eBay Listing images

[spike3333]

@shipscript 

Is it possible to use a link to files on your desktop in the spreadsheet you are uploading to File Exchange to create your listings. I know there was a previous discussion on https://community.ebay.com/t5/Replacing-Active-Content/Move-description-graphics-to-a-secure-server-... that has now been archived.

[shipscript · Accepted solution]

@spike3333 

Unfortunately, it is not possible to upload desktop images through File Exchange. File Exchange always requires an online URL in the spreadsheet. The reason is that once the file is on eBay's server, eBay has no mechanism to reach back to someone's desktop.

eBay does have a command in the Trading API to upload "Site Hosted Pictures" as a binary file to eBay Picture Services (EPS), in somewhat the same manner as images are attached to email. As part of that transfer, eBay will provide the URL of the newly uploaded image file. The image URL of the uploaded photo is available for 5 days to use in a spreadsheet for permanent status as an EPS photo.  However, this is not an API that I plan to use or learn, so my advice is limited. I'm just noting that it is available to those who have the skill set to use it.

https://developer.ebay.com/devzone/xml/docs/reference/ebay/UploadSiteHostedPictures.html

We have previously discussed using a single placeholder photo for File Exchange bulk listing uploads, and then manually editing each listing to upload photos from the desktop.

I would recommend bringing these sorts of questions to the Seller tools forum

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Seller-Tools/bd-p/tools-apps-db

[spike3333]

Thanks, once the file is uploaded from a host, can it be deleted at the host? Alternatively, If I created my own website, can I host from there?

[shipscript]

@spike3333 

Theoretically you can delete from your host (per the caveats below).

Yes, you can create a website and upload your photos to your website. Then you will have URLs that you can use in your spreadsheet. One problem with personal websites (and with some external hosting sites) is that those sites often can't respond quickly enough to transfer the photos to eBay hosting. They appear in the listings from your own external domain (so you don't want to delete them yet).

Those externally hosted photos are not eligible for the zoom feature and are often sluggish to load with the listing.  To get around that, make sure the images are no larger than 1600 pixels on the long side and that they are compressed to at least 90 jpeg quality.  If listings will have a lot of photos, it may be better to go down to 1000 pixels on the long side.

Then check your batch sizes. You might be able to upload 5000 listings at a time, or only 500 or 200 at a time, depending on your server's response time and the size of the load.

After uploading your entire batch, the "fast scan" on this tool should be able to locate photos that did not transfer to eBay hosting.

https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm

Ultimately, you can use a spreadsheet revision to resubmit all photos for any listing that failed. Once the photos are eBay hosted, you should be able to delete the photos from your server.

But odd things can happen. I have found in my testing that retrieving photo URLs through one of eBay's APIs will return the source URL (the one deleted from the external server), while looking at the source code of a listing would allow me to capture the eBay-hosted URLs.  So it's a mixed bag, depending on where you look. In any event, back up your photos somewhere, either offline or online, in case something desperate should happen.