Video Interview with 2009 eBay Star Developer Award Winner WatchCount.com

"WatchCount.com shows how many watchers the most popular items on eBay have accumulated."

-- Jake Becker (helios825) of WatchCount.com on how eBay buyers and sellers use his tool

Becker joined us in June for the eBay Developers Conference 2009 at eBay's campus in San Jose to discuss his recent win in the Service to the Community category of the eBay Star Developer Awards. Sellers use WatchCount.com to know which items are popular to source/niches worth focusing on for research. Shoppers use WatchCount.com widgets to find that great deal they've been looking for. Check out his Success Story to learn more.

Becker talks about the core APIs that run his app, such as FindPopularItems from the Shopping API, GetMostWatchedItems from the Merchandising API, GetSingleItem, and GetCategoryInfo. As for his prolific posting of terrific answers in the developer forums behind his Star Developer Award? "I go to the developer forums often to look for information and news, but when I see someone ask a question, I feel compelled to help them out. I still feel like newbie myself sometimes."

Watch our interview with Jake filmed on location at eBay DevCon below (clip is 5:52 in length).

- Delyn

Featured SM App Developer: My.ShipRush Ship Center

Another eBay Ink-featured SM App of the Day: My.ShipRush Ship Center -- a Selling Manager application that helps sellers centralize and optimize the post-sale process, including that DSR-buster -- shipping!

Richard's put together a fantastic and comprehensive look at this useful tool -- read his write-up.

- Delyn

NEW: eBay API Developer Success Stories

Here at the eBay Developers Program, we know that we're only successful when developers are successful. You may be wondering, especially if you are new to the eBay API platform -- what does success look like? So, we're launching a new series featuring developers of all sizes who are creating cool apps and making money with the eBay API platform. Our eBay API Developer Success Stories are now live on the developer.ebay.com website.

We're launching our eBay API Developer Success Stories series with four success stories, focusing on Selling Manager Applications developers: ahTEXT, HostedSupport, MyShipRush & Terapeak.

Are you an eBay API Developer Success Story? Share it with us! We'll be publishing the ones our team likes best, then providing easy access to social media tools, so that your success story can be dugg, tweeted, blogged, facebooked, bookmarked & stumbled by your customers, staff & general fanbase.

Video interviews, seller testimonial quotes, and print versions of the stories have also been built in.  Take a look, and if you have a suggestion or feedback, please let us know how we can make these even better.

Get acquainted to different business models and strategies developers have used to make money on the eBay API platform. Check out our Success Stories today.

- Delyn

Potential "appinfo" Breaking Change

The eBay API team is considering changing the case of the appinfo tags found in various wsdls—specifically, changing from upper to lowercase on the first letter only. For example, CallName could become callName, RequiredInput could become requireInput, and MaxLength could become maxLength.

Example... Before:

<xs:appinfo>
  <CallInfo>
    <CallName>AddItem</CallName>

After:

<xs:appinfo>
  <callInfo>
    <callName>AddItem</callName>

Note that schema elements such as names of calls, elements and types are not affected (e.g. AddItem). Our proposal is only about the names of tags unique to the xs:appinfo structure.

The eBay API team would like to hear from anyone who would be affected by such a change: characterize, if you would, the impact of such a change on your tools, etc.

Please contact    developer-relations@ebay.com

Thanks
John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools

Video Interview with 2009 eBay Star Developer Award Winner Mercent

"We understand how retailers operate, and we work directly with our retailers to integrate into their systems specifically."

-- Joel Mosby of Mercent on working with retailers to grow their businesses on eBay

Mosby joined us in June for the eBay Developers Conference 2009 at eBay's campus in San Jose to discuss their recent win in the Early Adopter category of the eBay Star Developer Awards.Mercent's experience in the retail space recognizes that retailers rely on custom development to connect their existing systems in order to efficiently sell online across numerous e-commerce channels, including eBay. 

