Managing Item Listings

This chapter discusses the means for managing item listings. This includes relisting an item, revising an item, and retrieving seller events. For information about using the API to submit a bid (or purchase) on an item, see PlaceOffer.

Relisting Items

Revising Items

Changing Item Descriptions

Ending Items Early

Working with Seller Events

Learning About Bidders

Putting Store Items on Sale

For useful tips on revising items on various sites, also see these Knowledge Base articles:

Rules for Revising Items

https://ebay.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ebay.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=732

ReviseItem and RelistItem Best Practices and Version Concerns

https://ebay.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ebay.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=267

The Concept of Relisting

Item listings that end without the item being sold are typically eligible to be listed again without incurring additional listing fees. Listing an item again under these conditions is known as relisting the item. See the online help on the eBay site for specific information on when an item is and is not eligible to be relisted without fees.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/relist.html

When a seller relists an item, it can be done without any changes to the item's definition. All that has to be specified is the item ID for the original listing that ended. However, the seller can opt to change some of the parts of the item's definition. For example, the seller might specify a lower price for the item on a relist, hoping to better entice a user to purchase the item. Not all elements of an item's definition can be changed on relisting and changing some might cause fees to be incurred where the relist would otherwise be free. For instance, if the seller relists an item and specifies some fee-based listing enhancement (where the original item did not use that listing enhancement), then the seller would pay additional for it.

See Relisting Items for details. For information on RelistItem, see the chapter RelistItem. Refer to the eBay Trading API Call Reference for descriptions of the call-specific input and output fields.

The Concept of Revising

An item that is still active on the eBay site may be changed by the seller. This is known as revising an item. When an item is revised, the seller specifies a new value for one or multiple elements of the item's definition. This could entail supplying a new, non-blank value where there was no such value for the item as originally listed. It could also mean specifying a blank value where there was a non-blank value. Or it could mean specifying a value of false where there was previously a value of true (as in to turn off some option, like seller allowing the buyer to change the payment at checkout). There are certain rules that govern what can be changed when a listing has bids or is within 12 hours of the end of the listing.

See Revising Items for details. For information on ReviseItem, see the chapter ReviseItem. Refer to the eBay Trading API Call Reference for descriptions of the call-specific input and output fields.

Events Related to a Listing

A seller may be interested in various events related to an in-progress listing. One such an event is a change in the current price of a competitive-bidding listing (indicating someone has bid on the item or placed a higher bid). Another is the listing reaching the end of its duration (i.e., the end of the listing). An application can use GetSellerEvents to determine when such events have occurred and then retrieve the items for which these events have occurred and present them to the seller. See Working with Seller Events. Also, for information on GetSellerEvents, see GetSellerEvents.

User-Contributed Notes