eBay: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the San Jose-based marketplace eBay. Here you can find information on how to request an eBay account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Marketplace features

Settings and configuration

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Mappings

Additional information

• Countries and languages
• Change the location of your warehouse
• Additional mappings and options
  • Image mapping
  • Image requirements
• Merchant product numbers/SKUs
• K-types
• Returns
• Product variants (beta)
• eBay Plus
• Set stock to zero instead of removing products
• Order extra data

FAQs

Commercial information

* eBay Motors is also available as a separate marketplace, but only for the US market. Although the integration works in the same way, the only categories available are related to cars, motorbikes, and other vehicles.

Disclaimer: for the API connection with eBay, ChannelEngine uses the relatively new Sell API. eBay's back-end, however, still uses an older platform, so there could be discrepancies between the possibilities of the two systems.

How to request an account

To start selling on eBay, you first need to request a business account. Regardless of the country you use during the setup, one account is sufficient to start selling on every available portal. More information on how to set up selling on eBay can be found on Selling internationally.

eBay is a fully open marketplace and there are no strict requirements attached to business accounts. What is more, the number of different categories and products that you are able to offer via eBay is almost limitless.

Associated costs

eBay does not charge any listing fees for items listed in your default country. This is the eBay portal where you originally created your commercial/business account and the country where your warehouse is located. However, if you choose to sell internationally through other eBay portals (e.g.: if you initially registered on eBay.co.uk and now want to also list items on eBay.de), you may incur listing fees for each product. The specific fees you may encounter depend on the type of business account you hold and the category in which your products are listed.

For detailed information on commercial seller fees, please visit the eBay help pages for the following regions:

• United Kingdom
• United States 
• The Netherlands (in Dutch)
• Germany (in German)
• Italy (in Italian)

If your eBay store is not included in the list above, refer to the commercial seller fees section in the help center of your specific eBay market for more details.

Marketplace features

* This feature is currently in beta, so the related task cannot be scheduled to run automatically.

** On eBay, SKU matching only works with your own existing products.

Settings and configuration

Setting up each marketplace on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, though not every marketplace includes the steps listed below.

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Finish the Activation.
7. Check the Listed products overview.

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On eBay

If your business is based in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, or Switzerland, sign up via eBay's starter promo page. For other countries, sign up for an eBay account in a regular way. 

Following the creation of your account, you can set up the mandatory policies necessary for ChannelEngine to list your products on eBay. The policies that must be set up are Payment, Return, and Shipping.

1. Go to Account settings, Business policies on eBay. For all the policies listed below, it is recommended to choose an easy and specific name for ChannelEngine (e.g.: ChannelEngine payment) – without special characters such as colons, semi-colons or hashtags.
2. Create a Payment policy. Its name is required to properly configure ChannelEngine, so make sure to write it down (or copy-paste it). When configuring PayPal as a payment method, it is advised to enable Require immediate payment when buyer uses Buy It Now to prevent orders from remaining on a waiting status for a long period.
3. Create a Return policy. An easy and specific name is also recommended here.
4. Create a Shipping policy. The same naming advice is applicable to this policy as for the Payment policy. The shipping policy is where you set up the countries you want to ship to, and, as such, in what countries the offers are visible. Make sure to only enable countries you can and want to ship to.

   

5. Enter the previously created policies on ChannelEngine.

On ChannelEngine

Add eBay on ChannelEngine (see ChannelEngine: add a marketplace for more information on how to add a marketplace).

Once this marketplace has been created, enter two of the policies created under the Channel settings in your account. You are also required to enter the location of your warehouse (i.e.: country, postal code, and city).

Save this information and, when reopening the tab Channel settings, click the orange button Authorize at the bottom of the page.

A pop-up appears so you can sign in to your eBay account. Once logged in, you can confirm that ChannelEngine is allowed to have access to your account.

