Review of Bonanzle

[mandy]

What do you get when you take the time-consuming, tedious listing process out of auction sites, toss in some cool features, such as on-the-fly image-cropping and live chat, mix it up with a price and description estimator and, really, more features than one should list in an opening sentence?

You get Bonanzle — an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I've seen in my four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces aimed at taking sellers away from eBay. ..

The Bonanzle platform was designed in-house from the ground up, so not only does the site look very different from other alternative sites, but this is the reason why the tools and features on this site are so radically different...

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

Bonanzle — an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I've seen

Sneaky, BBH, or Maggie will probably stop by shortly to disagree and ask "where are the buyers?"  Amy will most likely also make an appearance and say "no bulklister, no 3rd party listing tool support, no me" 

[FiberGuy]

[quote author=mandy link=topic=18224.msg71691#msg71691 date=1217498562]
Sneaky, BBH, or Maggie will probably stop by shortly to disagree and ask "where are the buyers?"  Amy will most likely also make an appearance and say "no bulklister, no 3rd party listing tool support, no me" 
[/quote]

In the meantime, I'll stop by and say "ICK" and "ANOTHER ONE?"

[wbharding]

Hey Mandy,

I'm Bill Harding, the founder of Bonanzle, thought I'd stop by and throw in my two cents...

Firstly, I have been around long enough to know that any time a review this positive comes through for a service as new as ours (still technically in beta) there's never any shortage of folks that want to resist the change and emphasize what's wrong with Bonanzle.  I don't blame them for it: to call Bonanzle an "eBay alternative" is something of a stretch -- I mean, we don't even have auctions, and for people that are accustomed to the aesthetic of the eCraters/Tazbars/Blujays of the world, our site is going to feel jarring, since we have done a lot of re-thinking and re-inventing of what an effective user experience should feel like.

That said, I hope that people will open their mind to a new and easier way of selling and buying online.  That's the whole point of what we're doing, and we love to get feedback from users on the site that helps us continue to perfect what we're trying to build.

As far as the specific issues you mentioned...

* TurboLister:  What we've tried to do is take the ease of listing that you get when you download eBay's standalone TurboLister, and build that into our application itself.  Go to our new item form, and chances are the time it takes to post an item from on the site is comparable to the time it would take to describe an item in the TurboLister.  For sellers that have a lot of inventory, we can also import CSV files.

* Third party listing support:  Is something we probably will get around to before long.  The steps to that are 1) establish credibility amongst community 2) work with third parties to provide listing support.  I think we're most of the way through step one now, so step two will follow soon.

* "Where are the buyers":  If one don't sign up because there aren't as many buyers as eBay, they might as well use eBay, because no site is going to launch with an abundance of users.  However, we are growing rapidly almost every day, more than doubling our traffic on a month-to-month basis since our beta opened.  Our items are syndicated via Google Base and Oodle, so you are getting more item exposure than just the users signed up to Bonanzle today.  And from the buyers/sellers that have signed up, I've gotten an incredible outpouring of positive feedback that they're glad they did.  I think that the "where are the buyers" is a valid one for certain sellers, but it's ultimately a fleeting concern.

Hope you guys will give it a shot and send any feedback you have my way.

Best,
Bill

[quote author=mandy link=topic=18224.msg71691#msg71691 date=1217498562]

What do you get when you take the time-consuming, tedious listing process out of auction sites, toss in some cool features, such as on-the-fly image-cropping and live chat, mix it up with a price and description estimator and, really, more features than one should list in an opening sentence?

You get Bonanzle — an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I've seen in my four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces aimed at taking sellers away from eBay. ..

The Bonanzle platform was designed in-house from the ground up, so not only does the site look very different from other alternative sites, but this is the reason why the tools and features on this site are so radically different...

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

Bonanzle — an eBay alternative that is quite simply, the best I've seen

Sneaky, BBH, or Maggie will probably stop by shortly to disagree and ask "where are the buyers?"  Amy will most likely also make an appearance and say "no bulklister, no 3rd party listing tool support, no me" 
[/quote]

[BellisimaJ.]

Sneaky, BBH, or Maggie will probably stop by shortly to disagree and ask "where are the buyers?"  Amy will most likely also make an appearance and say "no bulklister, no 3rd party listing tool support, no me"  laughing7

Sneaky is probably running the numbers as I type this, since she is logged in. 



Um,    Bill.  tolensmiley:

[sneakymagenta]

* "Where are the buyers":  If one don't sign up because there aren't as many buyers as eBay, they might as well use eBay, because no site is going to launch with an abundance of users.

I strained my neck looking down this list to see how many users have discovered Bonanzle
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...2.new.html

Why would a seller want to settle for low or no sales by using untested sites that don't have "an abundance of users" when there are established stable sites that have "an abundance of users"? 

Sneaky's view on life:

doomed to failure [the typical OAI forum user]: seller regards Ebay as the center of the ecommerce universe, seeks Ebay alternatives, spends their days trying sites at the lower end of the list I linked to

on the right track: seller views their website as the center of their selling universe, regards everything else including Ebay as a marketing channel

Sneaky's world:
center of my universe: my website
marketing channels: Ebay, Amazon, Ubid, Comparison Engines, Organic Search, Paid Search

[amy]

Amy will most likely also make an appearance and say "no bulklister, no 3rd party listing tool support, no me"

Wrong.  I'm too busy reading the documentation for the new Zen Cart Checkout by Amazon mod to say anything at the moment.

