Setting up an eBay API

This is a Help Center article of Channable, the tool for product feed management and marketplace integrations. If you don't have an account yet, sign up for free or learn how to integrate your online shop with eBay.

Step 1: Create a new eBay connection in Channable

Go to the project you are working in and navigate to "APIs > +Add new API > +Add new connection". Select eBay. You can now give a name to the connection and click on "Connect with eBay", then you will be redirected to your eBay environment.

Sign in with your email or username and password. Make sure you have not logged in to a different eBay account already. Back in Channable, you can finish creating the connection by clicking on 'Add connection'.

Step 2: Setup a new eBay API

Now that you have created a new connection with your eBay seller account, go back to "APIs" and select your eBay connection.

Here, you can give a Name to the API and select the eBay country in which you want to sell your products. Choosing a country has an impact on the business policies of that specific country. For more information, please see step 3.3. Select the field you want to use for the Unique ID per item, we recommend using the id field.

Furthermore, it is possible to give your API a status. There are two options:

• Verify-only: The standard setting is "Verify-only". With the "Verify-only" status, you can activate the API to test for errors without actually publishing anything on eBay.
• Publish: Once you are sure you want to publish your listings on eBay, you can change the status to "Publish".

Finally, you can use a master rule group (optional) and click on "Continue". 

Step 3: Create your product listings 

Follow the four steps below to configure your product listings for eBay.

1. Categories
   Set up eBay categories for your products by using the generate categories feature or create new categories from scratch. You can also use our Smart Categorization, please see here for more information.
   
   
2. Rules
   Create different rules to optimize your product data. For example, take a look at our common rules support article.
   
   
3. Build
   In the "Build" step, you can find our preset template for the product listings. All you have to do is to fill it out by clicking on the field itself and selecting the corresponding value. For instance, the field "Title" should display the "Title" of your product and so on.
   
   The "Item group ID" field is used to combine multiple items into a single listing. Select the field that contains the group or parent ID of your products here. Later, in the "Attribute" step, you can select fields to configure the variants of grouped products. If your products are simple, simply use the product ID such as id. 
   
   If you are an eBay Store owner, you should also fill in the "Storefront category ID" & "Storefront category name" fields. If not, you can leave these fields empty.
   
   Finally, you also need to select Profiles for your Shipping, Payment, and Return policies. If you have set these policies up but can't find them, you might need to enable them first. For more information, see this link. In Channable, you can automatically select the profiles you have configured in eBay. You can use the name of the profiles as visible on eBay or the id of those profiles that you can find in the URL of your browser when you click on one profile. If you want to dynamically configure your profiles (i.e. different profiles for different products), follow this guide.
   
   Tip! Hover over the question marks next to the fields to see a description of the field and suggestions for possible values.
   
   Note I: It used to be mandatory to have EAN/GTIN codes for eBay, but not anymore. For eBay EU: If you do not have EAN/GTIN codes, select ‘EAN’ as ID Type and make sure you select a field that has the value ‘Does not apply’. For eBay US:  If you do not have UPC/GTIN codes, select ‘UPC’ as ID Type and make sure you select a field that has the value ‘Does not apply’.
   Note II: While not directly visible in the tool, Channable does support the K-type attribute for the car category in the build step. If you want to make use of this attribute, please contact our Technical Support department, and they will be able to enable this feature for your eBay API!
4. Attributes
   Next, you need to fill in the attributes per category in the "Attributes" step. See the screenshot below for an example of how the attributes look. A more detailed explanation of what to do in the "Attributes" step can be found in our Attributes support article.
   
   
   Note: if you have variants of products, you can configure this in the "Attributes" step as well. When selecting a field as an attribute value, for some fields you can also check the "Use as variant attribute" box. If you have variants you need to do this for at least 1 attribute for each category your variants fall into. Otherwise, the products will not appear as variants on eBay. Take into account that not all categories accept variant structures, only the ones that are specified on this page.
   
   

Step 4: Send your product listings to eBay

Once you have finished configuring your product listings, you can start sending your listings to eBay. If you have not activated the project yet, navigate to "Settings > Project settings > Activate project".  Then, go back to "APIs > your eBay API > Settings > Activate API" and "Run now" to send your listings to eBay. 

If you have still selected "Verify-only" as the status, your products will not appear on eBay yet. Instead, you will only see the error feedback from eBay in the "Results" step in Channable. When you are ready to publish your listings on eBay, select "Publish" as status and run the API again.

Step 5: Solve errors on your product listings

After you have sent your ads to eBay go to the "Results" tab. By clicking on "Errors" you can see which product listings have errors and will not be online. Click on an error to see what the error message is and which products have that error. When you send your listings with the status "Publish", you will also see the number of successful products in the "Results" step.