Getting started
This topic contains the following sections:
- Before using MIP
- MIP Sandbox environment
- Using the sandbox
- Launching MIP
- Settings
- Selecting a standard feed file type and format
- Uploading feeds
- Using response files
Before using MIP
MIP requires that you have an eBay seller account to use it. If you don't have an eBay seller account, visit http://pages.ebay.com/sell/sell-getstarted.html and follow the first instruction.
Check the What’s new page for important updates to feed requirements and restrictions.
Do not use MIP with other listing management tools. MIP cannot detect changes made to listings with other tools. Therefore, to prevent duplicate listings and process problems, when you start using MIP to manage your active listings, you must stop uploading, revising, and managing your active listings on all web flows, mobile apps, and third party tools. Use only MIP for all inventory management and order management tasks. However, continue to use eBay.com web flows for the following tasks: feedback, returns, and responding to buyer cases
MIP Sandbox environment
eBay offers a sandbox environment to practice creating, uploading, and downloading feeds. There are several advantages of using this site before you upload feeds to the eBay site:
- The sandbox site is a practice area that duplicates much of the functionality of the eBay Web site. It processes feeds in exactly the same way as the production environment, and it includes a subset of the eBay site's web pages.
- The feeds you upload to the sandbox cannot be seen by anyone but you. You can practice the MIP feed functions to get experience without affecting anyone else.
- When you upload feeds, you receive response files that describe any errors in the feed. You can view and verify your listings, and correct any errors before uploading the feeds to the eBay site.
- There are no fees or costs to use the sandbox area. You will not incur production charges by buying and selling items in the sandbox.
Creating a sandbox account
- Go to the eBay Developers Program page (https://go.developer.ebay.com/).
- If you do not have an eBay developer's account, click Register and follow the on-screen instructions to fill out the registration form.
- If you already have a developers account, click Sign In at the top of the page, enter your new developer username and password, and click Sign In.
- On the developer page, click Create a Sandbox User.
- Follow the 0n-screen instructions to create a user account.
Sandbox locations
Each eBay site has a corresponding sandbox site that is localized to the same language as the eBay site.
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Using the sandbox
eBay recommends that you get started with MIP in the sandbox, and when your feeds are working correctly, then upload them to the production environment on the eBay site.
- Upload your feeds to your sandbox area.
- Download response feeds and correct any errors.
- Verify that the listings are displayed correctly.
- Then complete the instructions in the following sections to set up your MIP account and upload your feeds to the eBay site.
Launching MIP
- MIP is supported on the sites listed in the following table, which also lists the language of each site. Launch MIP using one of the included URLs.
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- If not already logged in, sign in with your eBay seller account and password.
- Click Get Started to launch MIP.
Settings
The following sections outline the process for updating your basic MIP account settings.
Setting up channel management
In the navigation pane (left column) select Channel Management. The channel management page displays the settings for your warehouse location and business policies, including policies for payment, shipping, and returns.
Setting your warehouse location
eBay needs to know the location of your warehouse, so that the buyer can see where you are shipping from and to calculate shipping costs.
The default website where you will sell your products is set to EBAY-US. To use only this site:
- Click
- Enter the required information about your warehouse, and click OK to save the information. Then go to the next section, Creating and managing business policies.
To use other sites:
- Above Warehouse location, click Add channel. The Add Channel dialog box appears.
- Select one channel (other than the
- Enter the rest of the information that is required in the dialog box.
- Click OK to save the changes and close the dialog box
- Repeat steps 1 - 4 for each channel you want to add.
Creating and managing business policies
Requirements
- Business policies include payment, shipping, and return policies.
- You must set up at least one policy of each type for each eBay site on which you list your products (US, UK, DE, etc.).
- You can optionally create multiple policies of each type. For example you can create separate policies for each marketplace you sell in, or for each category of items you sell, and more. See the examples in the following section.
Creating business policies
Although you set up business policies on the eBay site, you can access the site from MIP to create, edit, and add new business policies, as follows:
- If there you have no business policies set up, on the Channel management page, under Shipping policy, Payment policy, or Returns policy, click Create. MIP opens your account page on My eBay (http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/business-policies.html) but leaves the MIP page open as well.
- On your My eBay page, follow the instructions to create a Shipping policy, a Payment policy, and/or a Returns policy. The policies are listed on the eBay site but not in MIP. However, you can apply the policies within MIP by including the policy names in the CSV files on the lines for each product. See the examples in the next section.
- Use payment policies to specify how buyers can pay you, for example, through PayPal or credit cards.
- Use shipping policies to specify your handling time, the shipping services you offer, and shipping costs.
- Use return policies to specify whether or not you accept returns. If you accept returns, include any return conditions (such as buyer pays return shipping) and the amount of time a buyer has to return an item.
- Optional - Set a specific policy of each type to be the default policy. MIP applies the default policy to any listings that do not have a specific policy applied to them.
Applying business policies
- If you have only one business policy of each type, MIP uses those policies by default for all of your product listings.
- If you have multiple policies, you can set one of each type to be the default policy. MIP uses the default policy for any listings where you have not set a specific policy, as shown in the following example. Shipping, payment, and return are the default policy names.
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SKU |
Attribute Value |
Category |
Shipping |
Payment |
Return |
Condition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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CAM-001 |
Cannon |
31388 |
shipping |
payment |
return |
USED |
- To apply specific business policies to a product listing, in the product feed or combined product feed CSV file, enter the names of the shipping, payment, and/or return business policies in the row with each SKU . See the following example.
- To apply different policies of each type to the listings in the CSV file, enter the names of the policies on the lines for each listing. See the following example.
