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Ebay auction manager for OSCOMMERCE


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The Shipping, Order Processing contribution has some very useful ebay-related functions:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...ions,832/page,9

 

Specifically:

E. Auction Info : if you place as well auctions on ebay or other, allows you to create an order in catalog and enter as well auction number auction end date....  

gives possiblity to send order status to person who won the auction: advantage is that you make the winner aware of your catalog  

You ask him to login in the catalog part to see his auction status and tracking number. Thus he may come back directly to your site the next time.

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The Shipping, Order Processing contribution has some very useful ebay-related functions:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...ions,832/page,9

 

Specifically:

E. Auction Info : if you place as well auctions on ebay or other, allows you to create an order in catalog and enter as well auction number auction end date....  

gives possiblity to send order status to person who won the auction: advantage is that you make the winner aware of your catalog  

You ask him to login in the catalog part to see his auction status and tracking number. Thus he may come back directly to your site the next time.

 

This would work perfect for me if there were a way to manually change the price and shipping for the auction item sold, since auction items rarely sell for the exact same price every time, and it is easier to charge flat rate shipping rather than try to integrate a calculator.

 

Until these abilities can be integrated I don't think that it is fully ready for auctions. Although this is a great start and I am looking forward to being able to use it on a regular basis.

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  • 2 months later...

I think that the idea of an open source auction... especially a heavily client based auction DOES have merit.

 

By client based, I mean that (as many have mentioned in this thread) osCommerce could be the client, and some some central server(farm) could be the hub and public access point. I see google moving this way every day... and I am willing to bet that google could... and probably will compete with ebay/amazon/msn/yahoo/etc at some juncture not to far in the future.

 

I mean, I can see a store powered auction site that only relies on the central server for validation, searches, and presentation as a really easy extension of froogle... and that could kick ebay's butt overnight... and (@jan) give osCommerce the fat 85% if we move that way now as opposed to after google makes their own client. I mean... move ahead of google, create the framework, and offer it to them at some point. Offer them a partnership or something.

 

So... if I want to auction some of my items and sell them at a retail site as well, I set up two sites: one that is a part of the auction network and is essentially a feeder site to the p2pish auction network, and one that is stand alone... most osC people have the capability to easily run more than one site...

 

AND... if the auction network idea could be turned on solely from the backend, you would never have to send customers to the auction network. Maybe we would set it up so that if your site is a gateway for the network, you get highlighted listings or something, if your site is not a gateway, just regular listings... or something along those lines...

 

maybe this is not an objective that osC is ready for, if not, I think I know of another group who might have the interest and the capacity... but I think osC is better situated than anyone else at present to take on a project like this... and even if the core developers don't want to do it, it could become a heavy duty contrib that a group of us can work on just for fun if nothing else.

 

One last thought... I sell herbs, I know there is another osc site that sells teas, and one other at least that sells chinese traditional medicines... there are probably many more. I believe that as long as we all have relative niche markets, a consortium of sorts would not be a bad idea... I mean I think that I would have no problem sending customers to an auction site... even an herb specific auction site. I am pretty sure that it would only help me in the long run.

 

maybe not... who knows... but I am inclined that way anyway.

 

--gabe

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The Shipping, Order Processing contribution has some very useful ebay-related functions:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...ions,832/page,9

 

Specifically:

E. Auction Info : if you place as well auctions on ebay or other, allows you to create an order in catalog and enter as well auction number auction end date....

gives possiblity to send order status to person who won the auction: advantage is that you make the winner aware of your catalog

You ask him to login in the catalog part to see his auction status and tracking number. Thus he may come back directly to your site the next time.

 

 

 

our order processing module allows you yto do just that:

 

after manual order entry is done , you can change in the admin

 

 

shipping cost

item price

print invoice with revised price

 

 

 

This would work perfect for me if there were a way to manually change the price and shipping for the auction item sold, since auction items rarely sell for the exact same price every time, and it is easier to charge flat rate shipping rather than try to integrate a calculator.

 

Until these abilities can be integrated I don't think that it is fully ready for auctions. Although this is a great start and I am looking forward to being able to use it on a regular basis.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, I'm unclear on something... and pardon me on this, as I don't sell all that often on Ebay.:

 

There's a way to create a check-out link in your ebay auction that only the winner can click on? How is that done? Can the seller alter this link in any way?

 

Thanks!

 

-= Dave =-

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I read through this entire thread and came up with some ideas:

[*]osC-Pawnshop module: One fellow mentioned using osCommerce to list the items in his pawnshop. Does the standard code handle that, or is there a need for a mod?

[*]osC-Consignment module: People could register with your osC store to re-sell their items and they'd appear in a special section of the catalog. You could also use it to sell product returns or items whose defects were merely cosmetic. If you were using the UPC module, you could use its index to do cross-sells between the "New" section and the "Used" section.