Settings

• Payment policy name - the name of your payment business policy on eBay.
• Return policy name - the name of your return business policy on eBay.
• Inventory location name - the name of your inventory location on eBay.
• Inventory location country ISO code - the ISO country code associated with your inventory location on eBay. E.g.: US.
• Inventory location postcode - the postcode associated with your inventory location on eBay. E.g.: 3157.
• Inventory location city - the city associated with your inventory location on eBay. E.g.: New York.
• Max. stock quantity - the upper limit of stock quantity communicated to eBay. eBay imposes limitations on the number of products you can upload, as well as their total value. This is calculated as follows: number of products × product price. Use this setting to upload only a portion of your inventory, and avoid running into these limits.
• Set stock to 0 instead of remove offer - enable this setting to set your stock to zero and exclude your product offers from being listed on eBay. This does not remove your products from eBay but only deletes them from the listing. Make sure you enable this setting together with the Out of stock setting in the eBay back-end.
• Fetch shipping policy for order - enable this setting to fetch your shipping business policy from eBay and append it to the order extra data. Be careful as enabling this setting adds extra load and may slow down the order import.
• Extra fields to export - select the custom attributes you want to export to eBay. You can also unselect the attributes you no longer want to export. To learn more about this setting, refer to the eBay: include or exclude custom attributes article.

Advanced settings

• Import WebInterpret orders - if enabled, ChannelEngine imports orders from the selected eBay accounts (e.g.: eBay IT, eBay FR) into your tenant. This is only applicable if you use WebInterpret's services, which let you list products in additional countries on eBay without the need to create a new account. Orders imported from other eBay accounts include the Marketplace code field as part of the order extra data.
• Override shipping policy - overrides the shipping policy values set up in the eBay back-end with the shipping costs set on the product level – if such a value is defined on the Content mappings tab.

Categorization

Categorization on eBay is mandatory. If your categories are not linked, products under those categories are not published on eBay.

Mappings

Content

All products (required)

• Prefill from eBay catalog - if mapped to yes, eBay populates your product content with input submitted by other merchants. This only works when creating products on eBay. Note that if you map it to no, after mapping it to yes, you must remove the products you had already created on eBay with this input before you can add them again – it is not enough to simply change the attribute value.
• Image URL 1 - the URL for your main product image. The requirements are:
  • Minimum resolution - 500x500 px.
  • Recommended resolution - between 800x800 px and 1,600x1,600 px, which allows prospective buyers to enlarge the images.
  • File format - JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, AVIF. All non-JPEG files are automatically converted to JPEG. Since JPEG files do not support transparency, PNG files that have a transparency element are converted to have a white background. TIF files with transparency may result in a black background being incorrectly rendered.
  • File size - at most 7 MB.
  • Color space - JPEG images must be uploaded in RGB. CMYK is not supported.
  • Images must be free from text and artwork added by the merchant.
  • The image URL must not redirect to another URL.
  • No rate limits, passwords, or tokens in the web hosting serving the image.
  • HTTPS protocol.
  NB: although eBay cannot check if self-hosted images meet the above requirements, self-hosted images that do not comply may be removed from listings at a later stage. Relisting or revising the product may fail if its images do not meet the requirements. 
  NB: if one of the images uses eBay Picture Service: eBay hosted images (eBay EPS), and others do not, ChannelEngine automatically uses its own content delivery network (CDN) to host the images. This is because eBay does not allow for mixing both types of images. In these cases, mapping images to anything other than the usual product image attributes does not work.
  NB: images that do not comply with eBay's requirements may cause issues with the related thumbnails. However, eBay does not provide feedback via the API. Therefore, make sure your images comply before submitting them.
• Condition - if unmapped, by default the status New is used. You can use the conditions below for your products, depending on the product category. For more information on this, check out the Item condition by category and Category and marketplace support for the eBay Refurbished Program articles on eBay.
  • Not working
  • Like new
  • New
  • New other
  • New with defects
  • Seller refurbished
  • Certified refurbished
  • Excellent refurbished
  • Very good refurbished
  • Good refurbished
  • Used acceptable
  • Used excellent
  • Used good
  • Used very good
    NB: only merchants approved by eBay can use the Certified refurbished condition.
    NB: if you map a condition that does not apply to the product's category, the product does not pass eBay's validation when exported.
• Shipping policy name - map this attribute with the Shipping policy you created in eBay's back-end.
• VAT - the product's sales tax, according to the eBay country where it is listed.

