RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. People can subscribe to a Feed same as they would subscribe to an email newsletter. Whenever a RSS Feed is updated, the subscriber is then sent an email telling them to check it out.
eBay provides you an RSS Feed automatically when you have an eBay store, so it should already be activated. Whenever you update the listings in your store, your RSS Feed is automatically updated at the same time. However, this only works if you have Store Inventory.
How to check if your RSS Feed is active.
- Go to the Manage My Store page on eBay. Under Store Marketing you should see Listing Feeds.
- Select both ‘Activate your Store Inventory listing via RSS’ and ‘Make a file of your Store Inventory listings available’. Then click Apply.
That’s it, two easy steps. You have updated and made your RSS Feeds active! Now let’s submit your Feed to a few places.
Submitting your Feed to Feedburner.com
One place you can submit your Feed is Feedburner.com, which actually has been acquired by Google! This site is free to join, but you will have to register to be able to submit your feed.
Once you have registered/logged in – there are a few simple steps to getting your Feed burned.
Start by finding your RSS Feed link on eBay. One easy way to find it is to go to your eBay Store Icon and click on it. Then scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see your RSS icon in an orange box.
Click on the RSS icon, and this will show your URL RSS Feed link in the browser. You can also get an idea of what your Feed looks like to others who subcribe to your Feed. Your URL will look similar to mine with ‘rss’ in the beginning: http://rss.api.ebay.com/ws/rssapi?FeedName=StoreItems&siteId=0&language=en-US&output=RSS20&storeId=22585822
Copy YOUR URL for Feedburner.
Then head back to Feedburner.com and submit your feed using these few more steps:
- Select ‘Submit your Feed’ on the upper right of the screen and follow the 3 steps.
1 – Paste your URL into the box.
2 – Select ‘Preview’. You should see a page similar to what you viewed in eBay when you clicked on your RSS Feed icon.
3 – Submit into the Feed burner Directory!
Once you have submitted your feed, you will not be able to submit it again. As long as you keep listing items in your eBay store, your feed will stay updated. You can see how many people subscribe to and view your feeds under the ‘MyFeedpage’ menu, then by selecting ‘My Feeds’.
This is just one of my preferred ways of getting eBay listings out across the internet. This is an easy ‘set it and forget it’ method. Once it is out there and it has been set, you don’t have to do anything – it will just continually keep updated.
There are many, many, many RSS sites that you can submit your RSS Feed on, but keep in mind you need to keep it targeted to your product or it may not be accepted. Feedburner.com has by far been the easiest and most organized. And the best part is, you can show up on Google in their ranking pages…I was ecstatic when my RSS Feed showed up on Google!!
I was able to READ my email in one swoop with no interruptions, print some shipping labels and get my eBay packages ready to ship without little helping hands. It was a nice day and I’m hoping for more quiet time to sit down and take some learning courses this season. 
follow me on Twitter