frontporchdreaming-

Your opinion does matter and we appreciate it as well as the great feedback. I will make sure to address this concern and post results soon. Thanks again.

Mark

I'm not sure I agree on it being bad to require buyers to register?

I mean there are sites that have been very successful with having buyers register and with having both buyer & seller feedback. And if seller neg feedback has been a problem for some buyers on some sites surely there are ways that sites can identify and police bad sellers besides removing the sellers ability to leave adverse feedback.

I just collected 9 negatives on a site because the individual didn't pay for the items- the site did nothing to support me. I had joined PSU already this spring after encountering several other policies I didn't appreciate & I have been browsing other auction sites this spring-

I'm pretty stoked and excited about my first look at Bonanzle! I signed up last night- listing things for sell and registration is extremely easy. good job Mark!

I intend to encourage every seller and buyer I encounter to check out Bonanzle!

best,
lad

I tried it and it works great-only problem is I am the only one in my area using it. Mark did comment on the Pontoon Boat I am selling-thought maybe he would nab it up-he did not. Come on Mark ya just gotta have it. You could fly here and then float it back to your state.

Debb

Hi Debb. I am sure it will not be long before we get more users signed up in your area. In the meantime you are awarded the "Lewis & Clark" award, a true pioneer!

I have to admit when I did see the boat I instantly pictured myself on it in a white tuxedo (Bond-like) having martinis with a couple of close friends. Only problem is that the Puget Sound sometimes gets a little rough!

News for Powersellers!

This week’s focus is going to be making life easier for our increasing group of Powersellers. To be frank, I seem to have guessed wrong when I thought that a site as simple as Bonanzle would resonate with Craigslist users before eBay users. It seems that you eBay Powersellers are just as desperate (or even more so?) for something simple as the Craigslist crowd is. And since you’re beating them to the punch in adoption rates, this week’s lineup of new features is centered around your needs:

~ Allow sorting and paging on the edit booth screen, so it’s easier to manage booths of 100+ items
~ Add more flexibility to our batch item editor
~ Continued improvements to our eBay and CSV importers
~ Google Checkout
~ A “booth policies” section for describing return policies, et. al

Hard to say whether all of the above will get done this week (AtomicMall’s experience with Google Checkout would suggest not), but that’s the target, and we’ll see how close we get.

Update:
Also, Bonanzle items are now showing up on Google and Oodle. Google Checkout coming in the next day or two.

Keep your requests coming! As long as it doesn’t interfere with our commitment to simplicity, most any feature you can dream up is on the table.

Happy Bonanzling.

Hey all,

I'm Bill Harding, the baby daddy of Bonanzle. I just wanted to chime in my two cents about a couple issues here and give a quick update on what's new on the site this week.

It seems like the biggest hot button issue on here is the question of whether to make buyers register to buy. Prior to this week, we had little choice in the matter for technical reasons I won't bore you with (short answer: buying without registration requires a "Buy it Now" like functionality we didn't yet have). Now we do have a choice.

The entire point of Bonanzle is to make shopping simpler than other sites. Almost 100% of the feedback I've received from our new powersellers has indicated that we have succeeded in this goal so far.

To me, allowing buyers to buy without setting up an account is a no-brainer in that it makes shopping simpler. I do think it should be at the sellers discretion as to whether they want to allow unregistered newbs to buy their items, but for those that want those sales, we're going to make it possible.

I would imagine that by the end of this coming week we'll have registration-less buying and Google Checkout shopping both setup. GC is working currently in our test environment, but I want to put it through its paces before we launch it on the actual site.

Here are some of the new features to check out this week:

~ Improvements to the eBay item importer. There's now more options for how you want to import your items (full html or not, etc).
~ Improvements for the power seller experience. Since we have an ever growing number of booths with 100+ items, we've added more power to our batch item editor so that you can manage your items quickly as a group
~ eBay feedback importer can now import up to 5000 feedback
~ Added ability for buyers/sellers to make counteroffers
~ And the aforementioned "Buy it Now" functionality

For any seller that signs up now, we're going to grandfather you in so that you won't pay any fees for six months after everyone else starts paying (on September 1st (even when fees are implemented, they're low, and guaranteed not to rise)).

Use this link to get your items grandfathered in..

And thanks to the sellers that have helped add about 2000 items to the site over the last week. It's a very exciting time to be Bonanzling.