All products (optional)

• EPID - the product's eBay product identifier (EPID).
• K-type numbers - see the K-types section.
• Product subtitle - the product's subheading, which helps it stand out in the search results page. Note that eBay charges for the use of this feature. For more details on it, such as the costs involved, check out the Fees for optional listing upgrades section of the Selling fees article on eBay. The maximum number of characters allowed is 55.
• Return policy name override - overrides the default return policy, which is configured on the Setup page of your eBay marketplace.
• Payment policy name override - overrides the default payment policy, which is configured on the Setup page of your eBay marketplace.
• Brand - the product's brand.
  NB: for many product categories, mapping the Brand attribute is required. If this attribute is left unmapped, ChannelEngine attempts to upload the product to eBay, but this might result in errors and unlisted products. The same goes for unique identifier numbers, such as EANs.
• eBay Plus - see the eBay Plus section.
• Image URL 2-10 - the URLs for your additional product images. Additional images can be mapped to default ChannelEngine attributes, or to other extra data attributes, during content mapping. For the image requirements, see Image URL 1. For additional tips and guidelines, check out the articles Introduction to pictures in listings and Adding pictures to your listings in the eBay help center.
• Variant aspect 1-5 name - introduce an aspect that distinguishes product variations from one another. Note that the aspect selected needs to be localized according to the sales channel. E.g.: while you can map this attribute to 'size' for eBay UK and US, you need to map it to Größe for eBay Germany.
• Variant aspect 1-5 value - provides a corresponding value for the Variant aspect name attribute. E.g.: black, small, etc.
  NB: if product variations share identical values for the Variant aspect value attribute, eBay does not display them. This is because values must differ per variation.
• Condition description - only required when a product is used. For every condition your products can have, a condition description is used.
• ISBN - the product's international standard book number (ISBN), if applicable.
• Limit quantity per buyer - use this to limit the maximum quantity of a product a customer can purchase in a single order.
• Product title - the product's title. The maximum number of characters allowed is 80.
• Product description - the product's description. The maximum number of characters allowed is 500,000 and HTML formatting is supported.
• Use product adoption - if enabled, eBay may match your SKU (such as the Manufacturer part number) to offers from other merchants and use their category and product compatibility information (e.g.: K-types). If enabled, eBay sets your MPN to your SKU if the brand is mapped – otherwise, it is left empty. If disabled, eBay sets the MPN to 'Does not apply' and eBay does not do product adoption for newly created products. Note that if you disable this feature, after enabling it, you must remove the products you had already created on eBay with this input before you can add them again – it is not enough to disable the feature.
• Secondary category - the product's second category. Note that eBay may charge a fee if you list your products in two categories.

Offer

Required

The only offer attribute required is Price, which is mapped to the CE:Price attribute behind the scenes by ChannelEngine if the Use price before reprice rules setting is disabled in your environment.

Optional

For information on the Map promotion and Percentage discount for 2-4 and more items attributes, check out the article eBay: how to set up multi-buy volume discounts.

Carrier

Carrier mapping is required on eBay. The list of carriers supported is fixed, but quite extensive.

Additional information

Countries and languages

ChannelEngine offers support for eBay in the countries listed in the Commercial information section of this guide. There are more countries in which eBay is active (such as in other parts of Asia), however, ChannelEngine deliberately offer support only for portals with relatively fast shipping options and Western currencies.

Multiple countries, one language

Although there are multiple eBay portals, if you place a product on one it is found on all portals. This can be changed by either excluding or including countries in your Shipping policy. Make sure to set up your shipping policy exactly as desired before uploading products, in order to prevent orders you cannot fulfill.

If you only use one portal but ship to multiple countries, your product information is shown in your setup language on every portal. In this scenario, it is advised to choose the plugin for the country you are shipping from. So if your warehouse is in the Netherlands and you are using Dutch descriptions, select the eBay.nl plugin.

