Tricks of the eBay Masters

Rating:
Summary: Full of tips that will help even seasoned eBay sellers.
Review: An excellent read full of vital tips and hints (or "Tricks" as the author calls them). The author is obviously an experienced eBay seller, and he taps hundreds of other sellers for their best advice. This book will help me progress to the next level of selling on eBay.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable info
Review: Granted, I'm one of the contributors, but I found many nuggets worth reading! Even after being an eBay seller for 6 years and an avid visitor to eBay's discussion boards, I know I still have much to learn. Of course, this will be most valuable to newbies, but I'm sure an experienced eBayer will find this book useful!
Sally

Rating:
Summary: Selling on Ebay? Must read Tricks of the Ebay Masters!
Review: Great book full of all kinds of important information from the sellers who already are making money on Ebay. All our tips and helpful instructions that Ebay members have given daily on Ebay's Discussion & Help boards over several month's time. Right at your fingertips now! In one easy-to-read book.

The chapters are laid out nicely so the reader can go right to the area of selling they need help with: listing auctions, taking pictures, packing & shipping, customer service, HTML, setting up an Ebay store, much more! Different opinions of many buyers and sellers as one-size doesn't fit all.

Great for new sellers just starting out and for sellers who have been on Ebay for years as the market is always changing and competition is growing. Even old dogs need to learn new tricks.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written... A big disappointment
Review: I just received my copy of this book, and really enjoyed it. I am a powerseller on eBay and find many of the books out there to be re-hashes of other books. This one excels in being different. It is the first book to bring eBay selling down to the level of the individual sellers that are working hard to succeed and who make up the eBay community. Why is this important? This book succeeds in its effort to show your the tricks and techniques of many of eBay's finest sellers that are vital to your success in starting or maintaining an eBay business.

The author's style is enjoyable yet informative and the book is well organized into sections to allow you to look at all important aspects of selling on eBay and have the knowledge and experience of sellers intertwined to give you information that just isnt out there in other books!

Kudos to the author for a job well done, and this book will be a valuable reference for my future eBay expansion!



Rating:
Summary: Some substance but mainly fluff and drivel
Review: Most of the 600 'tricks' in this book are common-sense shibboleths gleaned from the eBay forums. The other tricks are often plain ridiculous. Trick #129, for instance, is 'Work Hard'. Trick #160 is 'Buy as Cheaply as Possible'. If you need a book to learn such pearls, you don't belong on eBay.

Some of the material is useful and I learned a few things. But there just isn't enough meat to justify wading through 400 pages of material that (a) you should already know or (b) you can get for free by visiting the eBay forums, or simply by thinking about your eBay business.

My other complaint is the experience level of the eBay 'Masters' who contributed many of the tricks. Some of these Masters have less than 100 feedback, despite being eBay members for several years. That's not a lot of experience.

A glut of eBay books has hit the market over the past year. I don't believe there's much more to learn about eBay beyond what has previously been written. Books like 'Tricks of the eBay Masters' do little more than retread old ground. I expected real tricks from this book, but instead, it seems that I already know most of the tricks. And I bet you do, too.


Rating:
Summary: These tricks from the masters will help you avoid disaster
Review: Over the past few years I have had occasion to read many an eBay related book but never have I seen the wealth of real world information exhibited in this book. Michael writes in an engaging style that is accessible to everyone from the eBay neophyte to Powerseller.....
As much as I thought I knew before buying this book, I can safely say that I have tripled my knowledge base.
Wether you are a buyer or seller, this book will pay for itself in one eBay transaction.



Rating:
Summary: This was such a great idea!
Review: Selling (and buying) on eBay can, at first, be intimidating - before it turns into an addiction.
Even thought eBay makes it easy to list and bid, there are many tricks to be learned and, for the serious seller, the learning is constant.

The eBay Community Boards do provide a lot of help, indeed. However, not only there are many boards on every subject and category, but it takes a lot of time to read them on a regular basis; for most people, that's a commodity they can't afford. For the beginner, the amount of learning can become overwhelming!!

Michael had this *brilliant* idea: he has weeded through the boards to compile and organize valuable insider's information into the eBay world, including so much of his own vast knowledge! This is a hands-on, practical and easy to read manual that I wish I had when I began. Even as an experienced seller (I sell my own art under the ID "meloearth"), I'm still devouring this book!

The first book I read about online auctions was authored by Michael Miller, part of the "Complete Idiot" series; coincidentally, after I was already an established seller on eBay, he read one of my tips on the boards and asked me if he could include it in this book (my trick is #198), which flattered me to no end!

I wish I had a book like this when I started! Tips directly from experienced members are a commodity no one should pass up.

And whereas anything in written form about eBay is bound to have certain outdated information (because eBay changes "rules" quite often) this is still a VERY valuable resource for anyone who wants to join the biggest online marketplace.

And when you do, please check out the art category! Unknown to some, eBay is a phenomenal marketplace for original art, a truly revolutionary idea that hopefully will only evolve and improve; it has helped many to achieve their dreams of creating art and making a living at it. Best yet, you buy it directly from the artist - therefore YOU save, and make the artist very happy in the process!

Rating:
Summary: Concise Information
Review: The great thing about this book is that even though you can find this infirmation on eBay in the forum, the book has weeded out the duplicated and often unrelated materials. Have you been to the boards? If there is a thread of more than 20, it gets a bit annoying to read them all. Then there are the people who enter a thread just for the sake of seeing their own words captured on the web, no matter how inane or unrelated! I find any book on eBay that can provide me with even one new idea is well worth the investment and this one provided me with quite a few. And for the people who have under 100 feedback (that was one of the complaints in one of the negative reviews), they might have another eBay name which they do not use on the boards and the name they hide is the Powerseller name.