PayPal Hacks
100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
By Shannon Sofield, Dave Nielsen, Dave Burchell
September 2004
Pages: 368
Series: Hacks
ISBN 10: 0-596-00751-5 |
ISBN 13: 9780596007515




(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)


Description
Learn how to make the most of PayPal to get the most out of your online business or transactions. From how to take steps to protect yourself while buying and selling on eBay to using PayPal on your own site to handle subscriptions, affiliations, and donations, PayPal Hacks provides the tools and details necessary to make PayPal more profitable, more flexible, and more convenient.
Full Description
If you've bought or sold items through eBay, or through hundreds of other online sites, then you're familiar with PayPal, the online payment service. With PayPal, a valid email address, and a credit card or bank account, you can easily send and receive payments online. Not a bank or financial institution itself, PayPal describes its service as one that builds on the financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards, and using advanced propriety fraud prevention systems, creates a safe, global, real-time payment solution. Put simply, PayPal provides the means for people to conduct financial transactions online, instantly and securely.
But there's more to PayPal than meets the eye.
PayPal Hacks shows you how to make the most of PayPal to get the most out of your online business or transactions. Authors Shannon Sofield of Payloadz.com and PayPal evangelist David Nielsen guide you through the rigors of using and developing with PayPal. Whether you're building an ecommerce site using PayPal as a transaction provider, or simply trying to pay for an eBay auction without getting burned,
PayPal Hacks will give you the skinny on this leading global online payment service.
The collection of tips and tricks in
PayPal Hacks shows you how to find or even build the right tools for using PayPal to buy and sell on eBay or as a transaction provider for ecommerce on your own site. Written for all PayPal users, from those just starting out to those developing sophisticated ecommerce sites, this book begins with the basics such as setting up your account, then moves quickly into specific tips and tools for buyers, sellers, and developers.
With PayPal Hacks, you can:
- Learn extra steps to help protect yourself while buying or selling on eBay
- Save time and money with advanced tips and undocumented features
- Learn dozens of easy-to-follow procedures to help you request and receive payments and fill orders
- Use PayPal to handle subscriptions, affiliate systems, and donations
- Create and customize your customers' checkout process
- Effortlessly integrate PayPal's shopping cart system into your own website
- Implement digital fulfillment with Instant Payment Notification (IPN) and Payment Data Transfer (PDT)
- Develop and distribute ecommerce applications with the PayPal API
Each hack consists of a task to be accomplished or a creative solution to a problem, presented in a clear, logical, and task-oriented format.
PayPal Hacks provides the tools and details necessary to make PayPal more profitable, more flexible, and more convenient.
Featured customer reviews

Love the book..BUT....AND the website here has apparently dead links..,
May 08 2008
Submitted by
Dan Hess
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Great stuff in the book and if I was an ASP guru, I would be on easy street. As a entry level (self taught) PERL monger, I'm frustrated. My pulse went up and I got excited at the More on the examples link when you talked about auctioning off hacks on ebay for initial inclusion at the www.paypalhacks.com website. The ebay link is currently DEAD. The www.paypalhacks url is also a dead link. (By the way, the actual "examples" link seemed not to be working also on this visit to the page). So anyways, as Arnie said best in one of his movies: I'll Be Back ! (looking for some PERL examples of hacks, especially ALL OF THEM in the PDT/IPN section of hacks !!
Great Book...just looking for the addendum or supplement that comes in: "my flavor".
- Dan
Good, but...,
October 06 2004
Submitted by
Paul
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I like the format of the Hacks series, and I had high hopes for this one. It presents quite a bit of information in an easy to find manner, along the way detailing posibilities one might not have otherwise thought of. It does have some flaws though, in my mind deserving just under 4-stars.
There are two small issues I have with this book. First, some of these hacks feel like filler, many of these would be obvious if one were to read PayPals online documentation. The counter to this though is that Oreilly does post the table of contents online, so one can make that judgement for themselves.
The second reason is purely subjective, but an annoying one for me. Every single Hack I've looked at so far, for any server side code, it uses a .NET language, mostly ASP. I was somewhat surprised that neither PHP or JSP/Servlets were mentioned. As they stuck to just one language, some of the code samples seemed pretty heavy and unnecessary.
The book does present some useful information though and does deserve a serious look.
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Media reviews
"PayPal, like Amazon and eBay, has become a utility for technological
civilization. You can buy, sell, or contribute to a worthy cause. Safer
and easier than using a credit card, PayPal is changing the way we
transact.
That's why
PayPal Hacks is great. Not only is PayPal the most known
and convenient way to deal with money on-line but there are some
significant business processes that need to be thought through for brick
and mortar retail. Not every hack will apply but many will inspire new
ideas and bring some increased awareness. Using
PayPal Hacks will let
you take things at your pace and the bite-sized nuggets let you get
started immediately.
You will need some decent computer skills to get past the first few
hacks, and unless you do business on IIS you'll need to rework the code
examples. The good news is that once you get going you'll probably be
glad you took the journey."
-- Leam Hall, Amazon.com
"Any who would understand this very popular ecommerce program....should have
Paypal Hacks as part of their reference collection."
--
Bookwatch, February 2005
"I marked a lot of pages in this book and if you do any kind of e-commerce -- or plan to -- you will want to get a copy of this book to guide you through the process of safely and securely possibly making money online."
--Robert Pritchett,
MacCompanion, January 2005 (3:1)
"Though the subtitle trumpets that
Paypal Hacks contains '100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools,' there's far more than that packed in between the pages. While the content is solid, the conversational tone of the writing also makes the book more user-friendly than a straight technical manual. The writers have the right idea in that they have not merely emulated the content of PayPal's support pages, but instead delivered a good deal of useful information as it might be delivered by a technically savvy friend."
--Scott Pepper,
Blogcritics.org, November 2004
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