[*]osC-Barter module: An extension of the consignment module; this would list items like, "1973 Ford Truck, runs. Sell for $500 or will trade for boat and motor."

 

Competing or partnering with eBay is a bit beyond most of our reach. The trick is to find a new market that hasn't been exploited yet.

The web is like usenet, but the elephants are untrained.

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some one could take the time to scope out your lan cable as you run a client-side program like Seller's assistant Pro. Then you just have to watch how the API is called. (reverse engineering?)

 

As far as paying fees to ebay for something like this I think it is crazy. ebay should be willing to allow 3rd party auction listing software because it only helps to further thier grip on the market. I suspect there must be some arrangements where SApro and some of these other listing software has negotiated terms so that they don't pay for API calls. It would be worth some checking into. I know a few PowerSellers that would probably support a petition for an osCommerce mod to be placed on an "accepted list" or 3rd party ebay auction listing software without the API fees.

 

In the meantime, has anybody given some consideration to the size/type of database tables that would be needed to support this. I suspect that you could modify your product tables. But there are a lot of other eBay variables and tracking information that would be required too.

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I would suggest that we move this project to sourceforge to have a place to share files and forum. I definitely think that this needs to be an add-on to oscommerce, but if we create a new project we can collaborate there and then just submit the contrib on this site.

 

I'm going to be working on another project to combine *nuke with Osc and phpBB2, and I believe that is probably more important to me right now. However, I would like to assist with the ebay API project.

 

I guess we need to determine who is the most active and willing to manage an oscEbay mod and have that person begin the sourceforge project.

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Hello,

I have been triing to set up OSC to accept my ebay auctions. I have been sending the winning bidders a link at the end of the auction to come and pay for their item. But, it seems the link does not work for some reason? it seems to work fine for me when Ihave tested it. It is the "Buy Now" link. I thought this would be great because it automatically puts the item in the shopping cart and all the winner has to do is proceed through the checkout. Why is this not working? I am really scratching my head on this one. Well anyways here is the link that I am triing to use:

 

http://smittys.pointclark.net/webstore/def...products_id=120

 

Should I just link it to the product description? This link:

 

http://smittys.pointclark.net/webstore/pro...products_id=120

 

Your help would be much appreceated

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I guess we need to determine who is the most active and willing to manage an oscEbay mod and have that person begin the sourceforge project.

 

I would suggest not using ebay in the name though because of trademark issues. Even though it will be eBay specific, it needs a generic name to keep everyone out of trouble.

[no external urls in signatures please, kthanks]

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Hello,

Well anyways here is the link that I am triing to use:

 

http://smittys.pointclark.net/webstore/def...products_id=120

 

Should I just link it to the product description? This link:

 

http://smittys.pointclark.net/webstore/pro...products_id=120

 

Your help would be much appreceated

 

 

 

Funny.... the first one seems to work for me.

 

 

-= Dave =-

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Dave you tried my link and it works ok? Would you do me a favor and try to go through the complete checkout? Just use the check or money order payment method. Could this possibly have something to do with the way I am posting the link in my winning bid e-mail?

 

Thanks for your help

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Check-out button fails to pull up the page. "Cannot find server" / "Page cannot be displayed". I think it has something to do with SSL.

 

 

-= Dave =-

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SSL? Why would ssl have anything to do with it? Is there a setting or something I need to change? Please help me.....I have been scratching my head for days......

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So the link works but when you hit the checkout button you get a error? This is so strange, It works fine for me but maybe thats because I am in the Intranet not comming from the internet. What do you think?

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Your checkout link is sending me to a secure server location:

 

https://smittys.pointclark.net/webstore/che...0a1986e926d0cf9

 

Note the 'https:'

 

My guess would be that you have SSL somehow set up in the configuration (configure.php?).. and it should not be. Or, it should be set up and you've set up SSL itself incorrectly somehow.

 

 

Based on your responses, I'm guessing the first one. Check your configuration file for "https" and remove the "s" and then maybe it will work.

 

Just a thought.

 

-= Dave =-

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Smitty/Dave,

 

Please start a new thread to discuss your topics.

 

 

Forum,

 

Is there anyone that is interested in working with the eBay SDK to develop this tool? The add listing and relist API calls are free. However, the ebay developer website was a little vague about whether you still needed to pay the minumum $1000 annual "Bronze" API Developer fee. .... and if there are any API calls that are not specifically the "add listing" - such as logging in and downloading categories, those are still charged.

 

It occurs to me that if we did develop this code it would be necessary to charge some sort of usage or licensing fee to at least recover the eBay fees. I'm definitely a proponent of open source GPL software, but unless we can get eBay to open the doors a little bit, we may have a problem. It would be interesting if anyone has already registered as an API developer what sort of unique code do they use to record the source of each API call.

