Selling on eBay with the Channable app

eBay is one of the biggest online marketplaces worldwide. You can bring your online catalog to eBay and start offering your brand directly on the marketplace.

To start selling on the marketplace, connect your store to eBay through the Channable app from the App Market. The connection process includes connecting both your online store and eBay accounts to Channable, and creating product listings based on your online catalog. After you connect your online store to eBay, your online catalog appears on eBay, and shoppers can order your goods directly on the marketplace. 

Note:
eBay charges sellers for creating product listings. There are also seller fees for the items you sell. You can find more details about eBay fees by contacting eBay support.

Requirements for selling on eBay

To sell on eBay, you need to meet the following requirements:

• Your store is located in the United States, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
• You have a verified eBay account.
• Comply with the eBay Business Policies.
• You have assigned EAN (for EU) or UPC (for the US) to your products. That is needed to set up your products listing.

Step 1. Connecting your store to Channable

Before you start connecting your online store, make sure you have set up and verified your eBay account.

To connect your store to Channable:

1. From your store admin, go to Apps → App Market.
2. Find the Channable app and click Install.
3. Click Open app.
4. You will be redirected to your Channable account where you need to login to your account or create a new one. Please note that you can only use your business email to sign up to Channable.
5. Once you're logged in to your Channable account, you will be prompted to create a connection with your online store. Tick the checkbox and click Add connection:
   

   

6. In the Label field, enter the name for the connection. For example, My store on eBay. Click Save.
7. Click on the Channable icon in the top left and then click Add new project to create a new project. In this project, you will create the connection between your online store and eBay.
8. You will be forwarded to the Setup page where you can import your product catalog. Select your connection and name it. For example, eBay catalog and click Save. If there are some issues that require your attention, you will see the instructions on what to do to fix them.
   
   Note:
   Channable imports each product variation as a single item.

That’s it. Products from your catalog are now uploaded to your Channable account. You can find them by clicking the Items section in the menu on the left in your Channable account. Clicking on an item will show you detailed information about it.

The next step is to connect your eBay account to Channable. 

Step 2. Connecting your eBay account to Channable

After you uploaded your online catalog to Channable, it’s time to connect your eBay account.

To connect and set up eBay with Channable:

1. In your Channable dashboard, go to the project you created for eBay and navigate to APIs in the left-hand side menu.
2. Click + Add new API, then + Add new connection.
3. Select eBay. In the Label field, give a name to the connection and click Connect with eBay.
4. Sign in to your eBay account. When redirected back to Channable, finish creating the connection by clicking Add connection.
5. In the Name field, give your API a name. For example, eBay.
6. In the eBay country dropdown, select the country in which you want to sell your products.
7. In the Unique ID per item field, select id.
8. (Optional) In the eBay status dropdown, select Verify-only to activate the API to test for errors without actually publishing anything on eBay; or select Publish to publish your listings on eBay. You can change the status anytime.
   
   Note: 
   Once you set the status to Publish you will not be able to switch back to the Verify-only mode.
9. (Optional) If you have created master rules in your Channable account, select one. If not, skip this step.
10. Click Continue.

Now you have to create your product listings so that your products appear on eBay.

Step 3: Creating product listings on eBay with the Channable app

After you set up your eBay connection, it’s time to create your product listing and sync it with your eBay account so that your products appear on the marketplace. 

There are four parameters you have to create and set up:

1. Categories
2. Rules
3. Build
4. Attributes
   
   Note:
   To get help with creating product listings, refer to the Channable help center.

Set up categories for eBay

In your Channable account, go to your eBay project and switch to the Categories tab at the top right to set up eBay categories for your products. You can use the generate categories feature or create new categories from scratch.

Note:
To speed up the process, try the Smart Categorization.

Set up rules for eBay

In your eBay project in the Channable dashboard, switch to the Rules tab and create rules to optimize your product data.

In the Channable help center you will find examples of common rules that you can create.

Set up build for eBay

In your eBay project in the Channable dashboard, switch to the Build tab and click Start building product listing. You will see the preset template for the product listings. Fill it out by clicking on the field and selecting the corresponding value. For instance, the field Title should display the "Title" of your product and so on.

The Item group ID field is used to combine multiple items into a single listing. You need to select the field that contains the group or parent ID of your products. Later, when you switch to the Attribute tab, you can select fields to configure the variants of grouped products. If your products do not have variations, use the product ID such as id.

If you are an eBay Store owner, you should also fill in the Storefront category ID and Storefront category name fields. If not, you can leave these fields empty.

Finally, switch to the Profiles tab and select profiles for your Shipping, Payment, and Return policies. If you have set these policies up but can't find them, you might need to enable them first on eBay.

You can automatically select profiles you have configured on eBay. You can use the name of the profiles as visible on eBay or the id of those profiles that you can find in the URL of your browser when you click on the profile. To dynamically configure your profiles (i.e. different profiles for different products), follow the Channable guide.

For eBay EU: If you do not have EAN/GTIN attributes in your store, select ‘EAN’ as ID Type and make sure you select a field that has the value ‘Does not apply’.

For eBay US: If you do not have UPC/GTIN attributes in your store, select ‘UPC’ as ID Type and make sure you select a field that has the value ‘Does not apply’.

Set up attributes for eBay

In your eBay project in the Channable dashboard, switch to the Attributes tab to fill in the attributes per category. Here’s an example of how the attributes look:

To get a detailed explanation of what to do in the Attributes tab, follow the Attributes article in the Channable help center.

Product variations. You can configure product variations on the Attributes tab as well. When selecting a field as an attribute value, for some fields you can check the Use as variant attribute box:

If you have variants you need to do this for at least 1 attribute for each category your variants fall into. Otherwise, the products will not appear as variants on eBay. Take into account that not all categories accept variant structures, only the ones that are specified by eBay.

Step 4: Sending your product listings to eBay

Once you have finished configuring your product listings, you can start sending your listings to eBay.

Note:
If you already have any products connected to your eBay account, you need to delete them since Channable will create new product listings in your eBay account instead of adding products to existing listings.

To send your product listings to eBay:

1. From your Channable dashboard, navigate to Settings → Project settings and click Activate project:
   

   

2. Go back to APIs → your eBay API → Settings → Activate API and click Run now to send your listings to eBay. 
3. (optional) If you have selected Verify-only as the status on the “Step 2. Connecting your eBay account”, your products will not appear on eBay yet. To publish your listings on eBay, change the status to Publish and run the API again.

That’s it. Your products are now available on eBay.

Please note that listings are not automatically terminated if the stock is 0. So if a listing needs to be terminated it must be excluded from Channable. 

Checking product listings for errors when selling on eBay

After you have sent your product catalog to eBay go to the Results tab and click Errors to check if there are any issues preventing your products from appearing on the marketplace. Click on an error to see its details. When you send your listings with the Publish status, you will see the number of successful products in the Results tab.

If you get an error on one product variation in a listing, this error is shown for every variation in the listing.

Processing orders from eBay

When someone buys your product on eBay, a new order will appear in the My sales → Orders section in your store admin. You will get notification about a new order with an email or a push notification in the mobile app for iOS or Android.

By default, the orders are not synced between your store and eBay, but you can sync them by using Channable add-ons. When orders are synced, information about changing the order status and assigning the tracking number is sent to eBay. And vice versa. As a result, you will see up-to-date order data in both your store and eBay, and will be able to manage the orders from either platform.