2016 in Review, Annual Survey Online
As we prepare to close the books on 2016, I wanted to impart a few thoughts on what we learned from the past year of running Bonanza.
It was another promising year of growth for our sellers. The average Bonanza seller nows earns 164% more than three years ago. It was also an encouraging year for our company. We doubled office space yet again; this time we've grown all the way to an office with a view of local Mt. Rainier:
Dramatic re-enactment of our actual office view
With 25 million items listed and our sales per seller setting new highs each month, we feel immense optimism about what we will accomplish in the coming year.
More depth on the high points of 2016 (plus sneak peek at 2017) follows...
Seller Traffic on the Rise
Our 2016 roadmap for sellers started and ended with initiatives to drive more buyer traffic to booths. We made inroads into this goal on several fronts.
Our calling card has always been our top-flight integration with buyer channels in general, and Google Shopping in particular. Back in 2008 we were the first marketplace to be connected to Google Base (precursor to Google Shopping), and maintaining our lead has been a priority for us ever since. One result of our investment: in Q4, we saw 70% growth in TurboTraffic pageviews compared to the same period in 2015, and 123% growth in TurboTraffic sales. This difference was partly attributable to the number of sellers that chose TurboTraffic packs this holiday season.
Bonanza's Affiliate program has been another fast-growing source of buyers this year. We are now active advertisers across more than 1,000 publishers, including Cartera, eBates and RewardStyle. Total sales from the affiliate program grew more than 50% compared to 2015.
The most recent addition to our lineup of traffic-driving tools is probably the most exciting. In June, we launched the first version of our Customer Marketing Tool. Its purpose is to help sellers reconnect to past buyers, driving down costs of buyer acquisition as sellers build their brand. The second version of the Customer Marketing Tool launched last week, adding niceties like detailed performance metrics. This tool is going to be a point of emphasis in the coming year, as it continues to help sellers transform one-hit buyers into repeat buyers.
Bonanza sellers submitted thousands of ideas to us over the course of 2016, through both our support team and our feedback forum. In turn, we shipped more than 2,500 features and bug fixes this year. We also closed around 5-10 issues from the feedback forum each month. It was a banner year for craftsmanship at Bonanza.
Focal Point: Dogfooding
"Dogfooding," aka "the practice of using one's own product," is a mantra I’ve repeated at every company meeting over the past year. My thesis is that lack of dogfooding is what lets bad products happen. I want everyone at Bonanza to have an active booth, and to buy from Bonanza merchants. To ensure dogfooding happens, we added a weekly leaderboard that gets emailed to everyone at Bonanza, summarizing who has been using the product, and how much.
Seeing our team embrace the dogfooding ethos inspired me to take our commitment a step further. As of this year, all Bonanza employees must dogfood the site to qualify for a salary increase. I can not say this was a universally popular mandate; nor did I expect it to be. My conviction is that Bonanza's key sustainable advantage is trying harder than our competitors. Dogfooding is the cornerstone of that commitment. If any employee of Bonanza isn't using the product, they are diluting our primary advantage -- I’d rather have them work for a competitor.
The return on our dogfooding investment has been hard to overstate. We found (and fixed) 42% more issues in 2016 than in 2015. The level of polish on Bonanza is higher than it has ever been. If any employee notices an issue, or if any customer reports an issue to our support team, we now have the systems in place to investigate and react to even the smallest glitches. You can thus rest assured that if there’s something on Bonanza that is annoying you, it’s probably annoying us too. By regularly using the site, everyone at Bonanza HQ gets a first-hand look into what makes our product intuitive (and profitable) to use.
"Most Improved" Award: Customer Support
This was a heck of a year for our Customer Support team. Last December, as sales grew, an increase in our support backlog grew alongside it. By mid-December, we were averaging four days between support ticket responses. Once we did we respond, only 55% of our survey respondents indicated a positive experience. It was, shall we say, a far cry from awesome.
In one year's time, we've reduced the average response time by about 75%. We now respond in an average of 10-20 hours, depending on the complexity of the question. As our response time improved, our satisfaction ratings followed suit, improving nearly every month of 2016. By the end of the year, we had pushed our satisfaction rating from 55% to 85%. I don't know if we've ever turned around a vital business metric so rapidly, and so completely.
