The Internet Time Capsule Era on eBay - Hubpages Like CD concepts that evolved into sites like these

This kind of skips around from the beginning of my adventure on eBay to the end so I'll clear up the hierarchy here (I don't have time to edit this hub):

1. Found fascinating Compilation CD on eBay

2. Started marketing it

3. Format changed to zipped up files instead of loose html files

4. Format changed to eBook for ant piracy and other reasons

5. Learned amazing skill sets and built a construct for the CD and eBay called the flag, made a rule to ban these types of products.

With that you should be able to follow the story. Essentially this is what got me motivated to write eBooks, then later write blogs, and now hubs.. the journey taught me amazing skill sets I hold today so I thought I'd share my adventure of my eBay beginnings and how I acquired my writers skills, webmaster skills, utilized my research and development skills and more..

The concept of the portable HubPages CD (so to speak) should fascinate you.

At first I sold others "writings" through eBooks with resell rights I purchased, then I decided to write my own because I could fill in the gaps.

A couple years later I found an interesting niche on eBay where by people were selling compilation information discs. This was my first run in with eBay; I'd heard of them but never used them at any length. I searched maybe once for something but had never really used the site to any depth.

CD's with loads of valuable e-books with resell rights was a hot product that had a lot of appeal.. (Although at first they were just loose html pages that were interconnected with links to make it an eBook).

It was sort of a viral marketing concept where by people would sell the e-books for 10.00 with resell rights and embedded in the book were site addresses and ads etc of the author of a website who wanted it to drive traffic to it...

Most people decided (not originally) to create their eBooks in software that compiled it and didn't allow editing permissions (blocked by software restriction) because people kept changing the links and reselling THEIR work. They were given resell rights if they didn't change anything..

This reverted to PDF files later because it could be viewed on both PC and Mac... Most PDF files can be cracked and edited with software easily attainable (and sold as a "recovery" software) however. eBooks with electronic protections still cannot be broken into (unless your REAL good). Even most hackers cannot figure out how to crack into and edit an eBooks with limitations.

The software I used to compile my pages into eBooks had eBook disabling, meaning I could go online, click a box on a site, and the next time the eBook called home it would get the command to self encrypt.

the eBook would call home to once a month, and if I put kill it the book would disable itself. If the user tried to dodge this calling home, the book would disable until they got online. This was for when someone bought it got the download and said they wanted a refund (because they thought they'd copy it and get their money back but haha. Nope.)

eBook disabling was a great ant piracy device.. When it disabled a page loaded telling them to update it, and to have the code we emailed them ready, if they forgot it was attached to the account info, realize most people wont give away this code as it is attached to their private information.

With this I disabled my eBooks once a year (not counting refunds which I disabled upon sending back their money if any) and forced them to download a fresh copy (and told them of this before the purchase). This wasn't all bad as I explained the anti-piracy reason to them and most people didn't mind, especially since this also meant getting a new updated copy with more stuff and a free eBook that I wrote much like my hubs. I realize you have to give them something to make up for the inconvenience.

I did this due to piracy issues. If these eBooks got pirated, when I disabled them they all died every last copy,(and copies, copies copy, it was like an ant killer spray that you hit one ant with and the colony died) and only those who paid for the book would be able to get a fresh copy. It didn't stop piracy but it did slow it down drastically(and pirated copies had a one year shelf life or less, if you got a copy of a pirated eBook one day before expiration the copy would die after one day for example). It actually reset the copies of my work so all pirated copies had a shelf life of one year not infinity.

I decided to take alot of the eBooks I had resell rights to and rewrite them in my own way, Create a fresh version and control the contents better (no ads, links to websites etc, just a plain old eBook which seemed to be extinct at the time.

Some of these books I bought for resell really had great ideas (in the ad but the book poorly displayed said ideas). The author didn't do their research, so I did, and created better versions. I liked to write and this was my window of opportunity since the ads built in me the curiosity and ambition I thought why not utilize it and launch my writing career/hobby.

These compilations CD's were somewhat like HubPages only portable and instead of adsense ads (directly on the article/hub) their was a link to a site that often used adsense.

..Evolution of this concept..

My learning curve in entrepreneurial efforts was taking a sharp upward spiral, I became overwhelmed a lot at the very vastness of this field. I was excited at the same time but I really felt my brain grow as I developed my skill sets. This made this the most exciting business I'd ever tackled. I was learning at an alarming rate and bettering myself at the same time.

Although money never poured in like I imagined the currencies of growth were much more valuable. I also found this was a great way to tap that creative energy I always had so much of an abundance of!