Please note that if someone searches for a specific unique attribute (such as an EAN) on an excluded eBay portal, your product can still be found. However, orders can not be placed on it.

Multiple countries, multiple languages

If you want to place products on several eBay portals in multiple languages (which is advised to achieve maximum conversion), add a different eBay plugin per language. E.g.: if you want to sell to Dutch, German and French customers, add the eBay.nl, eBay.de, and eBay.fr plugins. You are required to perform the above-mentioned steps for each portal set up.

Furthermore:

• Create payment, return, and shipping policies for every eBay portal. You can use the same login for every portal. I.e.: if you create an account on eBay.nl, you can use the same credentials on eBay.de.
• Make sure to use the correct policy names for every channel.
• Use a business eBay account, otherwise you cannot use 'good till cancelled' offers on other eBay portals. This can be done from your eBay account, under Account, Personal information, Account type, Change account type. After changing the account, you have to re-authorize ChannelEngine via the Authorize button in your account.
• A different SKU is necessary for each and every portal. If you only use one SKU, make sure to enable the setting Append country code to SKU by going to the Setup page and expanding the Advanced settings section. When enabled, products on eBay.nl are published with the suffix _nl added to the original SKU – for example. When importing an order, that suffix is removed once again to prevent systems such as Magento from not recognizing the product.

Change the location of your warehouse

If your warehouse is moved to a different location or if you are switching to a different fulfillment supplier, you have to configure it on eBay as well. This can be done by changing the location information on ChannelEngine (make sure to change the postal code as well). Due to limitations on eBay, this is only updated for new products.

For existing products you have to manually change the location on eBay via the following steps:

1. Go to Sell.
2. Select all products by selecting the upper checkbox.
3. Select Edit in the options listed above your offers.
4. A spreadsheet view appears, listing all your products. You can change the location of your products in bulk.

Additional mappings and options

Additional mappings

• Once you have added shipping costs per individual product (e.g.: because they vary based on size and weight), these are used to overwrite the Domestic shipping costs set in the Postage policy.
• For many product categories, the GTIN/EAN, brand, and MPN are mandatory. For non-auto parts (which have an actual MPN) you can use the SKU.
• The title/name of a product cannot be empty.
• When selling used or refurbished products, it is mandatory to fill in a Condition description matching the condition of those items.
• There are limits on how many products can initially be sold on eBay, especially for new sellers/accounts. You can find more information on Selling limits.

Merchant product numbers/SKUs

eBay has strict requirements when it comes to the stock keeping units (SKUs) used for offers. SKUs can only contain alphanumeric characters, hyphens (-), and underscores (_), with a maximum length of 50 characters.

This means that SKUs containing a slash (/), for example, are rejected by eBay. For more information on how to prevent issues with offers on specific marketplaces, check out our Merchant product numbers/SKUs article.

K-types

• 10426,1071 -> product compatible with K-types 10426 and 1071
• 10426;1071 -> product compatible with K-types 10426 and 1071
• 10426|Rear axle;1071|Front axle -> product compatible with K-type 10426 with note 'Rear axle' and K-type 1071 with note 'Front axle'

Returns

Returns on eBay are imported and you can mark them as received, after which they are exported to eBay for full refund.

Beware of the following limitations:

• You can only fully accept or decline a return. Partial decline is not possible.
• ChannelEngine only exports updates on a return request that was previously imported. It is not possible to create a return on ChannelEngine and export it to eBay, because eBay does not support this scenario.
• ChannelEngine does not support eBay's return shipping labels, seller shipping labels, or seller-funded return shipping (i.e.: free return shipping). Your customer has to get the shipping label for returns, and pay for the return shipping.
• ChannelEngine only supports refunds, not replacements.
• As of the time of writing, returns were only available on eBay United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Canada (both in English and French).

Product variants [beta]

The product variants feature allows you to group variations of the same product. Variants can be grouped based on the parent-child or grandparent-parent-child structure of your products on ChannelEngine.

