eBay Selling Tips: Using RSS Feeds to Increase Sales

The RSS technology has been around for a while but is steadily gaining popularity as an online marketing tool. Made popular by the blogging community, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This programming format (usually and xml file) is used for transmitting and distributing headlines to a wider audience via a feed.

eBay sellers can now get their listings from eBay in RSS format. On the bottom of the user’s Store Home Page or from the Selling Manager dashboard, click on the Manage My Store link. Look for the Store Marketing link in the left navigation menu and click on Listing Feeds.

Click on the radio button for Distribute your listing via RSS or you can enable the button for Make a file of your Store inventory listings available. It may take a couple of hours for this to take effect, but you should see an orange RSS icon on the bottom of your store’s index page.

Listing in RSS format can help increase sales for your eBay store. Encourage buyers to subscribe to your feeds to allow them to monitor changes that you make to your store, specifically for any new or updated inventory, auction or listings under Buy It Now.You can also automatically feed your selection to any other online media you are connected to, be it your blog or a social networking site like Twitter.

Another advantage of using eBay RSS Listing Feeds as a seller is that you get notification for items under “Good til Cancelled” that are automatically relisted. To be able to view this feed, you will need an RSS aggregator. There are several free readers online, the most popular of which are AmphetaDes, NewzCrawler and Radio UserLand.

On another note, eBay has been expanding the use of it feeds to cater to its vibrant community. Aside from allowing RSS for eBay stores, feeds are also available for discussion boards, search results pages and announcement boards.

Happy eBay selling!