ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
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The intent (whether using File Exchange or eBay's online listing tools) is for photos to be transloaded to eBay hosting and be given an eBay URL. However, that is not always successful, and when transloading fails, the listing will display photos actively delivered from your own server instead of from eBay servers.
The most common reason for photos not transferring is that the hosting server could not respond quickly enough to eBay's requests for those photos. Some private servers are just too slow, or sometimes the photos are just too big and cumbersome, or too many, for a fast handshake to transfer them all. I've helped sellers get past that issue by suggesting their photos be no larger than 800px on the long side, which is half the width, but 1/4 the area and download size, of a 1600px image. And 800px is the minimum size required for zoom to work. But sometimes even a 500px image will suffice, if the item fills the image area and if there are no details to see.
A transload failure won't zoom in the listing, so that is often one way to tell the transfer failed. Another way to tell whether your listing images are still displayed from your own external server is to scan them with the BulkPhotoScan tool.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm
The FastScan button on the tool will fetch the image URLs and can provide a spreadsheet of those that failed to transload and are still "external".
Here is one of my test listings with transload failures. I've made additional notes within the description. But one thing to note is that the non-https photo in the listing caused the secure-lock icon in the address bar to show a problem.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/223612891458
You will note that I've added a letter suffix to some of my images, like "?c". When uploading the same failed image to the same listing again and again, eBay's servers will think they already have the image and won't fetch it again. So changing that suffix from one upload to the next (for the same listing), will fool File Exchange into thinking it is a new image that must be freshly fetched from the server. With File Exchange, to modify only one photo in the lineup, you will still need to provide all the photos in the lineup.
The intent (whether using File Exchange or eBay's online listing tools) is for photos to be transloaded to eBay hosting and be given an eBay URL. However, that is not always successful, and when transloading fails, the listing will display photos actively delivered from your own server instead of from eBay servers.
The most common reason for photos not transferring is that the hosting server could not respond quickly enough to eBay's requests for those photos. Some private servers are just too slow, or sometimes the photos are just too big and cumbersome, or too many, for a fast handshake to transfer them all. I've helped sellers get past that issue by suggesting their photos be no larger than 800px on the long side, which is half the width, but 1/4 the area and download size, of a 1600px image. And 800px is the minimum size required for zoom to work. But sometimes even a 500px image will suffice, if the item fills the image area and if there are no details to see.
A transload failure won't zoom in the listing, so that is often one way to tell the transfer failed. Another way to tell whether your listing images are still displayed from your own external server is to scan them with the BulkPhotoScan tool.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/BulkPhotoScanner.htm
The FastScan button on the tool will fetch the image URLs and can provide a spreadsheet of those that failed to transload and are still "external".
Here is one of my test listings with transload failures. I've made additional notes within the description. But one thing to note is that the non-https photo in the listing caused the secure-lock icon in the address bar to show a problem.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/223612891458
You will note that I've added a letter suffix to some of my images, like "?c". When uploading the same failed image to the same listing again and again, eBay's servers will think they already have the image and won't fetch it again. So changing that suffix from one upload to the next (for the same listing), will fool File Exchange into thinking it is a new image that must be freshly fetched from the server. With File Exchange, to modify only one photo in the lineup, you will still need to provide all the photos in the lineup.
