Often times custom programming solutions are needed to increase productivity on eBay.  When referring to eBay keep in mind the same principles apply to any website really.

eBay having been designed to work with an internet browser while providing for the gambit of users generalizes their website to suit the masses. In addition, their profound growth brings to mind the Peter Principle in that the bigger they have become the more cumbersome their site has become. Their site in a nutshell brings little more functionality today then it did five years ago when I became involved with them. What functionality they have added over the years could be done in a lot of cases one or two clicks if it were not for the limitations of your web browser. Or how about no clicks at all? Automation! 

Probably the biggest reason to design a custom program that will interface with a website would be to enhance the use of the site by providing features that the website itself cannot or will not provide. You would like X done but the masses do not require X so put simply, its not worth eBay's time to provide X for you or your company!

Tasks that once did not exist on eBay have been addressed with customized Windows applications that do many things to make working on eBay easier and quicker.  While eBay themselves have addressed many of the tasks that once did not exist, due to the limitations of a typical web browser jobs are easier to do in some respects on eBay, but in most cases are far from an adequate programmatic money saving solution!

eBay has become the website of a 1000 clicks and their sign in schema only seems to bring up the blood pressure level of most.

What is your time worth to you? Do you have time or can you afford to sit in front of a web browser and spend possibly hours when perhaps a windows programming solution could reduce the time spent on a task that can take hours into simply minutes? 

This company introduced snipe software to the world. What was done manually at all hours of the day and night is now done with full automation. Truly the program freed up many hours of a life for those that scheduled their lives around a certain known event in time.. the end of an auction while at the same time saving loads of greenbacks for savvy bidders that use the program. Look what the result has been with the introduction of a simple software program in 1997 that provides a simple solution to an annoying problem? Another industry has blossomed! The business of saving time and money is big business on eBay alone now!

Safe2Bid takes hours of tedious work and brings results to an end user in a matter of minutes.

Perhaps you need a custom solution to an ongoing eBay related problem? You will not find a more experienced programmer to assist with solving your problem.

Considerations

There are some things you must consider when developing a program that interfaces with eBay.

1. eBay doesn't like it and often looks for ways to get a piece of your action. (The eBay API) should your program be commercially viable.

2. eBay makes site changes that can effect your program which basically means an update to fix a feature. So.. eBay software is like virus software in that the application requires some maintenance occasionally.

3. When developing a software program that interfaces with any website certain RFC (Request For Comments) should be followed because what you are developing is a client program that can also be considered a BOT (Automated Robot Program like a search engine) With this in mind one has to consider the impact of hits on their server and minimize this.

4. eBay can say one day, that's enough.. and ban your program or attempt to prohibit you from using it on their site.

5. When you use me to code your eBay program, you have the most experienced coder in the industry writing your code. I know every pitfall there is and have already addressed these issues in my own program. I guess another way of saying this, you can learn it the hard way or the easy way.. whichever way you can afford to learn.

Is your program for personal use or commercial distribution? If for commercial distribution and you plan on doing data mining on their site you may not be able to legally pursue your idea without applying for and getting approved to use their API. You cannot legally scrape their website and take information from it and then resell this information or as in the case of one website that was attacked by eBay, use this information to attract advertising monies. Be careful when thinking commercial application of intellectual property rights. If it is on their site, eBay claims ownership. Storing data scraped from their site can be illegal in some cases.

If applying for their API is a requirement and if you are lucky enough to get approved into their API program, the cost can range as high as $10,000 per year plus additional fees per 1000 hits to their site.

Security and Privacy issues are big concern with eBay. If you plan is to gleam email addresses you are asking to get your throat cut by them.

I've introduced a new commercial active x control that is available to any programmer. The Sign In control simplifies tasks on eBay that requires a user to sign in. It is called ezSignInEbay and if a program I write for you requires a sign in, source for this control is not provided unless you pay the price to have the source code. Normal licensing fee to use the control will apply if you are to be delivered the source code of the project which basically means a by having the source code of the program, the control would come with the project but you would not own the control. You can learn more about copyright restrictions here.

A full blown commercial grade program that interfaces with eBay can be costly or perhaps what you are looking for would be prohibitively expensive for just your use? If your program has commercial value I would consider writing the program for you for much less cost assuming I would retain copyright ownership and distribution rights.