eBay Feedback Farms: 1-cent eBooks with zero shipping charges

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Many eBay users are familiar with sellers who use a low-price/high-shipping strategy to manipulate eBay search results. But less well known is the technique of listing 1-cent eBooks with zero shipping charges. In fact, it would appear at first glance to be a money-losing strategy, since eBay charges a minimum 5-cent listing fee for Stores (and 20 cents for core listings). But sellers employing the strategy offer multiple quantities of the items in each listing.

While sellers legitimately sell digital content on eBay, many of the 1-cent eBook, no-shipping Store listings AuctionBytes examined looked suspect, including the possibility that sellers are in effect creating "feedback farms" - creating multiple User IDs that bid on these listings to quickly build up positive feedback ratings.

One such listing posted on September 20 netted the seller close to 1,000 feedback points in a 4-day period...

full article: http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m10/i03/s02