Setting up Ebay

You need to have an Ebay account. It is best to set one up specifically for using with your Actinic shop, rather than using any personal account (as your customers may look at your purchases and sales etc.).
It is also a good idea to accept Paypal. For ease of transaction processing you may decide to only take Paypal.


Creating your products on Ebay

Download and install the Product Mash from http://www.mole-end.biz/download/ME_ProductMash.exe

1 The default feed created by the Ebay Product Mash is for a 10 day fixed priced UK based item (of quantitiy 1). You can change these if you have an Ebay shop (to GTC).
2 You should then set-up the other default information, which is:
Location - City/State
Accept PayPal (and PayPal Email Address)

3 Add in any extra options that are specific to your needs (e.g. Counter).
4 Add in the Ebay category. You can check what the Ebay categories are at the following link: http://listings.ebay.com/aw/listings/overview.html. If your products are in more than category you will have to use one of the following approaches:
. Use the product's section title (see the Product Mash: How do I use my section title in my feeds? article)
. Use information in the product's title (see the Product Mash: Use Manufacturer (or Brand) from product's title article).
. Use a custom variable at a product or section level. For more information see either the Product Mash: V7: How to use User Defined Properties or Product Mash: V8: How to use User Defined Properties articles on how to setup custom variables.

5 Create your feed file from the Product Mash
6 Import the created feed file into Turbo Lister (using File->Import Items->From File).

To get these ready to upload to Ebay you should set-up the Basic settings. For more detailed listings use Advanced settings and Additional Information.

Basic settings
You can now set any standard information for groups (or all) of the items. Turbo Lister allows you to edit multiple items and amend a value that will be applied to all of the selected items. This is useful for entering standard terms and conditions etc.. For example, to use your Actinic shipping model, select Sellers Standard Rate in the Postage Options. In the Instructions and Policies section Edit the Additional Information text. You can then enter your postage costs and any other terms and conditions that you want to include.

Advanced settings
If you want to include your items in more than 1 Ebay category you should enter the value for Category 2. You can define this as a fixed value or custom var (in a similar way to Category 1)


Additional information

Images
All the images are referenced from your Actinic site. For this reason you should check to see what the the image size is, as Ebay won't resize your image in the main listing (i.e. it could be too large). This approach also allows you to include extra images for no extra cost if they are referenced from your description (in a similar way to Spoonfeeder). If you want Ebay to host your images you should add a CustomVar to your products that reference a local file. This will then be uploaded to Ebay when you upload your listings.

Giving all items a style similar to your Actinic shop (or adding your logos etc.).
This is acheived by amending all the descriptions to include HTML around your descriptions. This can include links to your logos etc. and your standard text used on your site. To do this use the following approach:

1 Select all the items to give this appearance to.
2 Select Edit multiple items.
3 In the Pictures and Description area select Add to top of description.
4 In the description area paste in the start of the required HTML (you should remove the </body> and </html>. NOTE: It does not matter that you will remove the (Multiple Values) text.
5 Save the changes and close the Item.
6 Edit the same multiple items.
7 In the Pictures and Description area select Add to bottom of description.
8 Enter </body></html> after any additional information that you want to include after the item's description.

How to process the Ebay Orders

Your Ebay orders can not be imported into Actinic.
You can print directly from Ebay (using Selling Manager) or for larger numbers of orders (and to provide a better looking invoice) use the following approach using Integrated Label paper
http://www.int-l.co.uk/IntegratedSMProDef.html.
This solution uses the same paper format as Actinic uses.
A lot of Ebay sellers take all of the Ebay orders and enter them into the accounting software (e.g. Sage) as a single entry (e.g. Ebay Orders). This saves on data entry time and does not get you to the limit of the accounting software (particularly for Quickbooks).
Ebay can automatically give your customers feedback once they have placed the order (won the auction).
For improved and easier order processing you can use One Stop Order Processing for Ebay at www.1stoporders.co.uk


How to limit the problems with using Ebay

It is always a good idea to send items that require a signature. If using Royal Mail sent items recorded delivery. This limits people claiming that they did not receive the item(s).
You may decide to only send items to the registered Paypal address. This is a policy that a lot of B2B companies use (in some cases companies will only send to Paypal customers who have a rating of over 100).

Useful information

Shipping information does not import directly into Turbo Lister shipping fields. You can resolve this by creating your pricing in the Shipping Instructions information in the listing.

To do this create a new property called Payment Instuctions (select this from the Variable name list) and use the value of !!DeliveryCost!! to include the shipping instructions (e.g. 'Shipping costs: !!DeliveryCost!! on a 2 day delivery using Parcelforce'). You could also include this in the Description using a value of '!!Description!! Shipping costs: !!DeliveryCost!!' for the Description property. An example can be seen at:

If you want to include your Actinic image as part of the Ebay desciption (allowing you to pay less Ebay fees if using multiple images) you should use the following approach:

You need to define you description with the Product Mash to include your image. You should create a Property called Description with a value of the following:

!!Description!!<html><body><img src="!!Image!!"></body></html>

This will create an Ebay description that contains the Actinic description followed by the product's image. The product Mash property is shown below: