eBay Hacks, 2nd Edition

Hacking a Dynamic System

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

—Mark Twain

eBay is constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of its ever-growing community (as well as its business partners). Every two weeks, in fact, eBay introduces new features and changes to its site. Some changes are subtle, like moving the location of a button or link, or updating an obscure policy. Other changes are much more dramatic.

While the first edition of this book was being written, for instance, eBay added the Calculated Shipping feature [Hack #59] , substantially changed the licensing and pricing for its Developers Program (see Chapter 8), and introduced an entirely new auction page design. And all of these changes occurred within a period of about 30 days.

There is no such thing as eBay 2.0 or eBay 2.1, a fact that can create quite a challenge for tinkerers. But, by their very nature, hacks are experimental, and not necessarily impervious to breakage or obsolescence.

Much changed on eBay since the first edition of eBay Hacks was written. eBay consolidated its non-paying bidder process and fraud reporting tools into the handy Dispute Console [Hack #40] and [Hack #89] and changed the design of the feedback profile page [Hack #1] . eBay introduced the Subtitle listing upgrade [Hack #46] and eliminated the essentially useless Featured on Home Page upgrade. And a few new restrictionswere put in place concerning Java-Script in listing descriptions and revisions to running listings.

In most cases, the results of these changes were cosmetic and didn’t cause any real problems. But it’s important to be aware that even though policies will frequently be updated, prices will almost always go up, and new features will be added (and older ones deprecated) faster than you can keep track of them, the methodologies and strategies in this book should remain pretty much the same.

This does mean, however, that some of the hacks in this edition may need minor modifications to work within the confines of the system. If you encounter a problem, just visit www.ebayhacks.com to see if there’s a solution (or to suggest one of your own).

Fortunately, whenever eBay closes a door, they try to open a window (or at least a vent), which means that hacking will always be a part of using eBay, and the hacker will always have a home.