I'm pretty bummed out right now. So here is my situation: I have an online eCommerce site, I want to make a eBay store to get more traffic to my .com site. Unfortunately after reading a lot of the rules and things it seems like eBay has restricted outside linking very much. My plan was to sell original (Public Domain) books on ebay and sell the digital version on my site. Having a link from the eBay page saying, if you are interested in a digital version look here, something like that. Since these are different items do you think this would still be violating eBays TOA? Also from your own experience how lenient or severe is eBay at following it's rules? For example if I put a link to my site at the bottom of my listing and feign ignorance if caught what will be the punishment? Thanks, Ty
They're not lenient at all. You may get a few auctions without getting caught, but they're very vigilant about any links in auction text. Also, it's very easy for them to detect, as they can just look at your auction content text. If it contains links, someone will eventually end up reviewing it.
You may be able to get away with it if you word it like "Own a hard copy of the popular digital release XXXX from www.yourdomain.com" Worst case scenario, they delete your listing. In very extreme cases if you outward links are to something illegal / offensive they will ban your account but I don't see this being an issue for you.