[wbharding]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=18224.msg71708#msg71708 date=1217532030]
Why would a seller want to settle for low or no sales by using untested sites that don't have "an abundance of users" when there are established stable sites that have "an abundance of users"? 
[/quote]

I think the reason people try sites that aren't established is because they don't like the prices or experience they're getting from the existing sites, and/or they have the vision to see how great new products become successful old products.

In the case of Bonanzle, sellers who have that foresight sign up today get grandfathered in, and don't pay fees for months longer than the users who choose to wait until our site moves up the list, as I think it rapidly will.   ;D

This is all pretty common sense tho -- I imagine that people who like new things (that have been called better by reputable third parties) are already trying Bonanzle, people that don't aren't going to start because of anything I have to say.  So I'll quit yammerin'.

Bill

[sneakymagenta]

I imagine that people who like new things (that have been called better by reputable third parties)

In the past that "reputable third party" (ecommerce-guide's V. Beal) has recommended the following sites:

Wensy- a site whose monthly GMV is equivalent to ONE Ebay silver powerseller
BiddersNSellers- a site that receives less than 3000 monthly unique visitors, has no SSL, and hides its WHOIS ownership data
MyAuctionPlanet- a site with 65 registered users,14 live auctions, and only 2,000 unique monthly visitors
HiBidder-a site whose monthly GMV is equivalent to ONE Ebay BRONZE powerseller
Plunderhere- a site whose monthly GMV is equivalent to  ONE Ebay silver powerseller
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essential...hp/3729121
Bidville- shut down
UpperBid.com- uses a $175 auction script
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news...hp/3755236
DizzyAds- shut down
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions...hp/3659871
Wagglepop Stores- :
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/article.php/3626191
Ewaey- a site whose owner has frequent temper tantrums and has deleted his site 5 times in 3 years-the last deletion was 2 weeks ago
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essential...hp/3643171

Any full time seller who made the mistake of following that "reputable third party's"  BAD advice about Ebay alternative sites would be living in a van down by the river and working the night shift at McDonald's.

EDIT:  the track record of ecommerce-guide's other writers' Ebay alternative recommendations is even worse.  Who could forget E-C's rah rah 1/31/05 "Are You Ready for Wagglepop?"  and 2/17/05 "Wagglepop Opens For Business" articles?  The site closed 5  days after the second article was published.

[AuroraGG]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=18224.msg71722#msg71722 date=1217544872]
In the past that "reputable third party" (ecommerce-guide's V. Beal) has recommended the following sites:[/quote]

The first link you provided offers factual details on twelve sites which offer an auction-based marketplace: "It's too soon to tell if any of the eBay competitors will take off, but they get kudos for the effort, as many are offering promotions to disgruntled eBay sellers. Here we take a look at some recent start-ups, plus...."
(There is no recommendation on this page).

The second link you posted provides traffic ranking and registered user numbers for several auction-based Web sites that have been online for more than 1 year, plus discusses several which launched and failed immediately. V. Beal also talks about why sellers are not leaving eBay in masses to join these sites.
(There is no recommendation on this page).

And so on for each of the URLs you listed. However, there are several marketplaces and auction tools that I have written about and have actually recommended to other sellers. But there are hundreds upon hundreds of articles on that particular site which are there to provide news and information -- and it would seem those are the types of articles you have linked to.

Kijiji Review: Better than eBay for Hot Rods and Guitars
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/article.php/3720581
"Our eBay columnist tries the auction site's local classifieds Kijiji and recommends it for low-profit merchandise and hard-to-ship items."

That is a recommendation.

Review: Using inkFrog Auction Tools for Princely eBay Profits
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/essential...hp/3760181
While at eBay Live this year, one such firm, inkFrog, caught our eye, and we decided to take an in-depth look at the company's services — and after taking it for a test run, would recommend it.

That also, is a recommendation.

To me, there is a world of difference between recommending something to people and providing information and news about a particular topic (like e-commerce). I am very glad I read this particular thread on here. I'm not sure, really, what to think, as I had no clue that because I mention a particular e-commerce product, Web site, or service in a news piece or round-up style story, that people look at it as a seal of approval. Food for thought for me I guess.

Also glad I found it because after posting, I started reading and now I've been on here for a couple hours and found a wealth of information about a lot of topics I have an interest in in different sections of your forum. Very cool.

Thanks,
Vangie

[BellisimaJ.]

The first link you provided offers factual details on twelve sites which offer an auction-based marketplace: "It's too soon to tell if any of the eBay competitors will take off, but they get kudos for the effort, as many are offering promotions to disgruntled eBay sellers. Here we take a look at some recent start-ups, plus...."
(There is no recommendation on this page).

The second link you posted provides traffic ranking and registered user numbers for several auction-based Web sites that have been online for more than 1 year, plus discusses several which launched and failed immediately. V. Beal also talks about why sellers are not leaving eBay in masses to join these sites.
(There is no recommendation on this page).

I didn't look at the second link, but I did read the article in the first link. We can argue semantics, however, the first article certainly sounds as though you are recommending these "alternative" sites to sellers looking for alternatives to ebay.  And, I agree with Sneaky.

The truth is that there are no really viable alternatives to ebay other than those that are already well known, such as Amazon and Etsy, and they don't do auctions.

If you are really interested in helping your readers find viable alternatives, you would stress the alternative of their own website, not the list of really bad sites that you offered. A recommendation from you regarding Bonanzle, does not really change my opinion.

Oh, and    tolensmiley: