I have the UPC numbers for all products in my inventory. I would like to make use of eBay catalogs and list with product information. How can I do that?
Listing your items by leveraging eBay product catalogs is a great idea. Items listed against eBay catalogs surface when buyers search for the particular product.
To list against catalogs you will need to provide at least one product identifier. If you use UPC, BrandMPN, eBay attempts to find a matching product on your behalf and use it in the listing. If you specify more than one of these values (such as UPC and BrandMPN), eBay uses the first one that matches a product in eBay's catalog system. (This may be useful if you aren't sure which ID is more likely to result in a match.) ePID is an eBay defined product identifier. As ePID is defined by eBay, it is the most reliable means to identify a product.
Therefore we recommend that you find if your UPC has a catalog match on eBay using the FindProducts call. The call response will return the ePID if there is a match. Store the ePID in your database and use it in the AddFixedPriceItem call.
While this involves making an extra call to FindProducts, this process offers the following advantages -
· You know which product has catalog coverage on eBay.Over time you build an ePID database that you can reuse.
· You don't need to do category mapping for the product since eBay will do it for you. Also you do not need to send in the description, pictures, and eBay CategoryID in your listing request.