Find out how to sell stuff online, without actually owning things. How? You have but to inquire of me in one of our morning meetings how YOU can help the community by offering things for sale without having to buy them or store them or ship them. You can sell, we drop-ship deliver for you. But what about digital downloads?

Here’s what I thought would be a good pitch for a digital download, but I strongly suggest against eBay as a venue — they are NOT friendly to game developers, and every single download costs YOU $9.95 in advance whether the item sells or not, and it’s only one at a time, no multiple listings. Forget it, there are plenty of other venues for selling videogames, and eBay generally is a big stone wall against which your voice trembles and collapses into a ball of dust.

Oh, it’s not that they’re not friendly — they are, in a cold-blooded corporate sort of fashion, quite friendly, and they’ll read you the rules and regulations over and over again, but they can’t offer advice or explain what the hell it all means. It’s not their fault; it’s just that their rules and regulations were made to keep the little guy down, and fill the pockets of the greedy bastards who control and run eBay, that’s all.

We ARE the little guy, and they never let us forget it.

So I’ll show you the wording I came up with for a classified digital download listing on eBay, even though I clicked off and will have nothing to do with it, and I’ll tell you why. The fact is, when you pay ten bucks for the ad, that’s the same as the cost of a flash drive, and it’s ME that has to pay the extra ten bucks to list it.

I clearly can’t list a thing for $20.00 bucks when I can offer the same digital download on Payloads for much less, and I don’t have to pay in advance, like I do with eBay, and I don’t pay for what I don’t sell, which is also different from the eBay deal.

So here’s the wording for a digital download:

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You are buying a FULLY LICENSED 3D Videogame. We make hundreds of video games, and this is one of the best, with a 22-year history, but now, you get a brand-new complete revamping of the game, two added almost-impossible levels, and the bosses are a LOT smarter. This is the Official Game Issue for 2021, full of the latest updates and we’re now delivering our games with the new GoDD™ engine and Hart Physics, as promised. Of course, you can still win FANTASTIC in-game powerups!

You will find the levels of increasing difficulty quite challenging, the way video games were originally designed — no frills, no extras, just pure mindless tedium alternating with moments of intense almost impossible combat.

THIS IS A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD – you will receive instructions through eBay where to get your download. We make hundreds of video games, audio books, music albums and spiritual videos, and will soon have many of them up on eBay for you to purchase.
This is an experimental listing. I’ve also listed the collectible version on eBay — it comes in a developer-signed USB flash drive wallet card, but this is NOT that — it’s strictly a digital download. note that it is a DIGITAL DOWNLOAD.

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So that’s it, that’s the whole plan. I wanted to put up digital downloads of games, puzzles, ebooks, video films, instructionals, audio books and digital art, but the hell with it — I’ll stick to my own solution of putting them on a USB flash drive, signing that, and shipping it off.

It makes a collectible, and it saves me a big, fat ten dollars on the listing fees! Clearly, eBay is not interested in developing the digital sales market, but they’ll soon regret that bad corporate decision, because CDs and DVDs are ON THEIR WAY OUT!!!

Do you still have a CD drive in your computer? If so, you have a Windows 7 OS, I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts, you do.

So here’s one solution to the eBay dilemma:

Go to facebook.com, then to commerce manager, then make a test store, which costs you nothing. From there on, you have it nailed.

That’s where to sell just about anything. By the way, I checked our wholesale CD disk suppliers about $1 disks, and they say, “Disks? What disks?”

No matter how you slice it, it’s gonna cost somebody ten bucks to get a game from my computer over to yours, and that’s hard-cost, allowing nothing for support.

So I’m back to my $19.95 price tag again for my videogames, and that’s really the best I can do, until we’re selling them by the millions, and that’s weeks and weeks away from here.

My recommendation is that you learn “The Way of Facebook” and set up a store there, where you can at least have your friends and neighbors drop in for a visit now  and again.

I’ll try to set up a store tonight, but doubt I’ll be able to conduct all the business necessary to accomplish that in one single night.

First things first, make a test store and see how it looks, how it feels, and how it works. It’s free, as I mentioned before, and it’s proverbially harmless, doesn’t require actual banking information for the test store, but it will when you really want to set it up  and work it.

Yes, work it. What? You’re gonna just build it and dump it? No, you can’t just throw the dredging hose over the side and wait for the gold to come pumping up and land in your lap.

That’s not how anything works.

Oh, by the way, I watched a few youtube videos on the subject, and all of them recommended that you not sell digital downloads on facebook or eBay, and the reason is mostly that they are not friendly environments for digital products like ebooks, audio books, instructionals and above all, videogames. We are definitely on the outside.

Get onto facebook, and lemme know if you have any trouble with acceptance or any technical difficulties, leaving out any personal drama that  may have developed alongside the effort to put up a facebook store of your own.

It’s not hard to do, it’s hard to make yourself do it.

See You  At The Top!!!

gorby