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Ebay auction manager for OSCOMMERCE


quicklyshop

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I still like the idea of finding a way to interact directly (albeit without the use of the API in this case).

 

I'm in the middle of working on an Amazon Auction solution right now but when it's finished (no time frame - it's Christmas time and I'm kinda busy at my day job) I'm planning on working on eBay and then Yahoo.

 

IMO all three are possible with a little creativity.  :D  

 

If anyone has any other ideas though please pop them right in here.

 

yes it certainly is possible... as I metioned earlier the software based timbercreek SOLD! doesn't use the API... the only problem with this is when eBay does change its API, you will have to change your routines to be able to post again or get the correct category numbers.

The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing

- Edmund Burke

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2.) I do agree when the comment was made....why would anyone want to send business from their site, where they can make a profit, to an auction site where chances are very good that the customers will find the same product cheaper. This doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

One thing to keep in mind is the idea behind ECOM is promotion, promotion, promotion. . . Then mix it up and keep it interesting. Placing an item for bid on the internet and providing a link back to Ebay is a way to give customers variety.

 

It also gives people a chance to say "HEY!!, I got a great deal on ____ at www.somesite.com. . "

 

The integration with auction sites is a great idea, promotional tool, and when finished a great edge.

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To cwdmark: good idea, but what happend if prices at ebay are differents that prices we have at shop.

 

Tell me what are you going to do, may be we can organize us to make a contribution together.

 

manon, just create a seperate category that is hidden (no name), and add your auction id/product in that category. just when you add it, click on the red button after you link to it so that it is not visible to the public.

 

i've been doing this for a week or two and it's working out great.

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ok, this discussion is huge and i didn't read all of it but let me throw my rotten two cents in.

 

 

what's wrong with just a simple form? like a check out. everyone that gets a 'you are the winner' email gets info from the buyer usually. leave a link, or SEND a link to this person stating where they can take advantage of order history and possible discounts, blah blah blah

 

they follow the link, it takes them to a form. at the form they put in their auction number, etc. etc. their info, and press 'continue'. at that, it takes them to check out, and drags them all the way through to the end. just making that auction item an 'item' on the site.

 

there, how's that???

 

*looks around* am i too late? did someone already suggest it?

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I am new to OSC, but I have been using ebay for several years now. I will admit, I hate the costs. Last month my eBay bill was over $1000 because of all their fees. I use eBay's new auction type of the "Fixed Price Auction". So all the prices are fixed, and I have items in my store that are the same price ie "LOTRCOL_EBAY" and so on.

Keeping up with the auctions is a HUGE time consuming thing. I literally spend hours a day sending emails back and forth. If OSC could send the buyer a "Congrats" letter with a checkout link that would be fantastic. The checkout link (as stated before) add the "..._EBAY" item to the shopping cart, check email address against database to see if they exist. If they exist, ask for password and send to checkout, otherwise, it would send them to new user sign-in page.

For payment options, on ebay you would need to disable the paypal/billpoint feature so people dont pay with that, but have paypal and whatever else for payment options on OSC.

Than have OSC generate an invoice with the auction number that they can print out (and send one to yourself if you wanted)

 

Another idea, you can't parse the html and stuff from eBay because they are a pain. But, they send emails when some one buys/wins an auction. Can OSC check an email address for emails and parse those? Then it could read the information directly.

 

Secondly, can temporary items be created? Again, parse the email which will contain the price, and create it on the fly with the correct auction number. Item number could even be the auction number from eBay.

 

None of these address the relisting and things, but since right now I'm doing the bulk of my business on eBay it would save me a TON of time to click a button and have it scan emails, or whatever and generate emails to people automatically.

---

Now I just need to get all these module installed so I can take credit cards and things.

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It would make sense and I imagine there is an audience for a contribution that would list items on eBay. My understanding of the eBay Developer fee schedule is that only the contribution developer would need to pay the $1000 annual fee and then, since fees are not charged by eBay for using the API to list items, this contribution could be used fee-free by OSCommerce users.

Patrick Breitenbach

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Wel... ehmm... you work for them don't you

 

I don't know, as I was EXPRESSLY told the other day by a Paypal rep over the phone, "We do NOT work for, nor are we OWNED by eBay!" and then hung up the phone leaving me high and dry. Sorry, no love for Paypal here. Once they work out who's rules to adopt then I'll worry about it.

 

 

 

API calls that involve adding or relisting items to eBay are free and are not charged any API usage fees. However, the seller will still be charged the standard eBay listing fees.

 

That could be inturpereted that listing an item does not use an API call. But we are trying to create an eBay solution, so API calls would be required. And as eBay says,

Typically, we find that seller management tools use approximately three or four API calls for every item listed (over the duration of the item listing). Merchants using the API for their own selling typically use 1 to 2 API calls per item listing."

Even if that's 2 per listing.  I list anywhere from 50-100 things a month.  In a year I would have 1200 API calls, which would mean more charges.  I would have NO problem paying $10/yr for the development license, and another $10-15/yr for my API calls.  But I believe the developer is charged these API calls, and they would be responsible from getting money from people.  I think the $1000/yr would be easy to get, 100 people at $10.  Would mean alot of work from a developer just on the finance part of it.  In all honesty, there would be no way to really do it.  If the code is released, anyone can install it w/o paying for anything, and list 1000 items a month and run up a hefty bill for the developer.

 

I'm done rambling.

