The best ideas are usually the simplest. So it is with PayPal, the online payment service that allows just about anyone to send and receive credit card and bank account payments for goods or services purchased online. For most users, PayPal is fairly straightforward: sign up, and within a few days you can be buying and selling (usually on eBay, which owns the PayPal service) to your heart's content.

But for anyone trying to set up a real business using PayPal, the process can be a bit more complicated. It's easy to get lost among the hundreds of thousands of people out there trying to make a buck on the internet, and it's hard to turn a profit with hefty fees from both PayPal and eBay. Paypal Hacks is written with the small business in mind, detailing in depth-strategies for maximizing the entirety of the PayPal toolbox. While there are very few actual "hacks" involved, the book is quite thorough in rooting out many useful, difficult, and seldom-used tricks.

Most readers will want to skip the first three chapters, which cover just the basics of PayPal: account management, buying, and selling. However, there are some helpful tidbits hidden among the otherwise perfunctory material, including sections on fraud and disputes, as well as a highlighting of some important details in the fine print that most users skip right over.

The real meat of the book starts in chapter four, with an extensive explanation of the various types of payment buttons that can be added to existing web pages. Subsequent chapters get even more complex, covering the creation of storefronts and shopping cart management. Perhaps the most useful sections, however, are those that explain how to sell online content, either through subscription services or direct download. PayPal is currently the easiest way to sell digital content, but it is not a feature highlighted very often by the company itself.

Only expert-level users will get much out of the last chapter, which covers the PayPal API for developing online payment applications from scratch.

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.

If you're just looking to buy and sell on eBay, it's doubtful you'll need this book. But for anyone starting a small business online, or for anyone who already has one, this volume is a must-read.