Large Merchant Services (LMS) now in beta. The best way to list and manage in bulk!

Large Merchant Services (LMS) is a powerful new way to list and manage items in bulk. This saves developers processing power and bandwidth, and allows sellers to react quickly to marketplace dynamics.

Developer Benefits

• Reduce bandwidth by consolidating tens of thousands of calls into a single, compressed file
• Simplify integration by sending a simple file back and forth to eBay
• Off-load processing onto the eBay infrastructure, and save your own resources
• Simplify error management as LMS handles transport and general system errors, and retries appropriately
• Access Trading Platform features that may not be available via the Trading API

Seller Benefits

• Manage your items by SKU
• Bulk revise the price or quantity of active listings
• Bulk download orders for fulfillment
• Bulk upload tracking information
• Get eBay's list of your active items (to reconcile with your inventory management system)

LMS is still in beta, but you can try it right now. Check out the Large Merchant Services page for details. »

Get Your Items into New Markets: Global Buying Hub

eBay has just launched the revamped Global Buying Hub! The hub makes it easier for buyers to find items that they can purchase and have shipped to them.

Great for Buyers

• The eBay interface is localized in your language.
• Find out early if there are any additional taxes or duties that apply to your purchase. You won't get an unexpected surprise.

Great for Sellers

• Get access to markets you previously haven't had access to, for example, Norway and Czech Republic.
• eBay is doing additional advertising and marketing to get your items exposure.
• You may already be showing up here. If you aren't, a quick update to your ship to region will make you show up.
• When buyers leave feedback, they'll be reminded that it was a cross-border transaction. This should help protect your DSRs.

Great for Developers

• No code changes needed. Your sellers just need to specify that they ship to the applicable region.

For more details, supported languages, and an explanation of how GBH differs from the International Site Visibility feature, see the blog post. »

What Does the Future Hold? Find Out by Using the Dev Program API Calendar

You may have noticed that there's a lot of change happening on the eBay site. Stay informed about what is happening and when by checking out the eBay API Release Schedule calendar.

I've color coded the events to give you a sense of the likely impact. Here is what the colors mean:

Red = Must adopt by date. May break listing or other important functionality.
Yellow = Should adopt sometime. May be technically optional, but important to seller strategy.
Green = Nice to adopt. May still want to adopt as a differentiator.

One tip, click the Agenda tab and you can use it as a checklist for adopting upcoming features.

And since it's powered by Google Calendar, you can subscribe to it just like any other public calendar. Subscribe just to the High Impact calendar, or subscribe to all of them.

Caveat: Dates are subject to change. But the benefit of the dynamic calendar is that you find out immediately after I do.

Check out the calendar, or get more details in the blog post. »

Merchandising API: Similar Items

Have you ever lost an auction for an item on eBay, and wanted to find something similar? Well we have a new API for you!

eBay has recently released a new call in the Merchandising API that will fetch items that are similar to the item you specify.

The getSimilarItems call finds replacement items for your favorite item. Use cases for the getSimilarItems operation include recommending items like the one a buyer lost in an auction, or like watched items that have ended. The returned items can be filtered using any of the supported filtering criteria.

More information can found at http://developer.ebay.com/products/merchandising/.

New Flex/Flash SDKs Available!

Is it time to update your Flex or Flash seller application?

Now the Flex/Flash SDK is compatible with Flex Builder 3 and is now based on version 587 of the Shopping API.

The Flex/Flash SDK provides you with ActionScript 3 libraries that you can use in Adobe's Flex Builder 2, Flex Builder 3, or Flash CS3 development environments. The SDK also provides you with Developer Guides for each platform and working samples that include methods that you can re-use or re-purpose in your own designs.

There are two versions of the Flex/Flash Toolkit - one with samples and one without samples - so you can choose whether you want to download a larger or smaller package.

Visit the Flex/Flash Toolkit web page within the eBay Flash Developer Center to get more information.

New Version of the JavaScript SDK Now Available!

Now you can update your JavaScript seller application, because the most recent version of the JavaScript SDK is compatible with version 587 of the Shopping API.

The JavaScript SDK provides you with ActionScript 3 libraries that you can use in your JavaScript application. The SDK also includes a Developer Guide and working samples with methods that you can re-use or re-purpose in your own designs.

You can download the newest version of the JavaScript SDK from the eBay Developer Program web page.

Visit the JavaScript SDK web page within the eBay Flash Developer Center to get more information.

Find What You're Looking For: Better Developers Program Search

If you haven't noticed, we recently improved the search experience on the website. We hope that will make it easier to find the information you are looking for.

• Try a search for AddItem.
• Narrow your search down to a section of the site, or search everything.
• In the results, click [Type:] or [From:] to narrow the results further.
• If you want a whole document just on AddItem, try narrowing your search by doing the search on "TITLE," or sorting by " URL."

Tips:

• For blog searches: Search for "LASTMODIFIED" "DESC" to get the latest posts.
• If you want more results, do a search on "TEXT".

Try it out on the eBay Dev Program website »