The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an Ebay Business [Mass Market Paperback]

Barbara Weltman (Author)

Book Description

Series: The Complete Idiot's Guide | Publication Date: March 1, 2005

So, you've got eBay ambitions. Do you want to become a full-time seller or make money from a sideline business to supplement existing income? Millions of new sellers will list their wares on eBay this year alone. But 41 per cent of all listings never sell. And putting an ad for an antique teddy bear on eBay is no guarantee that it will sell or that a hoped-for business will succeed. "The Complete Idiot's Guide[registered] to Starting an eBay Business" will guide readers - step-by-step - in creating the eBay business they've dreamed of. It will help them understand what's involved in running an eBay business and how to go out about it. This work: covers the basics of eBay, the auction process, and getting your business down on paper, including record keeping, accounting, taxes, insurance, legal issues, and other details you need to know; helps the reader determine what to sell, how to value and price it, and the details of working with services like PayPal and how to organise fulfillment; contains new information on fraud and how to protect yourself and your business; gives readers the ins and outs of the biggest growing areas of eBay business - sourcing, wholesaling, and fixed price sales; and, includes a special business troubleshooting section focuses on issues affecting your business as eBay grows - cutting through the competition; improving your margins; changing strategies; improved advertising and promotions; and, more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Barbara Weltman is an attorney and small business tax expert. She has written over a dozen business books including J.K. Lasser's Small Business Taxes, 6E, and The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Starting a Home-Based Business, Second Edition (ISBN: 0028638425). Barbara serves as Staples.com's Small Business Tax Expert and also works with WE Inc., and Inc.com. She has appeared as a tax and small business expert on CNN, CNBC, the Today show, Bloomberg TV, and numerous radio stations nationwide. She is a frequent guest on Jim "Griff" Griffeth's eBay radio show and will be a speaker at 2004 eBay Live. Kara Gordon runs a highly successful eBay maternity business and co-hosts the Internet radio show Entrepreneur Magazine's Making Money on eBay, heard on www.wsradio.com. She is an eBay course instructor for a six-week online course Learn to Buy and Sell on eBay, that is offered in over 800 schools in the U.S. and abroad. Shirley Muse is an entrepreneur, eBay course instructor, and radio talk show host along with Kara Gordon. She has run a successful eBay business since 1998 selling a line of puppets and just about anything else she finds to sell.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Alpha (March 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592573339
• ISBN-13: 978-1592573332
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #614,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Covers all the basics of starting an online ebay business, May 10, 2005

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an Ebay Business (Mass Market Paperback)

Covers all the basics of starting an online ebay business, from insurance coverage and handling sales tax quirks between states to advertising, promotion, accepting and pursuing payments and more. Those who recall the old ebay auction-only model will find much changed: you can now set up a shop with fixed prices on ebay and Starting An eBay Business covers both stores and auction formats.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For ultra-beginners, April 16, 2008

By 

H. Grove "Errant Dreams Reviews" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an eBay Business, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This guide assumes nothing about your level of internet experience or how much you already know about the kind of business you want to run, and that's both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, if you're new to the internet and want to make money on eBay (after all, it can be a great boon to disabled and housebound people), you'll probably be grateful for such basic information as how to register for a PayPal account and how to determine what you might want to sell. On the other hand, if you already have some internet experience and a basic idea of what you want to sell, then a good portion of this book will be irrelevant to you.

A pet peeve of mine in such guides is the screen-by-screen walk-through of website registration processes and the like. If you can't figure out how to make it through the well-labeled form of a registration process, you're unlikely to have the brainpower to run your own business. In addition, websites change frequently. If there are folks out there who need to be hand-held through the process of signing up for an eBay account, then those same folks are presumably going to flounder if they get to said process and the form doesn't look like the screenshot in the book. Usually CIG's are good about not including so much of this kind of space-waster.

While it's true that plenty of other information in here will also change (such as monthly fees for various services), such information is at least moderately useful since it'll give the reader a ballpark idea of, say, what they might expect to pay for various types of eBay accounts or storefronts. Do remember to double-check any fees, terms of use, etc. rather than assuming they'll remain unchanged from whatever's in the book.

This is definitely a handy book---don't get me wrong. And if you're starting from zero with no experience in running a business, selling online, using PayPal, etc., then it's probably exactly what you want. It just seems to me that in trying to cover both the totally inexperienced newbie and the more focused or experienced businessperson, they've virtually guaranteed that no matter who you are, a good chunk of this book will be irrelevant to you.

Which might not be as bad if it weren't so darn dry.

2.0 out of 5 stars Ok book, March 9, 2011

By 

Toni R. Wise "toni4567" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an Ebay Business (Mass Market Paperback)

This book didn't really provide any information that wasn't easily accessible online. This would be a good book for someone with no ebay knowledge.