Atomic Mall's Owner Preaches the Seller to Seller Sales Doctrine

[sneakymagenta]

November traffic.....sad 

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bonanzl...ction.com/

down 40% since September.....even sadder 

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/atoncer...ebidz.com/

[sneakymagenta]

My own transactions have been up. I am not basing them on what I did last year because I have more inventory listed now and it wouldnt be a fair comparison

I'm pleased to announce that our fantastic core of Sellers have given Atomic Mall an overall 17.4% increase in sales volume for the 2009 holiday shopping season as compared to 2008's figures over the same period.

So is it also fair to say AtomicMikey's stats aren't a fair comparison?

AtomicMall also has more inventory listed than last year -HELLO, 4X more listings!, at this time last year there were under 50,000 listings (and 4700 members), now there are 217,000.  That 17.4% increase in year over year sales volume represents a significant decrease in year over year sell through rates -A FRIGGIN' HUMONGOUS DECREASE IN SELL THROUGH RATES. 

SNEAKY SELL THROUGH EXAMPLE
pretend there were 1000 sales last year +17.4% = 1174 this year.
'08 sell through:  2%
'09 sell through: 0.54%

This welcome news comes despite new Google Base policies which are seemingly giving preferential placement to big box outlets and major players like Amazon, Buy.com and Walmart. Internal tracking is showing an upward trend in the percentage of purchases resulting from organic Atomic Mall searches

translation: purchases from organic Atomic Mall searches, i.e. from site search, are up because the number of outside visitors took a nose dive after Google discovered we were using our search tag cloud to stuff keywords like hentai onto every page

[amy]

I'm sure there are other factors in play: the economy, consumer confidence, people who hate purple, etc., but to what degree the site's traffic is affected by each I don't know

If  the economy and consumer confidence are responsible for AM's traffic slide then why aren't other ecommerce sites seeing similar declines in traffic this holiday shopping season?

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/11/30...o-excited/

[xwpopper]

This welcome news comes despite new Google Base policies which are seemingly giving preferential placement to big box outlets and major players like Amazon, Buy.com and Walmart. Internal tracking is showing an upward trend in the percentage of purchases resulting from organic Atomic Mall searches

This welcome news comes despite the fact that the entire focus on marketing for the site (with the exception of a few low traffic shopping directories) is on Google.
I had issues with Google, as most merchants have, and when he has them over the pirated merchandise on his site the entire graph will vanish.
What has been said for years...? Never place all (or 90%+ of) your eggs in one basket. That's what Mikey did, which shows his utter lack of business experience and knowledge. He reminds me a bit of eBay's Griff. Fine inside the box he built for himself, but if the box ever collapsed he would be screwed.

[sneakymagenta]

it was the blujay sellers  there screaming great news  with those amazon ads..

[size=14px]Has anyone given a logical reason for thinking the Amazon affiliate items at the top of their product pages is great news??
 
  [img alt=Shocked]http://community.tuliptools.com/Smileys/Lots_O_Smileys/blink.gif[/img] 
 
I'd have to see that to believe it.[/size]

http://www.powersellersunite.com/post-28...tml#287599

Pot, kettle, dumbass!

[rho]

[quote author=sneakymagenta link=topic=18789.msg75645#msg75645 date=1261349940]

it was the blujay sellers  there screaming great news  with those amazon ads..

[size=14px]Has anyone given a logical reason for thinking the Amazon affiliate items at the top of their product pages is great news??
 
  [img alt=Shocked]http://community.tuliptools.com/Smileys/Lots_O_Smileys/blink.gif[/img] 
 
I'd have to see that to believe it.[/size]

http://www.powersellersunite.com/post-28...tml#287599

Pot, kettle, dumbass!
[/quote]

I had to read that twice. It appears she's becoming a jealous troublemaker. Wasn't that one of her favorite things to call people who pointed out the obvious? I rather like dumbass. Dumbass works, too.

