Integrating eBay® into your Site

eBay is no longer just an auction web site. It has become perhaps the most prolific small-business generator in history. Tens of thousands of people around the world make some or all of their income by trading on eBay, or by running a complete storefront from their home using eBay Stores. Even if your primary business is not buying or selling on eBay, many companies can benefit from either using eBay to get rid of obsolete or surplus inventory, or as simply a portal to eBay for their customers.

PCV Software is a participant in the eBay Developers Program. This means that we can write applications that run on your web site and access the eBay servers directly, pulling out information on items for sale, or adding items directly without sitting at an eBay screen and paging through their interactive forms for listing an item. Virtually the entire auction experience, from listing an item to leaving feedback for the buyer, can be automated and run from your web site.

The first example of eBay integration simply uses a link to your items on eBay. By registering your link with eBay, you may use the following image to take your user to a listing on eBay of items you have placed with them (note that, for purposes of this demo, I have set up a dummy seller on the eBay developers site, which is not the "real" eBay).

The next example uses a function available from eBay to format a list of items obtained via a search and display the list on one of your pages.