Cheers,
Bill

P.S. Regarding the question of whether we show up on search engines, try a couple searches for PosterCabaret's items to see how we're doing...
Buy Andrew Bird poster
Buy Hold Steady poster
Buy Sufjan Stevens poster

Not sure how often Google changes it results, but Bonanzle is second in shopping list for all the above as of today.

Yesterday, Ecommerce Guide called Bonanzle "the best eBay alternative we've seen" in more than four years of doing online marketplace reviews.

Given that Bonanzle just launched a month ago, and is technically still in beta through August, this is a statement that is sure to surprise many. The article cites in evidence of its conclusion a litany of Bonanzle-only features help set it apart from the crowd of other eBay alternatives (real time online interaction, online picture cropping, an intuitive one-page item listing interface, Bonanzas, etc.), as well as the "developed from scratch" approach the site has taken.

Personally, I think the premise of this article is a stretch. Not because I don't think Bonanzle is doing fine, but because it's hard to call the site an "eBay alternative" when we don't even have auctions, and when our entire philosophy of "relentless simplicity" means that that we're working toward a different goal than eBay or most eBay alternatives. In building Bonanzle, the inspiration was part Biznik, part Etsy, part Amazon, part Google. eBay didn't offer much in the way of inspiration, so I think that a lot of users are going to visit Bonanzle with eBay or iOffer or bluJay in mind are going to think "what the hell is this?"

And I think they have a valid point. If you do like the feel of an iOffer, or an OnlineAuction.com, you're probably going to not like Bonanzle. If you like what Etsy has done, you're more likely someone who will mesh with what we're trying to build.

Anyway, I'm not going to make a pitch here (I'll save that for our thread), but if you've been on the fence, you might want to give the site a try. Sellers that set up their store now will be grandfathered in to be able to continue selling for free for six months after all the new users have to pay.

Cheers,
Bill

P.S. OK, one eensy weensy pitch: we import eBay items/feedback and work with Google Checkout

It's not the end of the week yet, but I wanted to post a quick update to my last post.

First, if you hadn't heard, some very exciting (and traffic-inducing) news from this week occurred when Ecommerce Guide called Bonanzle "The Best eBay Alternative We've Seen" in four years of doing online marketplace reviews. Which generally seems to agree with most of the sentiment in this thread. We're incredibly excited to see the users who have been waiting for something simpler to come along embrace the Bonanzle idea.

Secondly, Google Checkout is now up and working with the site. We're not making it front page news or anything, but if you choose "Google Checkout" as a payment method in your booth, you'll be good to go.

In the wake of the article, I've decided to postpone the no-registration checkout process in favor of polishing some of the rough edges on the site (we are still technically in beta, remmber). I'm still hoping to get a no-registration buying process in by the end of next week, but if not by then, it'll be in at some point in August. It actually requires a fairly large number of subtle and complex architecture changes, but it'll be worth it.

Please, if you've tried Bonanzle, let us know what you think! Your positive feedback will help drive more users to the site to build our critical mass. Your constructive critiques helps us smooth out rough edges.

Thanks,
Bill

Definitely a class all it's own & classy too.

So if I am already a member I am grandfathered in-or do I have to do something else?
Debb

Deb: If you've already signed up for the site and set up your booth, you're good to go.

Wow, that Bonanzle is pretty cool. I've been trying to do the whole eCrater thing, but it's just quite complicated. Not sure if I should just wait until the shipping calc. I don't really feel like going through the USPS shipping chart.

I like the attitude on the site. That makes buyers feel better to.

This is so simple, my dad could do it. I can even sort the results. This will be so wonderful once there are more items. So much better than Craigslist as it's tough looking through all of those posts. Having to click on each post to see a pic is time consuming.

This way, sellers get exposure to local customers. The fees are nice and low to.

Due to the overwhelming response since the ecommerce-guide's article about Bonanzle.com we've changed the original name of this thread to reflect the impact of this article.

Once again, here's a link to the article:

http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news/article.php/3762231

wbharding wrote (View Post): › Deb: If you've already signed up for the site and set up your booth, you're good to go.

Good glad to hear that I am grandfathered in for now. Now lets get that 27 foot pontoon boat sold-I am taking trades also-so lets hop to it Bonanzle members.

Debb