The turnaround wasn’t a happy accident. Early in 2016, Mark and I recognized that a top business priority was to chart a course to better customer satisfaction. Our conclusion was that we needed to do a better job of delegating to the stellar team we had assembled. In the following months, we refined support team roles, such that we could have experts in areas like "new agent training" and "quality assurance." We started documenting the areas of the site that generated the highest volume of inquiries, and we refined these areas to be more user-friendly.
Now that we have processes in place to ensure continuous improvement, I’ve challenged the team to try to exceed 90% customer satisfaction in our support responses this year. I like our chances.
On the Horizon
The docket for 2017 is teeming with high impact opportunities.
In November of this year, we came to agreement with Google to be admitted into their Channel Partnership program. This means that we gain access to a host of fun new tools we can use to extend our lead as the best Google Shopping integration. An early fruit of this partnership will be a Broadcaster for Webstores, that we hope to have live by Q2. This product will take the underpinnings of our marketplace advertising tool, and add powerful new options like remarketing and keyword targeting.
Growing web of pieces will maximize buyer exposure, even after leaving Bonanza
Our Shopify importer is rapidly making its way from being a beta product to a fully fledged inventory synch tool. As with our other item importers, our goal is to allow a seller to remain synced to their Shopify store with no extra work needed -- just plug it in and make more sales. The importer has garnered a positive response in its nascent state, and we’re delighted about the opportunity it presents to eliminate busywork (i.e., exporting/importing CSV files).
In the interests of keeping the length of this blog manageable, let’s switch to bullet points to quickly cover a few other initiatives we have underway:
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Live chat support across all possible pages. We’ve already rolled out chat to the shopping cart, we’ll now look to add chat to all other important pages (e.g., inventory importers) in 2017.
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Background Burner quality. We set up a ton of infrastructure in 2016 to help the Burner scale in quality and volume (currently processing more than 10k images per day). This year’s focus will be on minimizing user time+effort required to bring about crisp ecommerce pictures.
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Mobile app re-launch. We made some good progress with our mobile app in 2015, but had to sideline it in 2016 due to competing priorities. We’re looking to have a revamped (and fully supported) mobile app launching in 2017 (hopefully Q1).
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Site search. Search is arguably our biggest opportunity to differentiate Bonanza to buyers, and we intend to invest heavily in tapping that opportunity this year.
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Offline inventory management tool. More than 10% of our eBay sellers rely on TurboLister, so we were pretty shocked to learn eBay would stop supporting it in June of 2017. We’re currently finalizing a partnership that should let us revive an improved version of this venerable tool before support for TurboLister officially ends.
What else to work on? You tell us
Our call for customer feedback last year generated thousands of responses. We summarized a few of them in January. In the months that followed, we implemented every idea from the list we posted, plus many ideas you sent us that we didn’t have time to blog about.
Our secret sauce is listening to our sellers’ ideas and concerns. Nobody knows what they need from our product better than its users.
This year’s seller survey is now online and awaiting your input! The data we get from this survey will go a long way toward determining what our roadmap looks like in the coming year. Because we know our sellers are very busy humans, we’ve designed the survey to take 5 minutes or less for the average respondent. When you have a moment between shipping orders, please stop by the survey and let us know what you’d like to see next.
Thank you so much for continuing to build your business on Bonanza! We are committed to making this your favorite place to sell online.
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200 responses to 2016 in Review, Annual Survey Online
Superb work, you guys ARE the future of online business!
Thank you for seeing the true us :)
Thanks for being there! We have experienced a lot of growth on this site. We are hopeful that this will become our #1 venue!!!
Super, thank you! If you know of anyone who would be a good fit for Bonanza, please let them know about us.
thats amazing that you were able to get a clear view of Mt Rainier, every time ive seen it it had this mysterious cloud around it.
It is said that anytime you can see Mt. Rainier in Seattle that you are guaranteed clear weather the following day. I’m not so sure I believe that!
Returned after a long hiatus. Willing to try again and see where it takes me. It was not an easy decision to leave nor an easy one to come back. But I do know that Bonanza is the best place to be for innovation, ease of use and I appreciate you all taking the time to give a more personal heads up with this blog. You just do not find this anywhere else. Since I’ve been away for a while, I’ll now have to learn the new lingo :) It’s been 2 or 3 years I believe.
