Bonanzle Up and Down Day

What an up and down day yesterday was for Bonanzle. The listing counts on the PSU board started going down, really down. Needless to say Bonanzle is back in #5 spot, but not for long. Before the end of the day Bonanzle will be back in the #4 spot.

This just means that we probably won't hit the million listing count until Monday. That's ok, I like playing fair and in a safe community.

Of course people watch the listing board and the number of users at Bonanzle. When the listings started heading south, questions started being asked, just what is going on?

Mark showed up at the PSU forum to let everyone know that "they were cleaning the ranch." In another thread on Bonanzle Bill showed up to say, "Hehehe… sorry to all you betters, but we recently took down a 50,000 item booth that had a bit of a fishy history behind it. That’ll set us back a couple days on the road to one million, but we always err on the side of caution when deciding which items can be sold and which can’t.

Knowing Bonanzlers, we’ll have the 50k items back and then some within the next couple days!"

Bill

Bonanzle is the only site where the owners will come to forums to answer questions. These guys are so on top of issues, even before they happen. Here a couple of weeks ago, there were a few folks that thought they would get on the front page of the booths page. So, if you favorite me, I will favorite you. So there were a few that went plum crazy.

This morning in Bill's Bonanzle Blog, the issue has been resolved. Here is part of the blog:

Booth favorites limited to 15 per month since registration and 75 total (that is, if you registered 3 months ago, you can mark 15*3 = 45 favorites). Being marked as a "favorite" of a user is intended to be a special designation, but with our previously unlimited booth favoriting, there was no reason a seller couldn't sign up and "favorite" 500 booths the next day, and presumably get a number of those booths to favorite them in return to increase their standings in the list of "most favorited booths" list. In implementing this limit, we hope to make favoriting an even more special designation, while still allowing our longer-time users the opportunity to favorite a bunch of booths (we know it's can be hard to choose which are the best of the best!). Note that if you are currently in excess of these limits, you'll still have all your favorites intact, but you won't be able to add new favorites until you're under the limit.

This next issue is so wonderful to the small seller, and I thank Bonanzle for this.
Booths limited to 10,000 items*. This goes hand-in-hand with the blog post from a couple weeks ago about not letting Bonanzle get overrun by drop shipping merchants, big box stores, or other mega-merchants. Bonanzle has grown because of grassroots efforts by small sellers; it's our vision to ensure that Bonanzle will always be a hospitable place to the sellers who have helped to create us. We think that this limit should help promote an atmosphere where no one seller could ever dominate policy (or hog buyers) on Bonanzle as we grow. (* because we're willing to fudge the limit a bit for users that have already registered and who have cool merchandise, like moviemagicusa with his 15k-ish items)

These are just a couple of the new things at Bonanzle, you will have to read the rest of Bill's Blog to find out the rest. Really is a great read. This guy really does have a sense of humor!

Bonanzle has 21,789 users and 927,062 listings this morning. Bonanzle is a breath of fresh air!

Bonanzle Supporting Membership Perks

The growth of Bonanzle is making history I am sure. Not to mention that the way that it has grown with grass roots efforts of the community. Bonanzle has given the little seller back everything that e-bay has taken away. We have control of our business again.

Bonanzle is free to list, free booth and the final value fees are nothing to worry about. However, if you wish to a sponsoring member it does have its perks.

One of the greatest things of becoming a sponsoring member, besides the fact that you are helping to build a better and faster running site, is that you are able to have Google Analytics. This is such a powerful tool. It lets you know where your traffic is coming from and where your promoting is, well just a waste of time. Are your paid ads really paying off for you? If not, time to move on to something more productive.

Another one of the perks and this caused quite a commotion in the forums, is the ability to turn off the Amazon Review on your listing. This is something that loads of people were upset about, why I am not sure, it has been there since day one and then all of a sudden, BAM everyone was up in arms about it.

Once again Bill and Mark listened to the community.They decided that if this was something that you could not live with then they would throw that in as one of the sponsering perks.

There are more perks for the ever so tiny fee of $10 a month. Or you can go with the premier member ship of $24 a month. Your items will appear in the search where the Google ads use to be. NO this does NOT raise your search standing! Your items are twice as likely to be shown on the front page, which is cool, however how many people are coming to buy are going to sit and stare at the front page? Not to mention that if you are bringing your buyers to the site, aren't you using a direct link to your booth?

I look at the small fee of $24 a month as an investment in my furture. Bonanzle has given me control over my business and not asked for anything in return. Sure I know things are tight, however this is business, ten dollars a month can be saved on the sodas or mochas that are bought without even thinking about it. Not to mention those trips to burger world. We can all find ten dollars a month to run our business and invest in our furture.

Bonanzle Gets Mention At CNN

Who says grass roots efforts at Bonanzle doesn't pay off. Bill has updated his Bonanzle Blog and it is a must read, or see, for sure! Great Bonanzle facts and a humor too! Not to mention ladies, this picture is sure easy on the eyes!

On Wednesday Bonanzle went down for a scheduled maintenance for about forty minutes. This was to add memory to the server. No wonder with the steady rapid growth. At the same time the maintenance was scheduled, we were in a countdown to the 20,000 member.

The maintenance went on as scheduled and at 6:35 PM EST on 1/14/2009 we welcomed our 20,000 member, ehappy to Bonanzle! As always this was very exciting, the forum was filled with chit chat, food and drinks. Welcome to Bonanzle ehappy!

Bonanzle was also mentioned on CNN. Take the time to read, very inspiring story, well worth the time.

Bonanzle is still #5 on the PSU listing board, has 20,301 members, of those members 4,033 have Bonanzle booths and 287 are sponsoring members.

Bonanzle I do believe will be in the #4 spot on the PSU listing board before Monday. It has been a steady climb in both listings and members. The growth is happening, however Bill and Mark have not changed in their ways. They still keep us informed of what is happening, when it will be happening, still answering e-mails and still in the forums. Did I mention they both have a Bonanzle booth?