 Re: Bye bye to self hosted pictures
1) eBay is NOT changing or banning third-party hosting of images down in the description area, and has no plans to do so. You may continue as before and use your own photos in the description.
2) eBay is still allowing you to upload third-party hosted photos to the top left of the listing. Use the "Copy web files" uploader or the "Import from Web" uploader, or use any third party listing service or selling tool. Using those uploaders, eBay will fetch the image from the host and rehost the photos on eBay. When eBay thus controls the photos, they qualify for supersize and zoom and can be sized as needed to fit the various selling venues.
3) The announcement pertains to closing down the "Self-Hosting" tab on the SYI (sell your item) listing form, and nowhere else. That form has two uploaders for third-party photos. One is called "Self-hosting" , with only one picture slot, and the other is called "Copy web files", with slots for 12 photo URLs The "Self-hosting" tab makes an attempt to fetch the photo from the host for rehosting on eBay. But if the attempt fails, the original URL is delivered with the listing page and the hosted image may or may not arrive in time to display in the page. It can not be processed by eBay for supersize or zoom. Due to the inferior presentation, and hit-or-miss rehosting, eBay is eliminating the uploader from the SYI listing form.
4) "All photos must be hosted on eBay" is not a new implementation. eBay has been rehosting newly "self-hosted" photos for a couple of years, you just never noticed. The policy announcement is just making clear what has already been in place and is a heads up for sellers who rely on hot-swapping. A side effect of this feature is that self-hosting sellers can no longer hot-swap photos at the top of the listing while bidding is active. They must go through the upload audit trail.
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