Welcome back! We have added many tools to help increase your sales (and will be adding many more). May you have many sales soon!
Thank you our Nov & Dec sales on Bonanza are up 276% over last year. We hope this margin of growth continues.
That is really great to hear! Please do let other sellers know about your success on Bonanza. May your success continue.
Just keeps getting Goodier and GOODIER!
Totally agree with you! Just wait till you see what we have in store for you in 2017 :)
I never see any advertising on other sites for Bonanza. How are people supposed to know this site exists? I quit for sometime things didn’t go well. Decided to try again and seeing a few sells here and there.
Good question. Bonanza advertises where shoppers are (online, Google, etc.). Our ROI is much better via those channels vs advertising on print or say a TV commercial. Additionally we offer all sellers an optional advertising channel where they can choose which channels they want to advertise their products on, and at what price. We offer this program at no upfront cost to you. You win, we win. You can learn all about that program here: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/bonanza_advertising_faq
Thank you for an AWESOME 2016 & looking forward to an even better 2017 !!! Happy New Year !!!!
You are welcome, thank you! We are excited about 2017 and beyond.
Looking forward to another bright new year spent with my Bonz family. Wishing you ALL a prosperous year filled with fun – Hard to believe sometimes it’s been almost 9 years ago that it all began. Thanks for everything you do Bill & Mark and all the crew.
Wow, there is a familiar avatar! Thank you for being an early adopter @masonictreasures. May you have much success in 2017!
Thanks for being there! looking forward to an even better 2017!
Thank you, we appreciate your support Digitaltech1
This is what I was most pleased to read about >>
“Dogfooding is the cornerstone of that commitment. If any employee of Bonanza isn’t using the product, they are diluting our primary advantage — I’d rather have them work for a competitor.”
Agree, that is a pretty awesome advantage. But what about our support team crushing it this year? C’mon Tom, where is the love :)
I’m glad I found this site and I am just new and am still learning and yes I haven’t sold much but I hope I can sell more in the coming year and I know is going to be a better year. 2017
Thank you for finding us goldrose_47
Please check out our articles on this page to help put your business in the best position for success: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/seller_success/home
I like this site, but really would like to see direct checkout back.
We agree on both counts! We plan on reintroducing direct checkout soon. Stay tuned!
I sell MORE on other sites but I still like Bonanza best!
We like you too @jewelrymandave. Tilt the scales in Bonanza’s favor in 2017! Check out these articles: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/seller_success/home
Very slow site for us compared to the other site. 50/50 on pulling the plug on it.
Oh noes! Sorry to hear that @Automotiveparts. While we think Bonanza is the best thing since sliced bread, we understand that it might not be the best fit for everyone. If there is anything we can do to help guide you towards a more successful experience on Bonanza, please do let us know.
Love it! Thanks for the update!
Love the website technology & the support team is great! Would love to make this my primary site but it seems that basic membership gets hardly any response at all…seemed too good to be true & apparently that’s the case. We’ll see how it goes but I’m very skeptical at this point.
Thank you for loving us Matties_Place. Please have a look on this page and see if that helps:
http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/why_no_sales
I’ve been around since the Bonanzle days and my sales have been fairly consistent, tending to grow as my inventory does.. unlike other sites, which have become very spotty lately. Here’s to an even better 2017!
Heck yeah you have been autonutt. Thanks for being an early adopter! May 2017 bring you much success.
my best year. made a lot on this site just in 2016.
I don’t understand anyone leaving bonanza. no listing fees, direct listing from other sites and i spend very little time on bonanza for the sales i get here.
And i want to add. my items come up faster in google search on here than ebay. when i get a rare item i just list it on here and i don’t even put it on ebay.i have had items bought in minutes(from when it was posted) where people came quickly from google search.
Mom? :D
this is the best place for me to sell stuffs.Buyers and sellers are all very nice.