EBooks evolved into the hub pages concept, I-think.. For the most part

It was a lot like how a hub page has valuable content but also has ads around the page, only these eBooks usually just had the site address of the author embedded at the footer of the page (prominently) They were less annoying than the eBooks you find now days, that employ this concept. They also used the link out feature to link to other sites and affiliate sites, but again it was done with tact and minimized marketing concepts. In some books they did like Google ads did, they advertised links to other sites and charged the site to put the link in their books (maybe where ad sense got the idea?)

It was a product you paid for so it had to be more info than junk marketing. A lot of eBooks today don't follow this concept and its rare to find an eBook that is just an eBook with but links to information that follows the same concept as a hub page without the ads around it.

eBooks used to be the way to make money writing, now the systematic approach of networking and the embedded web 2.0 technologies allow for a simpler approach. It takes more leg work initially but it's much easier to market. You just get people to read your article. With eBooks you had to convince them to pay money for it. With HubPages you just send them to the site, they have nothing to lose and if they benefit they help your site rank by leaving a comment, or they help your income by clicking an ad.

With all these eBooks being pirated it became more difficult to "sell" them so eBay sellers got creative, they "reinvented the wheel" or the "CD" (pun?)

Someone took this concept and started to compile all these e-books together. As they did often become pirated, because they were valuable and easily sent to anyone, combining them into compilation CD's refreshed the concept of buying them as this was a valuable product because it had so many in one place.

You didn't have to go searching for all this valuable data; you had them all there on one CD. The concept worked well for eBay marketing as well because people could use keywords for each product on the CD thus gain more potential traffic from search terms. CD's would be titled (legitimately) with just keywords and more people searching for information products saw the page and since it had so much on it (the CD and the ad about it wowed people) it was a win, win.

The whole point for the authors was to get traffic back to their site in exchange for providing valuable information. The person selling the book would get money for a valuable information product and the author would get traffic. The book was usually about the same thing their site was about, but was written to wet the appetite for more like information they had on the site. Some sites were just designed like hubpages, free information, and Adsense clicks paid the bills. Others sold a product but still offered valuable information.

The first CD's weren't eBooks they were loose html sites in folders, because it was simply harder to pirate it this way. To the CD owner who bought it, it was one big file 700 Megs in length. Most people buying the CD had basic computer skills and weren't adept in figuring out how to zip up just parts of the information to pirate it.. they thought they had to send the whole CD so this helped slow down the piracy. But then again this lasted only a short while, then authors started to zip up the different file sets so people could easily sell peices of the CD (which took us back to the drawing board to avoid piracy).

But to make better looking and more valuable CD's sellers started to compete by using the eBooking software to give the CD more flair. The first ones used navigation pages but were poorly made and cheesy at best.

The resellers realized something important.

What appealed to me here?

For the CD compilation disk seller these books collectively were valuable bits of information on themed concepts.. although most of these CD's didn't theme very well they just offered vast amounts of different types of information like the KFC chicken and coleslaw recipe (information on where to find the information on the web, whole sections were just links to valuable unknown sites on the web).

I kind of think of the eBooks as portable hub pages where by the only ad was their link back.. And the CD was like the HubPages site.. Only it was sold as a collection of hub like eBooks (content wise) that the authors authorized you to add to your compilation, because their goal was to write to drive traffic to the mother load site they had, or to a sales page.

I was using the eBook concept long before most of my competition picked up on it.. I just couldn't see selling the CD in such a archaic way (loose or zipped files which just confused the non computer literate customers!). The eBooks were attractive and had so much more control over piracy (because of eBook disabling technologies).

I liked that I could also seal the information I made myself so no one could tarnish it. Eventually I just sold my own creations and ditched the resell eBooks because most of them were outdated information.. They did give me a lot of leads to what to write about however and my writing career was started.. I didn't make much, I was not really good at marketing but the writing and research skills were currency I adored more than money.

A new concept happened that helped people get traffic on a wider scale and also offered the customer a better compilation product (CD). By networking the links to great sites of high value that worked based on Adsense revenue like HubPages, these CD's helped these sites get free traffic for their contribution. The authors sold these CD's with both eBooks (not compiled), of useful information right there, and they built eBooks that explained a lot of great information and then linked you to dozens of sites to find this information easily (They had filtered out sites that held little value).

In this way this was a filtering service that was of value to the CD owner, customer, and the seller of the service packaged as a product. It was a lot like how an interior designer helps people find the right furniture and fixtures to make a room what you want it to be, but you don't know where to look for the right stuff so you pay them to organize it for you and add some flair to your imagination.

The links organized sites that helped people for example buy parts to soup up their cars for racing, wholesale sites that most people didn't know about, and even 99 cent store sites that would sell you the entire store of stuff to resell at 99 cents stores (even how to set one up).. Back then people weren't as adept at using Google and other tools now available for this type of thing, now people do this like second nature, but back then it was a time saver and a marketable service, solidified into an eBook complete with links to sites and information that tied the whole thing together..