Getting Mercent's first eBay customer up online using Mercent Retail in November 2008, just in time for the 2008 holiday season, was a result of great teamwork. By working collaboratively with the eBay API platform and Large Merchant Services teams using the asynchronous transaction model along with great support allowed them to get the job done in time for the big holiday shopping season -- success!

Watch our interview with Joel filmed on location at eBay DevCon (clip is 4:17 in length).

-Delyn

Video Interview with 2009 eBay Star Developer Award Winner Monsoon

"For our customers, we found that conversion -- if you have real-time, accurately priced inventory -- jumped up between 5X to 15X compared to where the sellers had been previously -- a huge, huge increase in sales."

-- Clark Hale of Monsoon on the value of their dynamic pricing tool to eBay sellers

Clark Hale and Jeff Cutler-Stamm joined us at this year's eBay Developers Conference at eBay's campus in San Jose to discuss their recent win in the Most Innovative category of the 2009 eBay Star Developer Awards.

Monsoon's particular take on dynamic pricing creates efficiencies for their customers selling on the eBay marketplace through automation. Rather than relying on historical pricing data, they enable sellers to make use of pricing of competitive products for sale on the site at that particular moment. Jeff also shares "where all the action is" amongst his top three API calls by volume: FindItemsAdvanced, AddItem and ReviseItem.

Watch our interview with Clark and Jeff filmed on location at eBay DevCon (clip is 7:00 in length).

-Delyn

Thank you developers for a terrific eBay DevCon!

We're currently working on putting together the keynote and session videos for you, but in the meantime here are some useful links you've been asking for:

• eBay DevCon session slides
• eBay DevCon twitter with #ebaydevcon tags
  
• eBay DevCon photos
• eBay DevCon blog
• eBay DevCon Flipcam videos

Thanks again to our great crowd. We hope you walked away with the insight, inspiration and connections that will make it easy to build your business with us. Keep your eye out for the videos coming your way soon!

- Delyn

Improving the Profitability of eBay Retailers

Today at DevCon we heard some profit-tuning techniques from Marshall Smith, Sr. Software Engineer on ChannelAdvisor, the first software to go live on the eBay APIs, years and years ago. Different cost-cutting and profit-increasing tactics, he said, might be immediately obvious to different people; others are not right for every business or every case. In this economic climate, internet retailers have to look for savings.

Many in the audience were attentively taking notes on Marshall's tips, which were concrete, detailed discussions of specific techniques for shaving listing costs, increasing market share, and tightening margins in an economic climate that demands aggressive attention to detail. Marshall noted the diminishing growth rates in internet retail, showing graphed growth projections from 2003-2009 pitching challengingly downward. Marshall presented some direct and indirect methods for facing the challenge by reducing seller costs.

Direct Reductions of Seller Costs

These are some of the techniques Marshall discussed for reducing fees.

• Use the newly launched eBay Variations to list multiple items in a single listing, paying a single listing fee instead of a separate fee per item. Marshall showed the math when possible, and estimated that listing 13 items as a single variation would save $3.85 each time. Another advantage: users see your available stock in more detail. (If you are interested in this, don't miss the presentation tomorrow at 1:30pm by Keith Wescourt and Grant King.)
• Catalog Adoption: Some categories have reduced listing fees and are promoted by product-based search.
• International Site Visibility: Depending on the price of the items your sellers are listing, it may be worthwhile to pay an additional listing fee to make an item listed in the U.S. visible in Canada and Europe. This option works out best for numerous inexpensive items, and generally is not as effective with fixed-price items. The math: an listing that bid up to $49 saved $1.63 compared with the option of relisting in other regions.
• PayPal Micropayments: On listings selling for under $12, using PayPal Micropayments will save, for example, $29 on 200 transactions of $5 each.

Indirect Reductions of Seller Costs

These are some of Marshall's tips for indirectly increasing the effectiveness of your listings.