+1
Not working for me I will be Cancelling Soon
Sorry to hear that Arightchoice2015. Do consider us in the future and keep us posted if there is anything we can do to improve your Bonanza experience. http://feedback.bonanza.com/forums/149038-bonanza-com
Hi Everyone! We’re not your majority here. Only two sales on Bonanza for 2016. More items listed in our Bonanza Booth than our ebay store. Our ebay store set a new record for sales volume in 2016. I don’t feel it’s our inventory. Plus every ebay sale we send a business card with our Bonanza Booth info. We promote Bonanza much more than any of our other sites but Bonanza sales are in the dumpster this year! Not canceling out just voicing reality here. Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!!!
Great idea to send a business card with your Bonanza info! We appreciate your feedback about your Bonanza experience. You have some very unique items in your booth. We hope that 2017 brings you more sales and a better Bonanza experience.
I love the dogfooding idea. Although I do like Bonanza I do have a consistent issue that I will bring to your attention on the survey or in an email. Hope to get it resolved soon. Congratulations on your progress! Looking forward to the new year and seeing what you have in store.
Thank you for sharing how we can make Bonanza better. Who else knows how to make Bonanza better than those who use it! We appreciate you!
I have to agree with “summerkitchenresale”, even my Amazon beat Bonanza big time with 25 sales thru 2016. I do nearly 25 sales in a weekend on ebay??? On a POSITIVE note: I have been reading ~ “Up Against the Wal-Marts: How Your Business Can Prosper….” by Don Taylor
I think this book should be a must read for any retailer, smallest to largest – on-line or B & M stores will improve
mel9861
Knowledge is power! Sounds like a great book. I had a quick look at your booth and would recommend that you take a look at our no-risk advertising program: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/bonanza_advertising_faq
You work so hard for us – to make this a great site—I am so appreciative of this and just love being here!
We are motivated by users like you marecrochets! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for the tip Mel9861. The books sounds interesting after reading the synopsis. Even one little helpful suggestion from a book, article, etc, is well worth a read.
Adding another resource that may assist: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/why_no_sales
Congratulations on a Successful Year. Looking forward to continuous growth.
All the Best.
Thank you! May you have a banner 2017!
I applaud your efforts… and envy your view (above)… Wishing much success in 2017.
Very motivating ooak. Thank you for being so kind. Best to you as well.
Bonanza should create an eBay-like Ebucks program that gives back on purchases. This could/should be in the form of additional Bonanza Rewards to be used on future purchases. This program might stimulate more buying on Bonanza. The reward could be in the form of cash or Bonanza Rewards but should entitle the buyer on Bonanza to use the cash or rewards for additional purchases. Ebay will be changing their eBay Bucks program to include Ebucks for item sold (benefit to sellers) as well as items purchased (benefit to buyers). Bonanza already has something in place to reward sellers (as small a perk as it is – a bumper sticker? A Tee Shirt? Come on Bonanza. Only the ability to use rewards on your seller fees is worthwhile) but nothing to reward buyers. Again, this might help to spur sales on Bonanza which is sorely lacking as commented on by numerous people. Bonanza has no stick factor. No loyalty keep shopping on the site…just my two cents. That is about how much in sales I have had here this year…
Appreciate the feedback DaveMinNJ. We review and seriously consider every single suggestion. Bonanza has become who we are today because of great feedback like yours. While not all feedback is adopted, I assure you that we do consider each instance.
Can’t keep up this year- making apologies to customers- never thought I’d see that! Thanks for letting me drive you crazy as I try new features!
Good problems! May your success continue gearseller2.
Thanks for the update on the improvements. It is all good. I look forward to making more money with you guys next year.
That’s what we want to hear! Thanks for choosing Bonanza SpaceAgeAntiques!
I had one sale in 2015. I signed up for the free trial Gold Membership earlier this month hoping it might help me make some sales this Xmas shopping season. No difference. My item views for some items “increased” fractionally after I added them to Pinterest/asked friends of mine to check out my booth when I included links to some of my items in my emails to them. (I had intended to add more of my items to Pinterest, but I wasn’t able to manage it in time for this Xmas season. I’m autistic and I guess it just takes me a lot longer to do things than it takes “neuro-typicals”.) I had ZERO sales in 2016. I’ll keep trying to add items to my booth and I hope to start adding them all to Pinterest, but I can’t/won’t waste time with FB. I tried that a couple of years ago with another auction website, but I found it burdensome and it took up way too much of my time. Frankly, if I need to invest so much time (posting on social media, etc.) increasing SEO and/or have to spend loads of money (upper-tier memberships, Turbo Traffic, etc.) to make some sales here, I might as well invest that time, effort and money in my own webstore. Thus far I have no incentive to subscribe to a paid-tier membership here, or to risk throwing money away on advertising/promotion. If I’d had some sales this year I might have been motivated to do so, but no sales at all is not exactly encouraging. I hope the improvements to Bonanza will make a difference.