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Wel... ehmm... you work for them don't you

 

I don't know, as I was EXPRESSLY told the other day by a Paypal rep over the phone, "We do NOT work for, nor are we OWNED by eBay!" and then hung up the phone leaving me high and dry. Sorry, no love for Paypal here. Once they work out who's rules to adopt then I'll worry about it.

 

Ehm... taken directly from PayPal's homepage: ebay_co.gif

 

Out and proud I'd say.

"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them"

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I haven't seen the eBay API so cannot comment definitively but I believe you can get an item listed with just one call. The second call that is indicated likely has to do with the post-sale. The auction management tools make more calls because they manage auctions, not just list items.

Patrick Breitenbach

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Ehm... taken directly from PayPal's homepage:  

 

 

Yeah, well, since there were conflicting rules, ie, you can list pre-orders on eBay, but Paypal requires you to have the item in stock, a guy screwed me over. Demanded his money back and said I didn't ship it. Well, I couldn't it wasn't out until this week (10 days past the submit day, 3 days past the deadline date), so he got his money, I was charged a fee, and he bought it cheaper from someone else on ebay. Called paypal, they didn't care, when I said eBay allows it, and they are owned, the guy got nasty with me.

 

I want my OSC!!

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Was it clear that you wouldn't be shipping for over 20 days? Processing a refund through PayPal credits back *all* PayPal fees. PayPal and eBay terms don't match because they are two very different services.

Patrick Breitenbach

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Quickly shop, im sorry, but you have no clue!

 

Extract from news article:

 

Ebay notched up after-tax profits of $25.9m, during the last three months of 2001. Five million people visited the website every day during December, and the number of registered users almost doubled to 42.4m from a year earlier.

 

Do you honestly think a "contact in the UK IT sector" is going to be able to get you that kind of traffic? If it was as simple as you make it out to be then everybody would be creating multibillion pound websites overnight! Get back to reallity

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Do you honestly think a "contact in the UK IT sector" is going to be able to get you that kind of traffic? If it was as simple as you make it out to be then everybody would be creating multibillion pound websites overnight! Get back to reallity

 

How long as eBay been up? It wasn't always like that. It started out fairly small and slowly grew into the monster it is now. I know *I'VE* been on it for 4 years.

 

Who would of thought Athlon would actually be competing with Intel with processesors? They had a slow/rough start, but they took off.

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Even Amazon and Yahoo can't compete with eBay (and they've been trying for years). Think about that statement for a second...Amazon can't compete with eBay. It's called first to market and eBay has that battle won already. It would take millions upon millions of marketing dollars to even make a tiny dent in their business. Take a look at Amazon's auctions sometime. It's a virtual ghost town. :wink:

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well with the way ebay is becoming more of a tight ass, all a new auction service need are a few snazy commercials, and boom, i'm on that bandwagon.

 

ebay is not friendly, ebay is annoying, but it's something everybody knows, and that's only because of the commercials.

 

if a new dog comes out looking to make a home for himself, with the BS ebay keeps up with, TRUST me, many people will be happy to abaondon ship.

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  • 1 month later...

The API is not the only way to integrate with eBay. The Mr. Lister Interface allows a mechanism for adding items in bulk directly to ebay. I've used this in the past to build customer sites that can upload from an external database and load items up to eBay with easy this way. There is no cost supported with using this interface and it's just a matter of keeping the format consistent with the specs that eBay provides. Almost any type of auction can be supported using Mr. Lister including fixed price auctions.

 

I've never build this integration between OsCommerce and eBay specifically but I can't imagine any reason why it's not possible. I've done the same using another MySQL database and PHP driven website.

 

-Chris

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Okey you think noone can compete with ebay.co.uk right. But you are wrong. There is an auction site just 2 years old and growing everyday and expanding its community day by day.

The site called http://www.ebid.co.uk . They do not charge for listing . They do not charge aany success fee. they do their revenues from Advertising and promotional auctions. And their user support is great.

It is amazing howmany people moving from ebay to ebid everyday.

 

Check it out if you dont believe me. The auction site spends nothing on advertisment. They only use free banner exchange programs. You people are forgeting what creates the success on the net. Currently i started to consantrate on this site to get extra sales. And i am not paying fortune to sell there like i was doing on ebay.

If you people want to succeed on internet you have to learn to think like an enterpreneur. And keep thinking positive.

I can't type a trick like i can type.

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Okey you think noone can compete with ebay.co.uk right. But you are wrong. There is an auction site just 2 years old and growing everyday and expanding its community day by day.

 The site called http://XXXXXXXXXX. ...

 

And:

 

By Cool computer hardware at amazing prices

@ www.XXXXXXXXXXX

 

That's two commercial ads in one single post ;-)

 

Please read our forum rules and (at least) change your signature.

 

Last time I checked there were some 400 auction sites online, but - as always, according to Cringely - there will be a market share of 85% for the big one and 15% left for the rest. It happened with M$ and Apple, it happened with Commodore64 and Atari 800XL, and it also happens with eBay.

 

Let's hope it also happens to osCommerce, I mean - we getting the 85% ;-)

You can't have everything. That's why trains have difficulty crossing oceans, and hippos did not adapt to fly. -- from the OpenBSD mailinglist.

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I apologise for the line i put on deepnote.

About the Ebid auctions. I am not trying to advertise them. As i dont own the site and i dont get paid for advertising them. All i was trying to do showing a sample to the this ebays soldiers that nothing is impossible on the net. There will be always a weak site of huge company that another company can use to grow. There is no limits on the net so your minds.

I can't type a trick like i can type.

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