Customer Reviews

eBay For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are two real reasons for buying this book.

One is that here is everything you need to know is contained in one, organized book. There is really little that you can learn here that you can't learn on the e-Bay web pages. But there are 386 pages in this book. Looking at that may pages on the web is a real pain, and you will never know if you didn't miss something important.

Two this book has material (especially comments) on subjects that are covered, shall we say, differently on the web pages. Some such subjects: Sniping (entering your bid at the final instant of a bid), searching using mispellings, astronomical shipping costs, and much more.

One problem with books like this one is that the rules on e-Bay change so often and so fast that keeping up with them is a task. This book with ISBN 0470045299 is the Fifth Edition published on October 30, 2006. Be careful if looking and used copies that you aren't getting an earlier, and obsolete edition.

This book effectively explains the basics of buying and selling on eBay. However, much of the information can be readily obtained by spending some time on eBay's well-designed website. Those completely unfamiliar with or intimidated by computers would benefit from this book. Most other users would benefit more from buying/selling a few inexpensive items as practice - much less than the cost of the book and you might get some cool junk out of the deal.

This book is very informative and super easy to read and understand. I'm a beginner with the whole "selling on Ebay thing" so naturally I have many questions. I feel this book was great about answering questions, making suggestions and even warning you about certain things that might come up in the process of selling as well as buying on Ebay. I highly recommend this book to all newbies like me!

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.

I read the Dummys Guide several months ago. Since then I have read a number of other books and watched the Dont Bid On It eBay video. I also read the Simplified Tips for ebay, Schills and Sharks, and several others. After going through everything I am ready to pass along my opinion. I will mainly compare and contrast the Dummys guide with my top choice.

The information in the Dummys Guide was outdated and incomplete. The information was good but there was a lot of important things that were left out. Pages are filled with cute cartoons instead of details ebay users really need. Lots of filler to make the book longer but when compared to newer books, the actual information was thin. It barely comments on snipe bidding but the like Don't Bid On It book(which is also available here at amazon), has a detailed article on snipe bidding plus a chapter on bidding strategies that explains how it works along with other bidding strategies. The Dummys guide only quickly mentions fraudulent sellers and feedback with little explination of how to check it. Dont Bid has an extensive chapter explaining how feedback really works, how to prevent bad buyers from leaving you negative feedback, how to use feedback to spot hijacked or fake accounts, a full chapter on feedback and how it works, it also has a full section on identifying honest buyers and what to do if you do have a problem with a buyer or seller, and much more than I can list here.

Did you know that any seller who says "I am not responsible for loss or damage if you do not buy insurance" is WRONG, they are legally responsible even if the buyer does not pay for insurance.
Did you know that if you select the wrong option when filing a PayPal complaint, your complaint will be automatically rejected and you will not be able to re-file? That is pretty important to know and both of these were in the Dont Bid book but not in Dummys Guide as well as many similar tips.

The Dont Bid book also has a demonstration video. Many of the pages in the Dummys guide were filled with explinations about what webpage to go to and what to do, it was much easier to see it demonstrated in the Dont Bid video than it was to read the step by step in the dummys guide. Some of the Dummy's Guide information was not useful, for example, they explain how to research a bidder by seeing when they return to re-bid every day, but in the Dont Bid book they explain that you should not be bidding against such an inexperienced bidder in the first place because that only runs up the price unnecessarily. By simply waiting until the last minute or using snipe software you can avoid this bidder running up the price. This was not part of the dummys strategy and as far as I can remember, that was the only strategy they had. The Dont Bid book had several bidding and several more buying strategies.

The Dummys Guide gives you enough information to get started on eBay, but not enough to trade safely or enough to buy/sell and obtain the best prices. The Dummys guide is not expensive so give it a read but dont use eBay before you read the Don't Bid On It series, only then will you really know how to use eBay safely and correctly.

Length:: 2:54 Mins

It is John from http://www.ColderICE.com (the eCommerce blogger) giving a quick review of the new edition of eBay for Dummies. I have to give this book 5 stars for content, quality and usability. A must have addition to any sellers library big or small, and especially the newbie. Buy this book guys!

This really helped an old gramma like me ,learn how to sell things on Ebay...Now my garage is getting emptier because I can sell my things from my house..
What a life saver and fun too !!!!!!! Gramma Debbi

I hadn't done much with eBay before, so there was more explained in this book than what I had imagined eBay had. Very informative and easy to read.

Excellent book and just what I wanted. It arrived quickly and in great condition.

Great book for the beginner in Ebay buying and selling, I found it very informative.