Thank you for sharing figurineitout. The good news is that you are not afraid to roll up your sleeves and work to improve your position. Please have a look this page: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/why_no_sales
One thing you may want to do is edit your images and get rid of the watermarks. Google does not like them and will not show your items. More details about that on the above linked page.
You also mention a webstore. You should definitely look into Bonanza’s webstore product. It is very easy to set up and we are adding an advertising broadcaster to them soon. Learn more here: http://www.bonanza.com/webstores
Been on since 2015 regrettably I have not experienced any sales success on Bonanza. (Cross linked to import from eBay) Love this feature saves me time. Product still sells on eBay and not here. While I’m not cancelling I would love to hear from other sellers as to how they succeeded
Thanks for being so patient B_Mann. The type of items you are selling are in a competitive category. You should also try adding more items to your booth (more items = more key words = more traffic). Have a look here: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/why_no_sales
Been busy, huh? :D
So busy that it took 19 days to reply to your comment! Best to you in 2017!
Thanks for doing such a great job with all of us at Bonanza.
Looking forward to a very prosperous 2017. Thank you!! Keep up the good work!! Carmel Collectibles
Thanks to you carmelcollectibles. 2017 is going to be a really good year :)
Looking forward to seeing a more prosperous year for everyone in Bonanza 2017!
Happy New Year to you cherrylc. Thank you for your support!
We are excited to see what 2017 has in store for all Bonanza users!
We are too! Thank you for your support :)
Thanks so much for the well-written and informative overview. I enjoyed reading it. The dog-feeding concept is an excellent quality control tool.
I’m glad to be at Bonanza. Just opened my 2nd shop: Bead Tonic. I appreciate the wealth of articles and posts that are available to help sellers. I’m looking forward to 2017 also!
Happy New Year!
Sandi
EmbellishMart
“Embellishments for your crafting, your space & you!”
Bead Tonic
Bead-inclusive Handmades
Bill is blushing right now but he wanted me to tell you thank you. We appreciate your support Sandi :)
Dogfooding, aka "the practice of using one’s own product. One of my Pet Peeves is an engineer that designs a product he never actually uses in the Real World, So the engineer never knows the Good the Bad and the Ugly of the product. I am very pleased to know your engineers actually have a booth and should know the problems that are limiting desired results. Have a Great 2017 ONE and All
Another early adopter! Thank you for believing in us Fathertime. We have identified many opportunities to improve Bonanza via dogfooding. Have a great 2017!
I had only maybe 2 sales all year with more on eBay. I’d like to see more ACTUAL Advertising elsewhere considering if we pay more in percentage we get more places that shows our stuff. What about TV ads, Radio ads, more than Facebook if you liked the page. Even eBay has been going back to tv ads and using YouTube to drive traffic.
Thank you for your feedback M&SMall. Please see response above to advertising. We appreciate your support and look forward to a mutually successful 2017.
I have similar experience like seller B_Mann. Been a member on Bonanza for a few years. Each year I sold a few items, but this year was the worst year yet…….Zero sales!!! I get more sales on eBay. Very disappointed with Bonanza this year. Seriously considering options here. Don’t know if I will stay. Sad because I came here with high hopes. Ir started out okay but with each year it has gotten worse and worse. I would like to know how other sellers are doing. I know there are many ways I can go with Bonanza…..but even on eBay with the bare minimum options i use that are available, I get great sales. Here on Bonanza……..SUCKS BIG TIME! Very discouraged! Great others have done good, not me. If any sellers have gotten lousy results, please post. I see many positive comments but suspect there are probably there are more lousy results than there are positive. Yes I am being negative because I have gotten negative results on this site. Waiting now for the slew of mud to come flying my way. Sorry Bonanza, but for me especially for this year…..YOU SUCK!
