I've got some trickier eBay questions.

I need some help, and perusing Google and various forums hasn't panned out yet.

1) I would like to know what data eBay's API can reveal about a seller. Can bots dig up hidden or private information that a third-party could use to investigate or unmask an account?

2) What tools/methods can be done to hide parts of your sales data for a listing from browsers and bots? How do you protect yourself from being targeted by competitors or suppliers that could exploit data in the listing?

3) What can be done to automate monitoring competitors, product searches, repricing and other inventory management?

Thanks for any feedback ahead of time

najo10 said:

I need some help, and perusing Google and various forums hasn't panned out yet.

1) I would like to know what data eBay's API can reveal about a seller. Can bots dig up hidden or private information that a third-party could use to investigate or unmask an account?

2) What tools/methods can be done to hide parts of your sales data for a listing from browsers and bots? How do you protect yourself from being targeted by competitors or suppliers that could exploit data in the listing?

3) What can be done to automate monitoring competitors, product searches, repricing and other inventory management?

Thanks for any feedback ahead of time

Click to expand...

1) RTFM Mate - seriously just read the API documentation. I don't think you need to be technical to figure out what they do. That said I noticed the PayPal email of buyers of items from other merchants. I'm not sure that was a bug or what but that shits crazy. I can find out who buys what from buyers :0

2) Nothing. If it's on the web they can get it. If it was your own site you could employ some expensive software to combat it. You are selling on eBays site so you are at their peril as to how they manage to protect you. Either way it's an arms race and you should assume your data is there for all to parse and crunch as they see fit.

3) This is a multipoint question but simply put: buy software off the shelf that fulfils these requirements. If it's not available then pay somebody to make it for you. If you can't afford whats available off the shelf then just forget about it - paying somebody to develop your own will be more expensive, unless you can write software..

Hope that helps..

2) Spit up your eBay empire into smaller stealth accounts. Better to look like a bunch of smaller fish than one big one.