Use the eBay Editor Kit and Merchant Kit to promote your auctions off-eBay.
Once you've signed up with one of eBay's affiliate programs, as described in [Hack #77], you can use either of eBay's two tools for creating lists of auctions on your own site. Not only will this help promote your auctions and increase traffic to specific items, but you'll make money for each new user who signs up and for each bid that is placed as a result of your links.
The Editor Kit couldn't be slicker. Just go to cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?EKCreate and fill out the fields, as shown in Figure 7-7.
Select Commission Junction in the Provider box and enter your CJ ID in the Tracking ID field. The rest of the fields should be self-explanatory, and the only one that is required is the Search Term. If you want to limit the search to your own auctions, type your eBay user ID in the "Show items of the following sellers" box.
When you're done, click Preview to show the JavaScript code and the resulting search box, shown in Figure 7-8.
The big drawback to the Editor Kit is that it only shows results of a keyword search; you can't leave the Search Term field blank in order to show all your auctions. Instead, you can use either eBay Stores [Hack #72] or the Merchant Kit, next, to promote your overall business on eBay.
Like the Editor Kit, the Merchant Kit creates simple JavaScript snippets, but centers around category listings rather than search results.
Start by going to pages.ebay.com/api/merchantkitl, and simply use the Merchant Kit, shown in Figure 7-9, to create your code.
The code is little more than a URL that can be easily tweaked without having to return to the Merchant Kit. The resulting box, shown in Figure 7-10, lists all your auctions, optionally filtered by category.