Sorry for your not so good experience. It is challenging to identify opportunities in your booth. You are obviously a seasoned seller with tons of eCommerce experience. If I had to find one thing that may help, you may want to consider removing the ALL CAPS in your titles. Google Shopping does not like all caps. You can read about that here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150244?hl=en
Here is the exact text regarding this:
Spelling and grammar
Promotions that do not use commonly accepted spelling and grammarExamples: “Flowers here buy” or “Buy flwres here”
Punctuation, symbols, capitalization, spacing, or repetition that are not used correctly or for their intended purpose
Examples: Excessive or gimmicky use of numbers, letters, symbols, punctuation, emoticons, emoji, repetition, or spacing, including: f1owers, fllllowers, fl@wers, Flowers!!!, f*l*o*w*e*r*s, FLOWERS, FlOwErS, F.L.O.W.E.R.S, flowers-flowers-flowers!, f l o w e r s, buyflowershere. For specific guidelines on how to comply with this policy, refer to the ‘title’ and ‘description’ attributes in the feed specification.
Still i don’t understand ANYONE getting rid of bonanza you can list free !! Myself i do good, i do 9% max no store .
If your thinking of getting rid of it do lowest percent with no store.
But with the 9% i still have cheaper fees than ebay.
One main thing i have discovered about items and the search,is this. Most of the people who come to buy product on bonanza come from Google search. And most are looking for a NEW item,not used. This is why many sell better on ebay with the same items than bonanza. this will change over time if people keep sticking with bonanza and build the inventory.
So don’t give up just keep the items on here and try to get a mix of items. because even at the 9% setting it is cheaper to sell on here than ebay and amazon pay can be used.
Way to go, Bonanza! Happy New Year!
Thank you :) Happy New Year to you as well Kassike!
As a fellow Washingtonian I congratulate you on your view and on your success! Hoping to move up this year to see if my sales will be better. Hope so, because I love this site. Makes you feel right at home!
Thanks neighbor! You have a lovely booth with some very unique “one of a kind” items. May you have much success in 2017!
As usual Bill thanks so much for the update, I look forward to employing more tools as we migrate back to using the Bonz as our primary connection to our customers.
Hey hey canacreations! I believe we saw you at a BonanzaUP one year! Happy New Year to you. Glad to have you back.
I sold a total of 4 items on Bonanza in the year. Ebay was 2,412. I think I know where to keep my business. Sorry, but the traffic and sales are just not here.
Whoa, that is a huge difference. Hope we can help balance that number out for you in 2017!
I’m with Muddy Pizza—very few sales. Traffic has to increase over here to sustain this site.
Hope this year is better for you osanut. Hard to offer advice to someone who has as much feedback as you. If there is anything we can help you with on Bonanza please do let us know. A seller like you has keen insight and we would love to hear from you on how we can make things better for you.
Amazing! Incredible! Wonderful! Lots of beautiful future ahead for the future of online ecommerce retailers.
A very nice summary thecuratedclothier. Thank you for your support of Bonanza :)
Thanks
thank you hopefully we will get more traffic
My start is not very encouraging. I know I only have about 30 listings, but views are non-existent unless I post a listing to social media/do the work myself. I first sold on Etsy the beginning of 2011 and with the same number of listings my shop there was very active with views and favorites. And even sales. And after nearly 6 years I had almost 5,000 sales. NOTHING happening here. So Bonanza Dec 2016 is not as active as Etsy Jan 2011??? I will slowly add some items here, but I am not sure how long I will stick it out. Best of luck to everyone!
Love the tenacity ShoponSherman! Adding more items does help. I cannot recall the magic number but I do know that it is over 100 listings where sellers start to see tangible increases in traffic. Here is a page that we update regularly with great resources for increasing sales: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/seller_success/home
Thanks for your support and best to you in 2017!
Thank you very much
You are welcome! Thank you :)
Y’all took some of my listings down that I paid over 1000.00 dollars for because there was a problems with the seller. Needless to say this was inconvenient and not good customer service. I contacted Bonanza and was ignored and told nothing could be done. Please work on better customer service. Thank you
That does not sound like a good experience. Thank you for letting us know. You should never have to pay to have listings on Bonanza. Listing on Bonanza is free. If you are still needing assistance, please feel free to message me directly and I will do everything I can to assist.
