- ISBN13: 9781413308655
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Start an eBay business today!
The eBay Business Start-Up Kit is packed with in-depth information and practical advice to help you get your eBay business up and running quickly and easily. Best of all, it features an interactive CD-ROM that makes setting up shop on the web’s leading commerce site a cinch.
No more trolling the Internet, or digging through millions of web-sites. You can turn to either the book or the disk to quick… More >>
eBay Business Start-Up Kit: 100s of Live Links to All the Information & Tools You Need
There are a few good ideas, but frankly one could just follow eBay’s wizard to complete the same outcomes. I was quite disappointed.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book is oriented towards a totally new eBay user who wants to start a business selling items on eBay, as opposed to someone who just wants to sell a few items that they have sitting around in their basement. As such, it does live up to its name of “Business Start-Up”. Both the author and publisher are in the legal trade and the book covers a variety of useful information concerning taxes, insurance, accounting, and licenses and permits.
But about the first third of the book is spent discussing very basic eBay information that can be obtained from the actual eBay site in more detailed and more updated content. Chapter 13 is a 3-page chapter called “Should You Quite Your Day Job?” where one tip that he gives is: “Don’t burn bridges. You may want the job back.” I suppose that is the normal rule for any job that you quit on friendly, or even not-so-friendly, terms. The book does not cover various other aspects of running an business, regardless of whether your business is purely online, a brick-and-mortar, or a combination bricks-and-clicks business, and some aspects such as managing your supply chain are not covered. The ideal beneficiary of this book will be someone who is either very new to eBay or has just been casually selling a few items here and there, but has enough of a supply of items to sell, and enough of a demand from buyers, and realizes that they might be able to create an eBay business out of their situation.
I do really like the approach of including the CD-ROM that is a mirror-image of the book, but with working hyperlinks embedded in the text. In fact, I wished that all computer books included a similar CD-ROM that gives me the option to carry a CD around instead of bulkier books.
Rating: 3 / 5
The key word in this book’s title is business. This isn’t really a book for the person who wants to sell occasionally on eBay; it’s for the person who wants to sell items on eBay as a business.
Nolo, the book’s creator, specializes in helping consumers and small-business folk understand the ins and outs of common legal situations (starting businesses, setting up wills and trusts, selling property, implementing loans, etc.). Nolo explains the small print in language that won’t be inexplicable to non-lawyers, and their legal forms and do-it-yourself legal kits provide people what they really need for a lot less money than a typical visit to a lawyer would run.
Knowing this, you can guess which parts of this book are strong and which are not quite as strong. The legal aspects — structuring your new eBay business, keeping records, assessing your tax liabilities, obtaining the proper licenses and permits — are well covered here. The sections about the retail part of an eBay business — well, that’s not really in Nolo’s wheelhouse and it kind of shows.
A number of reviewers here have criticized this book for being outdated when presenting eBay’s methods and charges. These criticisms have validity. There have been a lot of changes to eBay’s selling structures in the past year and there are more to come. The best way to get the current info on eBay and its fees and policies is by going to eBay itself. No book, this one included, will be able to stay up to date. (Even the books eBay itself sells are largely out-of-date.)
Also, this book is not comprehensive in terms of retailing. How to find items to sell, how to know what is a good wholesale buy, how to track social trends and capitalize on them, how to publicize your business, etc. — these things are not really detailed at length in this book. You’ll need to get some standard retailing and marketing books that specialize in those areas.
All that being said, this book is still a must if you are going to actually start an eBay business. The cost of the book is well worth it for the legal advice and the business/legal forms and documents alone. While eBay often might change how it conducts business on its own Web site, the legal fundamentals of starting and running a business (any Web-based business, really) are thankfully not in a similar state of flux.
If you’re truly going to start a business, you should know you will need a number of resources to get you going. You’ll have to do a fair amount of research into a lot of areas. After all, we’re not talking about selling a couple of Beanie Babies here. You’re not going to be able to buy one book that will provide everything you need in your new venture. Business just doesn’t work that way. It’s going to require time, dedication, some competitive savvy and even a bit of luck.
You should realistically expect to buy any number of books to get you to the level where your business has a chance to succeed. Granted, the eBay Business Start-Up Kit is just one of those books, but it probably is an essential one.
Rating: 3 / 5
I agree with the other reviewers about how many things in this book are out of date. I think there was an easy way around that, the book should have been soley offered as a CD with links to the sections that are constant, but with the ever changing and updating information. This is like a book on web design, as soon as you print that book it will be out of date.
Since the book is on the CD, I felt bad that all that paper was wasted to print the book. I think it is a cop-out to say that people prefer books when your subject matter is web-base; your readership is already ready to use their computer, why not utilize that?
The information is pretty basic and can be found w/o problem on the ebay website. Since ebay is changing their layout and processes somewhat, people will have to read through the sections online on the ebay website anyway.
I do like the business part of it, having help with the correct forms and such is convenient and the parts that were beyond the very basics were well recieved.
I think ebay is very user-friendly and most of this stuff can be had by exploring, but the business extras were worth my time of getting it. I think this book would have been better if it didn’t start so low on the ladder and really focused on those of us who already ebay but want to get better.
Rating: 3 / 5
I love Nolo books and have found them quite helpful for other business topics. However, with the recent changes ebay has made, starting back in February, this book is about two years out of date. Back then, a book like this would have been a godsend. Now with the feedback changes and the upcoming shipping cost limits and the difficulty in accepting checks/money orders (coupled with the high paypal fees), even the big guys are having a hard time making it work on ebay these days.
The book shouldn’t totally be dismissed out of hand. If an alternative to ebay comes up, then this will still be very good information. And even with the current issues, it does have some helpful topics. But the truth is, that most of us have left or are leaving ebay.
I am an ebay seller with 7+ years experience and over 1000 positive feedbacks. I’ve only sold casually and can say that I’ve done quite well. Sadly with the feedback changes I’m now finding more nonpaying bidders and underperforming sellers (since I buy a lot more than I sell, LOL!).
So if you read a book like this PLEASE educate yourself on the current ebay environment. I’m out of there. I’m no longer buying or selling. Who knows what rules they’ll come up with next, and this book is too out of date to address them.
Rating: 3 / 5