Go to Setup, Advanced settings on your eBay marketplace on ChannelEngine, and select your desired grouping under the setting Group products by:

• None - no product variants (default).
• Parent - the parent-child structure is used on ChannelEngine. This allows prospective buyers to select by size, color, or whatever value you assign to the Variant aspect attributes.
• Grandparent - the grandparent-(parent)-child structure is used on ChannelEngine. The child products are grouped according to their grandparent. The parent product is ignored, and is used only to locate the grandparent. This allows prospective buyers to select by size, color, or whatever value you assign to the Variant aspect attributes.

NB:

• This is a beta feature. Make sure to contact a Support agent before enabling it.
• To switch to another way of grouping (or turn the setting off by using None), you must remove these products from your selection, and wait until they are unpublished. Only then you can change this setting and include the products in your selection again. Otherwise, your changes are not applied. This is a limitation on eBay's side.
• A product cannot be a product variant and a separate single product on eBay at the same time. So if you enable grouping, the product does not appear separately on eBay – only as a variant.
• If you are using grandparent grouping and make a change to the attributes of the grandparent (and only of the grandparent), it does not trigger an export. However, a change in the parent or child (or their mapping) does trigger the export – and also changes the grandparent fields.
• The different images are based on the difference of the URLs of the child product images.
• If one of your child products returns an error, it is not published – but it does not stop the entire family from being published. Make sure to check your child products for errors before requesting the enabling of this feature. This also applies to child products with no stock, so it is recommended to include a stock rule in your product selection.

eBay Plus

eBay Plus is a membership program that provides buyers with access to special deals, exclusive sales, discounts, free delivery, and free returns.

Currently eBay Plus is only available in Australia and Germany. If you sell in one of these markets, you can map the eBay Plus attribute under Content mappings. Products with this attribute mapped to Yes display a badge on their pages, and are included in the eBay Plus search filter.

For more information on eBay Plus, check out the Selling with eBay Plus article on eBay's Seller Center.

Set stock to zero instead of removing products

If you use a stock filter in the product selection, products are removed from eBay when they are filtered out – and recreated when they are in stock again. If you do not want that to happen, there is an option in the plugin settings to set the stock to zero when the product is filtered out of your product selection.

When that option is enabled, products are not removed by ChannelEngine. Instead, the stock is updated to zero.

To use that feature, you need to first enable it in eBay's back-end – as described on eBay's Bulk listing tool article. To enable the out-of-stock option on eBay:

1. Go to Selling preferences.
2. Scroll down to Multi-quantity listings and select the toggle beside Listings stay active when you're out of stock.

Note that eBay removes products with stock equal to zero after a certain time, without communicating it to ChannelEngine. Therefore, this option does not work if the product is out of stock for a long period of time.

Order extra data items

When an order is imported to ChannelEngine, ChannelEngine also fetches extra data items related to the order itself – or to order lines. This extra data is specific to this channel. An explanation of each can be found below: 

Order extra data

Order line extra data

* Conditional fields are only displayed if the marketplace provides a value. 

FAQs

I no longer see validation messages on the 'Listed products' page. What happened?

To provide a clearer and more readable overview of validation messages, this feature was moved from the Reason column under the Listed products tab to the Validation and feedback tab, under the same Listed products section.

How does ChannelEngine handle eBay's account deletion protocols?

eBay provides their customers with a way to request that their personal data is deleted from eBay's systems. When this happens, eBay notifies companies and developers using their APIs so they act accordingly. If such a request is received by ChannelEngine, a daily task is triggered to anonymize the customer's data – unless an existing order is still open. This task runs nightly (CET).

Can I add a 'shop category' to eBay via ChannelEngine?

No, adding a shop category to eBay via ChannelEngine is not possible. To do so via eBay's back-end, check out the article How to customize your eBay Store on eBay.

Why is there a code in the delivery address of some eBay UK orders?

eBay UK has been adding a unique code to the second line of eligible addresses in the UK since September 2020 (e.g.: ebay1234abc). Currently this addition is exclusive to orders where Royal Mail is the carrier. The code is automatically used to attain tracking information from Royal Mail, which in turn provides buyers with an easy way to track their purchases. Make sure to take this into account in your flows when using Royal Mail as a carrier in the UK.