Not sure that importing from Ebay and other sites is good for this site nor for sellers here. Since we have to do most of the work to promote our shop, and because there is low internal traffic on here, one way is to be relevant for Google searches. But if we have duplicate listings, that is bad for Google relevancy for our items AND for this site.
Good point ShoponSherman. One thing we tell sellers who import items is to make sure that your prices on Bonanza reflect the money you save by not selling on the other marketplaces, where you pay more. That way shoppers have an incentive to select your Bonanza items when viewing them on Google Shopping.
Do a TV ad on Fox O’Reily Show
If the ROI was higher and they were not so expensive, we would. Hopefully as our resources grow so will our budget to spend on such advertising channels. Thank you for your support and feedback.
Well, we are about to make a major change…changing our physical location and seriously thinkng of exiting from feebay and listing exclusively on bonanza….still contemplating gold membership..still calculating if the drop in sales is worth the reduced stress of feebay…..still contemplating…we do so like bonanza..but we like to eat and pay bills…hoping it pays off. Taking the long view…Bonanza will grow, our sales will grow, maybe our hair will stop turning grey and grow back also…we do love bonanza .
Ha! Thank you for giving Bonanza a go and for committing. We hope to not let you down :)
I gained a lot more customers from putting my shopify inventory on Bonanza. Thank you for the shopify importer.
Happy New Year! and keep up the good work……………
So glad to hear. We need to let more Shopify sellers know that we have that importer now. Will you help us?
Great site, but depends what you invest here. In exchange for a free listing platform sellers need to advertise their own shop & promote themselves. Have a wide variety of items, a few different types of items to appeal to a broader customer base, a lot of listings, competitive pricing & excellent customer service. I have done well here but am at the point where I have a good number of items listed so now I list new items only once or twice a week or when I have free time as I am busy with another site. But I am hoping traffic will increase here which it will in time, remember its less than a decade old venue, it takes time for these things. But there is no point in being negative just keep trying, try new things, different approaches, have some patience, & understand there is a tradeoff for the money saved here which is up to each seller to make up for, Bonanza is what you make of it. I personally like the setup, forums, & general atmosphere here, & there is no maintenance with listings which is great to never need to edit, renew etc takes very little time to manage my shop on here. Cheers to a prosperous & happy 2017 for everyone!
It sounds like you have a good idea of how to use Bonanza to your advantage. May you have much success in 2017 Jewelsbelegance!
I couldn’t tell that it was Christmastime around Bonanza without looking at the calender. No sales at all AND Bonanza seems to be ‘one of those’ safe companies that ignore Christmas, Hanukkah and all religion around the holidays (holy days). I usually boycott companies that do that…
We love Christmas secondhandjoe! We also have employees who celebrate Hanukkah and many other religions. We are hopeful that 2017 will bring many sales to you. That moped you have is pretty sweet!
Returned after a long hiatus. Willing to try again and see where it takes me.
Thank you for coming back. We will do our best to keep your attention this time Solysjewelry.
Need more shipping options stamps.com does not have fedX smart post option or flat rate padded envlope USPS option. Need to cut a better shipping deal.
Thank you for the suggestion DiscountCrafts4U. We have a special page for all suggestions: http://feedback.bonanza.com/forums/149038-bonanza-com
Our CEO, Bill Harding, personally reviews each submission on the above linked page. Thank you for taking time to let us know how we can make Bonanza better for you.
I’m still trying to figure how to make money on Bonanza, I guess the outlets have different customer taste, so I’m trying to learn what people like over here because my items sell very well on other sites except this one
Give this page a try: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/seller_success/home
Bonanza sales volume always fair. Just ok?
We kill it on Amazon. Bonanza it’s time for some
real advertising. Nationwide. The average consumer has never heard of Bonanza??? Keep up the growth and I hope one day you will close down the skum bags at EBAY.
Thank you for your suggestion. We appreciate you telling everyone you know about Bonanza, who may benefit from knowing us. We will keep doing everything we can as well. Thank you!