[sneakymagenta]

Import your Auctions and chat with Buyers & Sellers in Realtime!

I start to worry when a "programmer" can't even master the basic HTML needed for a forum signature. :blinkie:

  Post subject:  Will Bonanzle begin growing again?


I seem to recall reading somewhere that they were becoming more proactive in removing some of the duplicate listings and "fake" listings with prices of $99,999,999. That may have something to do with the recent slowdown in listing count movement.

http://www.onlinesellersunited.com/viewt...=7130#7130
Is he trying to explain the recent slowdown in Bonanzle listing growth or the 6 month slowdown in Atomic Mall listing growth? :twistedevil:

[xwpopper]

[size=14px]I'd guess that there is a steady stream of sellers who leave the site after a while, and the influx of new listings is not recently greater than the number of listings lost from:
 
A) Sellers leaving
 
B) Items being sold on the site
 
C) Items being sold elsewhere and then pulled from Bonanzle [/size]

D) Being that it caters to unique items and not mass uploaded dropshipped items from Doba or DSD, maybe the Christmas season brought some sales and there wasn't enough time to buy and relist more inventory?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that they were becoming more proactive in removing some of the duplicate listings and "fake" listings with prices of $99,999,999. That may have something to do with the recent slowdown in listing count movement.

Or maybe it's because they use a custom programmed forum instead of a shiny Proboards forum?

[sneakymagenta]

According to an AtomicMikey PSU post Xcoin is now available as a payment option.

Weee! Aren't you excited?

Here's what sellers have to say about Xcoin
Here's what buyers have to say about Xcoin
Here's what Ina of Auctionbytes had to say about Xcoin 2 months ago

trivia tidbit #1: The Big O added Xcoin as an option for auction sellers 4 years ago. 
http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bin/auctions.cgi?PAGE=static&pagenum=97532

trivia tidbit #2: Xcoin was recommended by OLA to its users in 2006

[regic]

Well isn't that special - two boinktard spammers (AM, Xcoin) joined forces and issued a press release.

A Bonanzle thread on Xcoin:
http://www.bonanzle.com/forums/9/topics/80090

Update 10/9/09: I spoke to Ken Sproule, co-founder of Xcoin, this morning and asked him where he got the email addresses and whether he would be continuing to send emails to the list of sellers.

Sproule said his marketing department identified 2500 sellers that have product listings on a number of different portals found through PowerSellers Unite, such as Bonanzle, and then went to the sellers' own websites to make sure the website was the kind of business they would like to offer this promotion to and to obtain their contact email address.

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blo...46508.html

translation: Xcoin harvested the email addresses of 2500 Bonanzle, Ecrater, PSU, and EveryPlaceISell members and spammed them.

edit: from the Xcoin TOS:

1.12. Termination and Restricting of Accounts:

...
1.12.11. Sending unsolicited email, SPAM or posting referral links on websites where not permitted.

It's ironic that a spammer has a spam clause in their TOS.

In January 2010, Atomic Mall merchants will be able to take advantage of the most attractive processing rate of any internet payment service (1.8% +.30). This rate* comes at a great time for merchants who are looking to preserve profits during the first quarter of the New Year.

*This preferred rate is available to Atomic Mall merchants for a period of 120 days commencing January 1st, 2010.

The same limited time preferred rate was offered to the 2500 spam victims.

After the 120 days are up sellers will be paying:

business accounts: 2.9% +$0.30 (domestic payments)/3.5% + $0.30 (int'l payments)
personal accounts: 3.9% +$0.30 (domestic)/4.9% +$0.30 (int'l)

There is also a $0.50 withdrawal fee to transfer money to your bank account

Xcoin's Checkout Solution for business accounts also contains this little surprise:

*Xcoin allocates up to 10% of Merchants monthly sales for a period of 180 days in a rolling reserve to cover charge backs and refunds for Xcoin Credit Card and Check Services. A running summary of your rolling reserve can be viewed in your Account Overview.

https://www.xcoin.com/Fees.aspx