System iNetwork

June 24, 2008

The Hidden Riches of eBay

In case you missed it, eBay has taken a major step forward to help businesses that rely on the site for sales, in addition to helping support third-party software vendors. According to eBay, the newly offered Project Echo will let developers "integrate applications in Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro, eBay's most popular tools for managing selling activities. The eBay seller community will benefit from a streamlined and trusted site experience with access to advanced selling tools that meet their specific needs. Developers will benefit by integrating, promoting, and monetizing third-party applications on the world's largest e-commerce site."

In other words, the new service will let developers sell their third-party software applications directly to eBay merchandisers via the auction site. Traditionally, eBay users have had two options for running their stores: buy software offered by eBay (and created by eBay) or buy software off the eBay grid from another developer. So even though eBay's Selling Manager subscription service has always sold eBay businesses the software they need, third-party developers have never before had direct access to buyers. Now, Project Echo lets developers embed programs directly where eBay sellers are already managing their online businesses.

The new tool promises to help developers every step of the way by integrating the third-party apps seamlessly into the eBay-offered apps so there will be no favoritism, by promoting new apps to appropriate buyers, and by managing communications between the buyer and the developer.

Project Echo will include helpful APIs such as a trading API, which offers authenticated access to private eBay data to enable automation and innovation in the areas of listing items, retrieving seller sales status, managing post-transaction fulfillment, and managing private eBay user information such as My eBay and Feedback details. Shopping, merchandising, research, pricing, and client alert APIs are also available, among several others. If you aren't sure which API you need, just check with the "API By Feature" finder.

All these APIs will let developers access eBay's information about how and when buyers purchase as well as how and what sellers sell in order to serve customers with programs suited to their needs.

After an application has been approved by the Project Echo team, developers can publish their application within eBay's Selling Manager, and sellers can discover the application and subscribe to the appropriate tool.

Just so you know, this is for everyone, even System i junkies -- the programs can be written in multiple languages, including PHP and Java.

So just because you are not on eBay selling your grandma's collectible teapots doesn't mean you can't make a boatload off the auction website.

--Erin Bradford, Systems Management & Availability Editor

Posted by ebradford at June 24, 2008 9:33 AM