This was before sites like HubPages were really thriving. (During web 1.0). The current product was fascinating as the entire CD was clone-able and resalable, for 8.00. When I saw this concept for the first time the "with resell rights to this whole CD" concept appealed to me because wow you just buy and sell it like anything else but it's a fascinating bunch of information!

Back to the first CD that got me started on eBay...

I decided to create an ad for this CD (before I bought it) selling it, to see how it would look. I basically took what they described was on the CD and made my own version of it (to see if I possessed the skill and patience to even make an ad to sell it if I bought it with resell rights (in the beginning). They were usually highly descriptive about the contents of each eBook, so it wasn't hard to just shorten this a bit and write it in my own words. I thought they were writing too much ranting so I made it more professional and created a more professional looking eBay ad.

Then, I ordered one.. And since the CD was on its way to me, and I had resell rights I wasted no time, I listed my ad thinking it would take days to get my first order, and it shocked me. I sold 3 copies in the first day! When it came in the mail it was a very cool CD, I cloned it packaged it and shipped my customers their CD, got good feedback and had an amazingly easy product to sell that was easy to make and ship.

I discovered their were floods of these CD's available though.. People started to compile several CD's together omitting the bad outdated info called "padding" but alot of padding was always in there.

I wanted to purify this CD so I started to remove all padding, and went on a purchasing rampage to acquire all my competitors CD's with resell rights and started to compile my own version with just the good stuff.. This was my niche as no one else seemed to be thinking of this, but each CD had at least 3 or 4 products that weren't found on any other CD (but mine).

People would add things themselves to this CD and this is how we shrunk the "padding" phenomenon. I called this CD "The Internet Time Capsule" for this reason.

I started to recycle profits in acquisition of ALL CD's like this one and many were just clones remarketed (really sucked to get those but some had money back guarantee). Over the next year I had a thriving business going, I had over that year recompiled a CD with about 80% quality products and 20% free space.. I didnt like selling a CD with a bunch of junk just to fill it up. Eventually I started to create products to fill the extra available space on the CD.

I really liked filling up the CD to the max and even when I filled it up I wanted to add more to it as I wrote new stuff, and I used eBooking as a way to compress files so I could even fit more! This is what got me started in writing eBooks. Within months I had a 100% CD full of amazing product, no BS.

My CD was called the Info-Matrix.. Containing a lot of fascinating information and how to books, then I added the marketing eBooks and re-themed it for power sellers on eBay because the bulk of people who seemed to be buying them after a while were other sellers looking for an investment product to resell. ClubPowerSellers Compendium... was the second..

I had decided to theme the CD better.. and spent about 6 months building a construct navigation infrastructure. Think of it like how hub pages works to help you navigate through all those hubs.. Before I completed the construct eBay had made a new rule that compendium CD's were no longer allowed on the service and we all perished.. I completely removed my product from ebay all together for the reconstruction, but it never got the chance to see the light of sales.. the end of an era was here (bows head).

They started out by making the ads not work.. You cannot describe the disk hence you cannot sell it.. The selling point was the descriptions of the products in the ad.

The first rule that made it hard was one ad one product description. Of course if you were selling a movie this is easy but a compilation disk is several products compiled into a set so to sell it you had to list the contents.. But with the new rule this was impossible.. It was the Wholesale lists people kept trying to market without updating them or using legitimate wholesale site links that caused the friction. Complaints about the bunk CD's flooded eBay's email and the bad apples ruined it for all of us. Honest sellers like myself found all that hard work destroyed and useless by these idiots.. who lost nothing really.

My latest and yet never sold compendium was perfected, it was called "The Facinatrix" Even the name was cool..

It has a beautiful construct, and I even designed a test drive by removing the construct from the CD without the products (the final link to the product/eBook itself was the only part missing) and offering this ride on the site, they could fully experience the CD without being able to see the actual products.. It was brilliant.. But sits on a shelf now in a dusty CD case. Alot of its contents are now outdated however so the concept is now lost.. But the experience was the real currency!

Since now sites like hubpages.com exist and give us a new more brilliant way to do the same thing, and we don't have to sell anything but our works value the legend lives on in a new web 2.0 format!

I moved on and chalked it up to a good run, and the end of an era.. We had fun though.. I sold probably 4,000 CD's for 8-12 bucks a piece over 3 years.. But this was to me more than the money, I learned web design, CD' jewel case art design, theme construction and many more skills that later translated into necessary skills for my business in Meditation CD's (the artwork creation, marketing, website etc..). I stand firm that everything had hidden and powerful lessons that help you later in life.. so even failures aren't truly failures!