I hope they don't start catering to powersellers, because as was all ready pointed out there are plenty of sites for powersellers to choose from. I used to get so annoyed, every time ebay had a price increase powersellers would flood the little sites. Many would come in with the attitude that a site should restructure everything to accommodate them, with no regard or appreciation for the Sellers who learned to survive off ebay. I've always felt that some could learn a thing or two from Alt site Sellers, and some did. They're the ones who readily adjust to change without putting too much emphasis on the idea of being a "powerseller". Powerseller is an ego stroking term created by ebay to make Sellers feel special, nothing more. That is not to minimize those hard working individuals who strive to be good Sellers like the rest of us.
BTW, I've seen many "professional" Sellers who are not so professional just as I have seen many "hobby sellers" who put the professionalism of others to shame.
I've had 1 sale in 7 months... not exactly what I would call a big channel for me, but it wasn't too hard to copy my Zen feeds into Bonanzle. I certainly won't be relying on the site for income.
The social aspect IMO is going to be the pitfall for the site. The whole site is a Myspace/Facebook combo, and they are two totally different worlds with basically the clientele. Facebook and Myspace already caught onto the potential of this market and have begun to capitalize. Even eBay knew it when they enhanced message boards and groups many years back. People like to shop with who they know. But keep in mind, the 80k members aren't really "members" since anyone who makes a purchase through Google or Paypal without a Bonanzle account will be assigned an account. That's the reason AM claims so many members. The vast majority of regular visitors appear (according to site stats) the few thousand booth sellers.
I applaud the fact that they use a real programmer (not some basement bugger with "hacks" for the sheep to follow) and seem to have a pretty good business plan, but it's time to step it up a bit. 80,000 customers in a year aren't that impressive when considering CircuitCity.com, newly owned by Tiger Direct's company, had the same number of customers last week.
They have a long way to go, and like BBH I agree, the only way to get there is by creating real advertising campaigns along with the member's own viral marketing. That would be a waste now, but getting up in the 7 digits of membership would be a good place to get it going.
[quote author=Cuff link=topic=18964.msg74602#msg74602 date=1247053342]
I hope they don't start catering to powersellers, because as was all ready pointed out there are plenty of sites for powersellers to choose from. I used to get so annoyed, every time ebay had a price increase powersellers would flood the little sites. Many would come in with the attitude that a site should restructure everything to accommodate them, with no regard or appreciation for the Sellers who learned to survive off ebay. I've always felt that some could learn a thing or two from Alt site Sellers, and some did. They're the ones who readily adjust to change without putting too much emphasis on the idea of being a "powerseller". Powerseller is an ego stroking term created by ebay to make Sellers feel special, nothing more. That is not to minimize those hard working individuals who strive to be good Sellers like the rest of us.
BTW, I've seen many "professional" Sellers who are not so professional just as I have seen many "hobby sellers" who put the professionalism of others to shame.
[/quote]
By "professional" seller, I just mean a seller looking to make a livable income from sales.
Quote:Overstock is empty. If they have over 500,000 users, where are they? I think the Overstock site itself might be getting a lot of traffic but there is hardly anything at all listed on their auction section
Certain categories do extremely well on Overstock Auctions: Jewelry, Designer Accessories/Apparel (NEW only), Consumer Electronics, Sporting Goods, and Salvage/Returned Merchandise/Liquidations. Items in these categories actually receive traffic and multiple bids (example
http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bin/auctions.cgi?PAGE=SEARCH&TYPE=4&BYSELL=empireliquidators ).
I listed 30 items in the past 3 weeks: 17 ended auctions with 7 sales (sale prices ranging from $23-$300), and 13 auctions are still running and will close this weekend.
If you're not selling in those categories however I wouldn't recommend it. Collectibles, antiques, art, books, and used items (especially used items--O buyers want new) have never done well at O.
Since day 1, the playing field at O has been openly tilted towards larger sellers so I probably wouldn't recommend it for smaller sellers. It's never been (to quote LOS)
"a place for Mom and Pop to sell their old albums, trinkets and such."
The Big O has never been anything but a big flop with regard to their auctions. The idea just never took off.
"The Innovation Never Ends - Seller Syndication - Bonanzle"
http://www.powersellersunite.com/post-26...tml#269088
It's not innovative if it rehashes the exact same system Shareasale, Linkshare, Clixgalore, Clickbank, Link Connector, Commission Junction and not to mention Google's referral program all utilize. All allow you to decide how much you will pay an affiliate who posts your link on their site and refers a sale to you. Some have been in operation for a over decade. But suddenly Bonanzle doing for a bunch of rinky dink addicted sellers that think $1.50 per sale is a good business, this is "innovation."
I don't think this will be too big of a deal. These are sellers who thought paying eBay a 10% commission to host, heavily advertise, provide expert 24 hour tech support, monitor fraud and abuse, maintain hundreds of servers, have monthly seller conference calls, that was too much money. How much does Bonanzle really think they be willing to pay a Blogger to put a link on their blog?
Quote:It's not innovative
It's in keeping with the time honored tradition of small sites not spending any of their own cash on paid advertising.
Amazon affiliate program: Amazon pays to advertise Amazon AND 3P seller listings
Bonanzle affiliate program: sellers ("syndicated sellers") pay to advertise their listings AND Bonanzle
Quote:The really cool thing with the Bonanzle Affiliate Marketing program is that participating sellers dont pay a single penny until after an affiliate directs a customer to the seller, the customer puts an item in their cart, and they pay!
It's called CPA and most affiliate networks like CJ, ShareASale, etc moved to a strictly CPA model in 2000/2001.
CPA isn't immune to fraud. We lost a shitload of money to affiliate fraud when we used CJ and ShareASale to manage our CPC and CPA affiliate programs from '99-'01. How will a small site like Bonanzle, which will be self-managing its in-house affiliate program, deal with rampant affiliate fraud when large managed affiliate networks like CJ haven't been able to stop it ?
Here is one article on CPA fraud. Do a search and you'll find many more.
http://www.benedelman.org/news/100708-1.html
Quote:How will a small site like Bonanzle, which will be self-managing its in-house affiliate program, deal with rampant affiliate fraud
Ummm...DUH!...the one part of Bonanzle's affiliate program that is innovative is the way they've been able to completely eliminate their company's exposure to losses from affiliate fraud. Sellers not Bonanzle will bear 100% of the risk and suffer 100% of the inevitable fraud losses. eBay and Amazon's affiliate program managers are probably hitting themselves in the head wishing they'd structured their affiliate programs to pass all fraud risks onto the sellers.