Bonanzle is an interesting site, it was launched June 2008 and is still in beta, but remarkably functional. This is one of the few new sites that is oriented to buyers on the home page. How about that! Support is speedy, friendly and to the point. At this time Seattle based Bonanzle is fee free. Unlike some other sites, there is an advertising budget but organic traffic is gaining velocity. The goal was to target primarily sellers in July, and then target both buyers and sellers thereafter. I have seen booth numbers explode in the last two weeks. I am pleased to tell you there have been sales.
So What is Bonanzle?
Bonanzle is a sales venue. It is bright and uncluttered, easy to navigate and it feels friendly. It appears to be a hybrid of Craigslist, Etsy and the very very old eBay (the community feel) but better and it is not auction format, fixed price only. Booths (Bonanzle for store) have a cart!
This is not a cookie cutter out of the box sales site. It is a carefully thought out uniquely designed sales venue into which founder Bill Harding and his team have put a tremendous amount of work over the last year and a half.
You can entertain offers on your items if you wish, or not, just as you choose. You can ship or offer local pickup for large items like couches and furniture. It is extremely web 2.0 in that there is a live chat option, you can list multiple means of contact, IM, Skype, e-mail, social network, website, blog, or plain old fashioned phone.
The listing format is great. It is truly simple and intuitive. When you click the Sell button a single screen comes up, just that one screen has all the fields you need. No html, decimal free (list in round numbers) and you can duplicate items if you have wording or layout you want to keep consistent.
Pictures are quick and easy to upload from your computer, there is a built in editor and more importantly your pictures look good on the site.
I found the listing process to be extremely fast to learn, completing my first ten items in about 20 minutes. Once I had the process down I was listing an item a minute. Wheeeeeeee! There is a feedback grabber from eBay and I believe you can also bulk import listings from Excel, eBay and Craigslist.
Each seller can have a Bonanza once a month, a Bonanza is a short term super sale.
"For a few hours we will let all visitors know that you are having a sale, that they had better check it out, and that all in all, we think you are pretty great. You choose the time to put your goods up for sale. We direct site traffic to your booth. Magic happens.. "
Bonanzle welcomes non US sellers,
Bill says
"We're open to sellers from other countries registering (quite a few already have), but our shipping is only setup to specify rates within the US right now, and all our prices are in dollars, so it is admittedly not ideal for them yet. We're hoping to add more internationalization in the coming months."
Bonanzle for buyers
As a buyer you have complete control of how you search. There is a semi-conventional search box on the home page which allows you to search by keyword and then price or speed. You can search for local items, most recently listed, shop in a Live Booth (where the seller is online) or browse more conventionally by category. In the Booths you can choose from six sort options.
Bonanzle has a unique cart system, the buyer drags items to the sellers cart, checks off options and makes an offer if that option is checked. The seller can fine tune with any shipping discounts etc and respond. Currently the site is set up for Paypal and Google Checkout.
I have tested quite a few sites since February and I now know which ones I do not want anything to do with. My gut feeling on this one? I like it, it is going places. I am in on the ground floor, which is a good place to be.
So here is a special offer, all sellers who get in and stock their booth before the beta period ends will be grandfathered in, and not be charged fees for six months after everyone else starts getting charged.
Tell 'em Henrietta sent you, (full disclosure, I am not getting paid to do this)
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Contributor's Note
This is original content published on my blog August 1st, 2008
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