informational Products. (To learn more, read Help: Advertising with Classified Ads.)

The reason for this change is the concern about Feedback manipulation (or artificially padding a member's feedback score). Since Classified Ad format listings are not transactional, no feedback is exchanged between buyers and sellers and no feedback manipulation can occur.