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How to use ebay/paypal while you are away from your Home Country
 

hi everyone..

basically i was in need of a good setup/info that will make me look like 100% in my home country while i m away. after days n nights of research i have finally become successfull in creating a fully working setup that will keep your ebay bussiness running (perfect for drop-shippers) who are away on holidays.. i still have 2 weeks to go on mine but the plan isin place tested and fully working.. i am sure we all know that paypal will put your account as limited if you access it from outside your country of registration.. i will try to keep this guide as brief and to the point as possible explaining just a bit more where needed..

Requirements:
1. ADSL/CABLE ROUTER WITH SUPPORT OF DYNAMIC DNS
2. A LAPTOP (WHICH CAN RUN LINUX UBUNTU)
3. SQUID PROXY SERVER (WHICH WE WILL INSTALL ON UBUNTU)

Plan overview:
ok now so the plan is we have to keep something running at home on minimal hardware required basis which can give us maximum output and desired results. so basically we need a couple of hardware (which i m sure all of you must have) and some linux expertise (dont worry im here to help you out on this). The plan in simple is we will keep our adsl router on which will forward http request to laptop where squid proxy server is install..

Plan in Action.

Dynamic DNS: You must be thinking how is it possible to know your ip address when you are away from home, what if electricity problem occurs and your router is restarted? what if bla bla bla??? right? so here comes dynamic DNS comes into play.. go and register with dyndns.org its free service. What this service does is pretty simple.. each time your router will go online it will give its ip address to dyndns.org and dyndns.org will associate it with a hostname (which u will setup when you register there all free)

TASK1: register DYNDNS.ORG and get a free hostname you want to add your name on.. theres a long list from which you can choose.. lets say i choose endofinternet.com so i will add my pc name to it cipher1.endofinternet.com

TASK2: make sure your adsl router/firewall supports two very important functions. one is NAT (Network address translation) and other is DYNAMIC DNS. There is a long list which of hardware which supports these two functions, the cheapest being US-ROBITICS 9111 ADSL2+ WIRELESS ROUTER/FIREWALL. Enter your dyndns.org username and password in the router aswell as hostname which you registered on the website.. restart your router and goto dyndns.org login and see your ip address should be automatically updated against your hostname.. so now if you ping that hostname the responce will come from your own pc cool isnt it? :)

TASK3: install linux ubunto onto the laptop (I HAVE PICKED A LAPTOP BECAUSE IT CAN SUSTAIN POWER OUTAGE TAKES MINIMAL ENERGY, NO FANS AND MINIMAL RISK FOR BURNOUT IF LEFT ON FOR LONG). You can find linux distributions free of cost scattered around the internet. once installed goto system->administration->users asign a password for root as you require root access to install squid and configure it.. after that goto system->administration->software sources, it will update all the packages. now open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install squid, this will install squid (remember to login as root)

TASK4: configure squid proxy as per your requirement but remember to do the extra tweaks in squid.conf file so that your proxy becomes anonymous otherwise it will give your real ip address forwarded.

TASK5: now goto network address translation setting in your adsl router cofiguration and then goto virtual server settings, assign the local server ip address where your laptop is located (running squid proxy server) and also assign the port number of your squid server 3128 (common but you can change it as well in squid.conf). After this assign any port number (other then well known ports) for the external ip address..

what will this do? lets say you assign 7876 to your external ip which is 54.23.11.90 and you assigned 192.168.0.90 (laptop) port 3128 (squid), requests coming to the real ip address will be transferred to your local lan where your laptop is located and you will also hide from outside world that you are have a proxy server (because most common port for squid proxy is 3128 and not 7876 ..

ALL DONE: if all set correctly, imagine you are away from your home (USA/UK) sitting in china/bangkok/australia, now you open your laptop , clicked on IE. entered connection settings for IE as hostname cipher1.endofinternet.com and port 7876.

cipher1.endofinternet.com (is your pc back home) it will appear as if you are browsing from your home and not from anywhere else...

yes i will still suggest that you keep track of your ip addresses while still being away...(if incase it got changed somehow)

ok then i hope this guide give u some rough idea on what todo if you are going away somewhere and how it all works..

best wishes to you all :)

WOW! Very detailed, but excellent post, thank you

I think I love you. Brilliant.

Very detailed and informative post, thanks.

a software alternative
 

some good ideas powerbid, I've been looking into automating the entire dropshipping process for some time, it was the original reason for getting into ebay for serious.

There is an alternative method which is more software focused, I've spent five months writing bash scripts to automate huge portions of the process and then realised it would be better to use PHP, taught myself PHP and am now rebuilding the system.

Both eBay and Paypal can be accessed via their respective API's, PayPal functionality is more limited via the API but may still be sufficient for two weeks outside of the country.

If you have a website, from which you also sell products, you can create and set up some php scripts that allow you to perform eBay and PayPal functions from your websites server to eBay, in this way eBay and PayPal will only see interactio between themselves and your server irrespective of which country you are in. Of course, for the eBay side you could just use Auctiva though you may want some extended functionality, a PayPal management tool would be highly useful.


In terms of automating the whole process as a dropshipper I'd be happy to share my thoughts on what precisely is required:

1. a dropshipper who provides xml or csv stocklists (or a good script which spiders their websites products)
2. a script which can convert those xml/csv files into a standardised purpose made (mysql) database for inventory management and listing
3. a script which automatically lists those products on eBay keeping track of inventory through the purpose made database, this database can also be used in conjunction with a retail website if you code it all
4. a service (e.g one that runs every second or so) script which deals with ebay notifications (e.g. if an item sells), and takes the appropriate action: for instance, script finds an item that sells, script removes item from inventory, sends invoice to user, awaits payment, when payment is received (again using a (paypal) notification script) we need to go to step 5
5. a script which can access the dropshippers website, select the product, fill out the customers information, and submit the product form
6. script to mark item as despatched on ebay
7. script to check feedback and leave feedback when customer leaves feedback

throughout these 7 meaty steps there also needs to be an accounting subsystem, which for instance, when product is listed records the ebay insertion fees into the ebay account, when it sells records the ebay fvf into the ebay account, that paypal (or other) fee into the paypal (or whatever) account, the sale price into the sales ledger, and the postage price into the postage account, and the VAT (if applicable) into the VAT account, when it orders from the dropshipper it needs to record the buy price into the purchases ledger and VAT. furthermore there needs to be alerts to the user for any issues or problems etc.

all of these steps are technically possible, and I've been working on them for some time, somethings it doesnt take into account though is getting hit by Veros etc. that could be scripted in. Also things such as non-payment, and if an item goes out of stock at the dropshipper the item would have to be taken down (or revised with another item).

If anyone wants assistance with this sort of thing, I'd be happy to talk - if its something major you want me to do for you I'll need remuneration thats if I've got time do it.

Peace,

ytl

ytl, have you had any success with your idea as you havent really mentioned if it is a working setup ?

hi powerbid, I was using and was having success with a primitive skeletal system coded in bash, that covered points 1,2,3,4 and 7 and the accounting subsystem, but I was building as I was going and sometimes one mistake would affect 80 listings in one go, which meant I did a lot of revising (I should have been more patient), this in part resulted in VERO T&C attention and shut me down in december. I'm now creating the system all over again in PHP, so that it is more distributable and easier to use, configure and optimize.

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Of course, the items I was selling were perfectly legitimate. Nevertheless...

that is all too confusing for me, lol, think i will just have 2 weeks off when i go on holiday.

Donna, how will U cope with the ebay withdrawals? Two weeks no ebay, wth?
Wait, maybe my ulcer will settle. LOL.