- To apply a single policy (for example, payment) to all listings, leave the default policy name in the CSV file, as shown in the last row of the following illustration.
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SKU |
Attribute Value |
Category |
Shipping |
Payment |
Return |
Condition |
Notes about this example (this column is not in the CSV file.) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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CAM-001 |
Cannon |
31388 |
US_CamShip01 |
USpay01 |
USCamRet01 |
USED |
All policies in this example CSV file are for the US only. Two shipping policies, one for fully assembled cameras, one for accessories. One payment policy for camera items. Uses the default payment policy for binoculars. One return policy for new items and one for used items. |
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CAM-002 |
Nikon |
31388 |
US_CamShip01 |
USpay01 |
USCamRet02 |
NEW |
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LENS-001 |
Cannon Zoom |
78997 |
US_CamShip02 |
USpay01 |
USCamRet02 |
NEW |
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LENS-002 |
Cannon Lens Hood |
78999 |
US_CamShip02 |
USpay01 |
USCamRet02 |
NEW |
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BIN-001 |
Cannon Binoculars |
28179 |
US_CamShip02 |
payment |
USCamRet02 |
NEW |
Selecting a standard feed file type and format
You must complete the channel management settings before the Feed schema link becomes active.
- In the navigation pane (left column) select Feed Schema, then select one of the feed file formats: eBay or Amazon.
- For the feed format you selected, select a feed file type: eBay XML or CSV, or Amazon CSV.
- Click Save Changes.
Uploading feeds
Before setting up your feed uploads, lets walk through a small practice product feed upload so that you can see how it works. We'll provide the sample eBay .CSV feed file. All you have to do is click a few times and make a few small changes, then watch it happen.
Downloading a sample feed
- Open the following link.
product-combined.csv – this feed includes details such as title, product identifier, product description, item condition, variation specifics, attributes, and image URLs - Download the sample feed file.
Editing the sample feed
- Open the product-combined feed sample file
- Compare the information you have about the products you sell with the information in the sample feed, and determine how your product information matches the structure of the product feed file.
- Locate the Shipping Policy, Payment Policy, and Return Policy columns in the CSV file. These columns tell eBay the names of your business policies associated with the items listed in the CSV file.
- For each SKU in the CSV file, replace the default name with the name of your business policies associated with it. Use lower case. See the example in the first line of the illustration.
- For each SKU in the CSV file, set the Total Ship To Home Quantity to 0 (zero) to avoid incurring costs when you upload your practice feed, and so that when the feed goes live, the sample product listing will not appear on eBay. See the example in the first line of the illustration.
- In the column labeled
- Important. Save the file as a CSV file.
Uploading the sample feed
You can use either the MIP user interface or the SFTP server to upload and download feeds. The procedure for the user interface is included here. See Using MIP with sFTP for information about using the SFTP server.
Due to security concerns with Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) and MD5 encryption when using the SFTP server, the following CBC mode ciphers and MD5 MACs have been deprecated. You must check the SSH implementation you are using and confirm that it is not one of the deprecated algorithms listed below.
To avoid service interruptions, please update your ciphers and MACs as soon as possible.
| CBC Ciphers | MD5 MACs | |
|---|---|---|
| aes128-cbc | hmac-md5 | |
| aes192-cbc | hmac-md5-96 | |
| aes256-cbc | hmac-md5-etm@openssh.com | |
| blowfish-cbc | hmac-sha1-96 | |
| 3des-cbc | hmac-sha2-256-96 | |
| 3des-ctr | hmac-sha2-512-96 | |
| arcfour | ||
| arcfour128 | ||
| arcfour256 |
The table below indicates the preferred ciphers and MACs for use with the SFTP server. They are listed in order of preference.
| CBC Ciphers | MD5 MACs | |
|---|---|---|
| chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com | hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com | |
| aes256-gcm@openssh.com | hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com | |
| aes128-gcm@openssh.com | hmac-sha2-512 | |
| aes256-ctr | hmac-sha2-256 | |
| aes192-ctr | ||
| aes128-ctr |
Using the MIP user interface:
-
In MIP, go to Product.
- Click Upload.
- In the File Upload dialog box that appears, browse to the CSV file and click Open.
- Click Upload. When the file has successfully uploaded, a completion message appears and a response file is listed on the screen.
Using response files
When you upload any of the following feed types to eBay, MIP processes the feed file and then generates a response file that confirms what you uploaded and reports whether MIP successfully processed the information. There are several other feeds and associated response files than those listed here, but in this topic, we’ll keep it simple.
- Product
- Availability
- Distribution
- Combined
If an error occurs and the upload is not successful, MIP generates an error message that includes detailed information about the error and what caused it. Users then know how to fix their upload feeds, and can successfully upload them again.
Response files are in the same format as the feed you upload. That is, if your feed is a CSV file, the response for that feed is also CSV, and if your feed is XML, the response file for that feed will also be XML.
CSV responses all have an identical structure. XML responses have a summary section.
Obtaining a response file
You can download response files either with the MIP user interface or use FTP with the file server.
To download response files with the MIP user interface:
- Under Feed archive, select the feel type of response file you want to download, and then select the navigation button. For example, to get the product feed response file, click Product, and then, in the Results file column, click Download .
- When prompted, either click Open to review the file in a browser or click Save to download the file to your computer.
To download response files from the MIP file server:
- Open the Output folder in the feed folder. For example, open the Product folder, then open the Output folder.
- In the
- Open that folder to obtain the response file for the that upload. Use the
When to use a response file
eBay recommends that you download the response files after each upload to make sure that your listings are complete and displayed as intended.
Contents of a response file
Response files contain these elements:
-
- Various elements that are unique to each feed type.