Listing upgrades can help buyers find a listing more easily or make the listing more appealing. For example, a subtitle may help buyers find the listing more easily because it provides more keywords when buyers search in titles and descriptions. Making the listing title bold can help it stand out in the search results gallery.

In addition to describing the item itself (or items) and providing at least one picture, sellers will usually want to include other useful information related to the selling process itself.

Optional features include:

  • Store categories

    If the seller is an eBay Store owner and wants to list the item in their storefront, the seller can optionally specify up to two custom categories defined for that storefront by calling AddItem (or similar call) and configuring the values for the following arguments:

    For additional information, refer to Manage Store Categories.

  • Free added category

    eBay may choose at times to promote a listing with a free second category. eBay does this to help increase the visibility of the item to buyers who may be browsing in a category different from the one specified for the listing. When eBay adds a category, sellers are not charged any List in Two Categories fees for the listing. eBay may choose to add a second category to listings even on marketplaces that normally do not support the ability to list in two categories.

    The AddItem family of calls does not return any information about free added categories. However, GetItem and GetSellerList return information about the added category in their Item.FreeAddedCategory and Item.FreeAddedCategory containers (respectively).

    Note: The Item.SecondaryCategory and ItemArray.Item.SecondaryCategory containers (respectively) are not returned.

    If a seller submits a listing with two categories and it qualifies for a free second category, the fees returned from AddItem will reflect charges for listing in two categories, but the seller will receive a refund of any List in Two Categories fees for that listing. In this situation, GetItem and related calls return both categories in the PrimaryCategory and Item.SecondaryCategory nodes as usual and Item.FreeAddedCategory is not returned.

  • Bold titles

    Listings on eBay may include bold titles to help them stand where there are multiple items from different sellers displayed on the same page (e.g., listing browse and search pages.) Bold titles are optional and will incur additional listing fees.

  • Charitable donations

    Specify whether or not to donate a percentage of the final sale price to a qualified nonprofit organization. These charity listings appear in the search results for the standard eBay marketplace and on the eBay for Charity site. Charity listings will be marked with an eBay for Charity icon adjacent to the item title. A charity listing will also indicate what percentage of the sale proceeds will go towards benefiting the nonprofit organization. For more information refer to Charitable Listings.

  • Catalog products

    To make it even easier for buyers to find your listing, include product details from a product defined in eBay’s product catalog. With this option, you search the eBay product catalog for a stock product that is similar your item, and eBay then uses that product's stock content to fill in a portion of your listing's Item Specifics and add other information to supplement your listing description.

    To indicate that you want to include this kind of data in your listing, you need to specify an eBay product ID (EPID) or a UPC, ISBN, EAN, or MPN. Refer to eBay Catalog Products for more information.

    If you are new to the API, it may be easiest to first develop and test the listing functionality of your application without using product details, and then add the product details once you have successfully created a number of listings the standard way.

For complete information about all features that are available to sellers, refer to eBay Features.