Provides the Basics of What to Do on E-Bay for Newbie Sellers and Buyers
It's important to note that this book is released in different countries as specific country editions. The triangle headed guy on the front cover is holding the flag from of the country each edition is from. Each country has its own laws and taxes, postal system you'll be using for domestic and international sales and so forth. Although most of the info (the general stuff) is the same if you're going to the effort of buying it I'd get one applicable to where you live. Even though Amazon is a global website, it is based in the US so you'll no doubt get the US version ordering it here.
There's heaps of books out there on ebay. Let's be honest none of them are really needed at all as all the info you could even need is on ebay's FAQ, help pages and discussion boards. If however your online internet time is very expensive or you don't have much time or opportunity to access the internet and want to be completely prepared for buying or selling an item on ebay before the expense of going online, then I guess you are going to buy a book to help you. Although if this is the case odds are you're not online and not reading reviews on Amazon about books anyway. But if you are after a book containing the basic information you need to buy or sell eBay for Dummies is one of the better ones out there.
This book is laid out in easy to follow chapters with headings on the various actions you'll be looking to do. It also has a pretty good index to search for particular things that way as well. There's not a great deal of pages devoted to buying, it's more for sellers (probably about 4 fifths of the book) but the basics are covered.
A much better book I have subsequently come across since writing this review is The eBay Myth-Bu$ter: Turn 199 Misconceptions Into Money! by David Busch. It debunks a lot of myths sellers tell buyers (and other sellers on the discussion boards) such as buyers are responsible for lost items (nope sellers are), feedback is important (nope but how you respond to it is), you can't have multiple accounts (yes you can, in fact you're stupid not to), buyers or sellers must respond within 3 days of auction ending (no they don't have to). It's a much better book to learn stuff than this Dummies or any other e-bay book I've come across.
Warning about ebay!!!!!
Warning about ebay!!! I try to avoid credit cards so I can prevent massive debt, so I tried using ebay and paying everything with personal checks. The sellers grew very impatient or didn't report having received my payment and soon I had too many nonpayment strikes and my account was blocked within a month or two. To fix it, I had to mail my proof of payments into ebay, but that is way too much hassle and no guarantee that it wouldn't happen again next time! I wouldn't trust a company that can't tell the difference between a fake J.K. Rowling autograph and a real one!
Great resource!
I was a complete novice at selling on eBay, but thanks to this book I have completed three transactions! I did not have a single question that was not answered in this book. I highly recommend this as a resource for new (and not so new) eBayers!
eBay book vs. the tutorial on eBay
The book does exactly what I expected it to do. Had I reviewed the tutorial already on eBay having to do with selling, I might have tried to work with it rather than buying a book.
Since some of the items I expect to offer on eBay are expensive (over $100) I wanted to be sure they were presented properly in order to draw a decent group of bidders. For me the book was a worthwhile investment.
Great book
This is a good book if you want
to know how to do Ebay.
Good service. Thank you.
(74 reviews)