• Sales History Relists: A new listing has zero sales history, which can be a disadvantage in the Best Match algorithm. A previous listing by a high-ranked seller may carry sales data that help boost the listing. Remember that when relisting you can't alter the item's title, condition, price, or category.
• Immediate Payment: When appropriate (say, for a concert ticket) specify that a buyer must pay immediately upon purchase. Immediate payment reduces the number of invoices you need to send and the number of UPIs you need to file, and pleases your buyer by cutting down on shipping time.
• Improve Seller Metrics: Marshall recommends using the CompleteSale call, which feeds shipping tracking information to eBay and as a clickable link for your buyer. This can increase your ratings on communication, provide defense against potential INRs, and reduce seller questions.
• Improve Seller Metrics Some More: Prepare your sellers for upcoming seller policy requirements (return policy, handling time, shipping options).
• Improve Seller Metrics Yet More: Hitting your shipping cutoff times, especially on Fridays, will improve your ratings.

You can see Marshall's slides here.

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2009 eBay Star Developer Awards

Please join us in congratulating the following developers building applications on the eBay API platform for achievements in enabling sellers to improve customer service, helping sellers keep pace with our dynamic marketplace, providing early product input & technical answers that benefit the entire eBay developer community, and extending eBay in exciting new directions:

2009 eBay Star Developer Award Winners:

• DSR Rockstar: Seller Machine CRM by BengalOne
• Most Innovative: Dynamic pricing feature by Monsoon
• Early Adopter: Mercent Retail for eBay by Mercent
• Service to the Developer Community: Jake Becker (helios825) of WatchCount.com
• Rapid Evolution: Sales Manager by InkFrog

2009 Runners-up:

• DSR Rockstar: Instant mobile alerts for sellers by ahTEXT
• Most Innovative: Vendio Research by Vendio
• Early Adopter: DSR Report by NullApps
• Service to the Developer Community: David Kronenwetter (exdwh) of Experimenter’s Discount Warehouse 
• Rapid Evolution: ShipRush by Z-Firm

Congratulations to our 2009 winners!!

- Delyn

Welcome to eBay Developers Conference 2009!

Welcome to eBay DevCon!

We're excited to be hosting our annual eBay Developers Conference at our headquarters in San Jose, California. It's definitely not your garden variety work day here on the eBay campus today. We've been busy preparing to be surrounded by hundreds of developers who've traveled from around the world for three days of learning, networking and inspiration, as well as to be among some of the most respected visionaries and venture capitalists in e-commerce. Not a bad day's work!

We're meeting in a tough economy this year. No news there. This economy also presents new opportunities for developers and entrepreneurs. The eBay API platform team wants you to walk away inspired by what lies ahead. We've planned a series of interactive feedback panels, sessions and workshops to allow you to tap the minds of eBay Inc. technologists and executives, as well as developers who have already built successful applications. We encourage you to challenge them with your questions and learn about their vision for the eBay Developers Program.  

We are also looking forward to hearing about – and learning from – your collective thoughts regarding our current Developers Program. What's working and what isn't? Where would you like all of us and this program to be in the future?

Of course in these challenging economic times, not everybody who wanted to be here was able to join us for this event. We encourage you to stay in the action by following @ebaydevcon on Twitter (please tag your tweets with #ebaydevcon) or by checking out the eBay developer blog, which will include updates, photos, and video interviews about what's happening here at DevCon 2009

We never take for granted getting to personally meet so many people working with our eBay API platform, and to hear about the creative ways you're building your business. It is an opportunity and privilege we look forward to all year. We also know many of you have had to make difficult financial trade-offs in order to join us this year. Thank you for joining us.

Since the inception of this annual conference eight years ago, we at eBay have been fortunate to witness the energy and the variety of applications you've developed. Your hard work and great ideas inspire us, and we're hoping that as you meet each other at eBay DevCon this year, you'll get inspired as well. 

Enjoy!

Kumar Kandaswamy
Head of the Developers Program

Delyn Simons
Lead of the 2009 Developers Conference