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EzineArticles.com has always been one of the more popular directories to submit your articles to for picking up those much needed incoming links. It has been my favorite for some time now, but recently, as of the last article I submitted a few days ago, they have become extremely picky in allowing live links in your author’s box.

I’ve never had a problem with EzineArticles.com after submitting nearly 50 articles over the last 3 years or so, but with the last one the scenario went something like this - I went through the usual process and sent in my article only to have it rejected for “linking to a website that violates our terms of service.” Since I have never had a problem I wrote to support and asked for a better explanation. The answer came back that the website I was linking to, a Build A Niche Store site, was nothing but auctions and I needed at least one page of content before they would consider it a legit site.

Obviously the noobie editor that went to my site didn’t see any of the 10 article pages featuring no auctions at all. I sent him a list of of those 10 urls, and while he thanked me, he still wouldn’t allow me to link to any auction page on the site, even though the specific one I wanted to link to had 3 paragraphs of text and an information widget. I had to link to article pages only! While this is still an good incoming link, it totally defeats the purpose of using anchor text to get a particular page quickly ranked in Google by using EzineArticles.com.

While there are plenty of other article directories to use for the intended purpose of links to very specific pages, EzineArticles.com was definitely the best in my book. I will continue to use them for many of my other niches, but not any longer for BANS related sites. Maybe it was a new editor or maybe they’ve just developed a snooty attitude towards certain types of linking.

EzineArticles.com is still a great place to work your article marketing efforts, just be warned that they’ve apparently adopted a stricter policy towards linking to BANS or eBay auction related sites.

In what will go down in Internet history as probably one of the lamest decisions ever in e-commerce, running second only to the firing of AOL CEO Jon Miller in 2006, eBay announced yesterday it will no longer allow any digitally downloadable product to be sold via an auction. You read that right, if you sell an ebook, digital recording, electronic forms, WordPress templates (or any template), digital graphics, ecards or anything else that can be transferred electronically, you are being kicked out of auctioning your goods on eBay like a red-headed stepchild. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

This utterly remarkable and shortsighted policy update was announced only 7 days before its scheduled implementation, giving those who make their living off of digital goods little recourse. All digital goods are scheduled to be removed from eBay auctions and stores as of March 31. All sellers of digital goods will now have to spend $9.95 per listing to place their products as a 30 day listed classified ad. This policy will put many eBay Power Sellers and hundreds to thousands of others effectively out of business because of the high initial cost of a classified ad. Sellers who market their digital downloads through eBay stores and have been able to list goods for mere pennies, cannot afford to list hundreds of ebooks, mp3’s and other items for $9.95 each.

eBay hastily decided this arcane policy because some digital sellers use these goods to manipulate the feedback system and artificially boost their status. The way this works is some sellers market near worthless ebooks for 1 to 99 cents and list hundreds of auctions only looking to increase their feedback numbers and ratings. So instead of eBay dealing with the problem, they make a blanket policy that hurts everyone, good and bad, who markets these products.

This is an incredibly ignorant move on eBay’s part. I have personally sold our Vegan Meal Planner on eBay via auction and classified style and have had much better success with auctions. Auctions excite people into making a buying decision, classified ads don’t.

If you are listening eBay, the answer is not to move backwards. Last time I looked at a calendar it was 2008, the digital information age, and the last company (AOL) that forgot where they were, lost more than 60% of their users nearly overnight. The answer is to deal with the people who manipulate the feedback system if that’s the problem, not to put legitimate merchants out of business.

To see how completely out of touch eBay is on this issue only requires one to read the completely inept statement issued just yesterday on their web site. Brian Burke, Director of Global Feedback Policy states, “Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller.” Well, yes they often are, but often they are not. My wife and I poured about 70 hours worth of work into our vegan meal planner and I am sure many information sellers spend multiples of those hours producing their products as well. The duplicity of this statement is evident in the fact that much of the junk, and I do mean junk, sold on eBay comes from the country that is the worst violator of human rights on the planet. Many of the hard goods sold on eBay are produced in the sweatshops of China, “at little to no cost to the seller.”

Lame eBay, just plain lame.