 

Perhaps it is possible to avoid the eBay API altogether and just find another way to automate ebay listings (possibly from HTTP parsing and end-user emulation).

 

If I understand the problem correctly, we are trying to make it so that a store owner could enter product into osCommerce for sale on their osc website. And if they want to list the same product in eBay it would be duplicating work to enter the product into ebay listing (or Seller's assistant pro). Perhaps, we could solve this problem easier if we could dump data directly into one of the eBay approved listing programs already available. I would be curiuos to take a poll in this forum to see what the most common listing software being used today. We use Seller's Assistant Pro, but I understand that it may be easier/cheaper to use one of the others....

 

 

 

JG

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Couldn't you just build some sort of export-to-Turbo-Lister functionality (a la Easy Populate)? That'd get around having to pay for API access, wouldn't it?

 

-= Dave =-

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Sorry John I did get off the subject a little bit but this was a major problem for me. I figured it out. I thought to myself why does it work for me but not anyone else on the outside word? Duh! The Firewall. I did not have port 443 (SSL) open. It had nothing to do with OSC. Any ways It would be great if one could parse the info from ebay auctions, I personally would not know how to do this but I would be very interested to see how it is done.

 

 

Redhat's off to the best E-Commerce software around!! :lol: :lol:

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Hi

I believe there is somany people out there wants to combine their auctions with their website. A standalone php program could list the chosen products on ebay by taking the available stock as reference.

So oscommerce stock information will be always uptodate.  And it can relist the unsold products automaticly after auction automated feedback posting. And any other feature an auction manager can supply.

Is there any plug in to do all this things. Or is there anyone planning to contribute this option?

 

Actually, there is a way to do this. It is a bit limited but it does work. In my case I don't want my customers to know that I am auctioning something off (since it is cheaper) so I made a category with no name. Then, I copy the product from the original category to the 'no name' category. Then on my auctions I put the link to the product for 'express checkout'. It works very nicely and uses the same stock as the original. BUT, there is one thing that bothers me and I haven't taken the time to investigate. On the New Products mod the auction items show up. If you decide to use this method and don't mind your regular buyers buying from you on eBay (or seeing a cheaper price on your site), I would suggest first making the product under the 'no name' category then post your auctions then go back to your product page and change the title with the auction # and maybe a link to the auction in the description. It has a professional checkout and is very easy. Hope this helps someone.

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  • 1 month later...

John, et al

I have a client that has asked me to build an automated auction manager for eBay. We will be buying a membership to the Developer's Program. While my client's focus is on the Auction manager - my partner and I realize the benefits of tying a cart into the equation as well. So, I am interested in helping to build a Contribution that will work with eBay's APIs - assuming eBay will provide written approval of such.

 

I believe a possible approach to the license issue is that the application (OSC in this case and/or the Contribution depending on legal wording) can be Open Source, but in order to use it to it's fullest extent, the developer/end user will need to register with eBay for full use of the APIs. It's pretty clear in the sample code that each call to the APIs requires a developer ID, an application ID, and a certification ID. The only way to get these is if you register with the eBay Developer Program.

 

It was already pointed out that the API's which provide a listing are free. But that's not where the power of the API's comes from. The APIs have so much more to offer in functionality.

 

As for one poster's comment/question regarding what if eBay updates thier APIs. Don't worry about it. The beauty of an API is that it's nothing more than a function to you. All you have to do is call and pass variables to it and then use whatever it returns accordingly. The rest is a black box as far as your concerned.

 

Caveat - I have only recent limited experience with OSC and no experience building a contribution and would welcome your help if you really want to see if this is possible.

 

Another thing you should be aware of - the API's send and recieve data using XML. OSC does not. In order to blend the two together, the plug-in will need to convert back and forth as necessary.

 

So John, are you still interested?

Apathy is a dominant gene - mutate.

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This might have been mentioned in this thread, but its too long to read :P

 

www.timbercreeksoftware.com

I use there SOLD! product. It was only $75.00 flat out - no other charges, and free upgrades - There has probably been 100 updates since I've been using it. Its probably the best 'offline' software solution, compared to sites like AuctionWatch and Andale who charge big monthly fees and auction cuts.

 

They don't charge monthly, or upgrade fees, and it works seamlessly with eBay - I don't really think they use the API route - whoever is interested should email Timber Creek Software and try to find out how they do it.

Check there forum as well - very active.

 

Ryan

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ryan,

 

I am test trying sold right now. Does it seem to run slow on your system? It just seems to be very slow about going from one window to the next. Sorry to get offtopic.

 

If anyone is familiar with RubyLane shops, if you have one of those you can send an item from your store to auction at ebay. I've never used them, just saw that feature when looking at other stores so there must be some way they have managed to do it.

 

Melinda

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