Great feedback
I like the dogfooding concept. If as an employee of Bonanza you don’t like the product, then how can you expect anyone else to like the product. If as an employee of Bonanza is excited about the site, then they will be more inclined to promote it. I, too, I am hoping for good things from my Bonanza experience.
I agree about advertising. My first 5 years on Etsy people didn’t know about the site, and yet I still made sales. If they didn’t know about Etsy, they definitely don’t know about Bonanza.
I had an easy and positive experience with bonanza and I will be back for other needs. Thank you.
am impressed
Bonanza the first year started great nearly 5K in sales, 2015 $2200 in sales and 2016 $1000 in sales. We opened a tradesy store and had 400 items by end of October and did $8245 in sales compared to Bonanza 1200 items and $1000 in sales. Will keep Bonanza open but not expecting much since Tradesy has been so good and they have text, phone and email, you only have email which when we get a return as a seller I am out of luck and I don’t like the fact that I have to put in for my return refund, seriously????
Bonanza has the opportunity to be great but you need support and sellers need to reach you, lot of work still left to be done on the sellers side. :)
Thank you for sharing. We agree that we have many opportunities to improve our sellers experiences on Bonanza. Stay tuned for many enhancements in 2017!
Updating/editing my post as my answer on Top Rated sellers being achieved right here on Bonanza was answered via email from Bonanza support.
Here’s the link on how to achieve Top Rated seller status on Bonanza.
http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/general_selling/top_rated_seller
I have been with you for years, but am just now trying to sell on Bonanza. I am REALLY struggling with the listing form. Where can I get help? Do you accept drop shipping? any help with that?
thanks, Iris
Congrats on starting to sell! You will find just about every answer to the booth set up process on our selling help page: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/
If you need additional assistance you can find us here: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/contact_us
I recently got the email that Bonanza sent out regarding a survey of how things are going, which led me to read the latest blog post, which inspired me to refresh my shop and vow to make it work this year. I have put more effort into sharing, tweeting, and pinning, and I’ve already made 2 sales so far! One site that I inhabit and had put a lot of effort into had only 2 sales the whole year in 2016. Eventually I will migrate all those items into my Bonanza store. And when I list an item on Bonanza, it is super quick, at the other place it takes about 4 minutes just for the photo to upload, bleh!
Woo hoo! Way to take action! Thank you for your kind words and your support. May you have much success and many sales soon!
Good Job ! really Bonanza is different and develop each day hope to be the first soon !
Thank you! We appreciate your support.
Look OUT Ebay, Bonanza is growing at a rate that the future of online retail opportunities has been generating an enormous amount of Buzz due to superior customer service & support ! Bonanza cares about us all, a trait that is often missing in retail/resell…..!
I can envision a giant blinking billboard in Times Square in New York with that powerful statement. Thank you NissanJockey55!
When Googling different products, eBay and Amazon items pop up constantly. Very seldom do I ever see a Bonanza seller’s item. I Googled several of my own items and I never found them in my Bonanza store, only on eBay or Etsy. Would love to leave eBay but not until I get some decent sales here on Bonanza.
Great point golddustwoman. What do the eBay and Amazon products have (in the title, description, and image/price) that your Bonanza listings do not? I would use those top results as a study guide on how you can improve your Bonanza listings so you can get the same top results. Make sure to check out our Google Advertising page: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/bonanza_advertising_faq
Well, only 6 views yesterday. That was right after posting a couple new listings on social media. I don’t believe people go to social media to shop. And they don’t buy something they just happen to see on social media either. There has to be internal traffic for sales. Bonanza is seriously lacking in that. Do sellers on Ebay and Amazon make sales only because of social media? Only 2 views today.
Sorry for your experience. We have created a help page that will help you zero in on key areas to increase the possibility of sales: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/why_no_sales
One of the more popular programs we offer to increase your sales is our Bonanza Advertising Program. You can learn more about that here: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/booths_setup/bonanza_advertising_faq
You may also wish to review our seller success articles for more handy tips & tricks:
http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/seller_success/home
Hope this information brings you much success soon!
I use to make a few sales here but the items I sold I can no longer sell. When I was selling swords, knives, and air soft I made sales, not a lot, but some sales, but haven’t made a sale since I had to remove my knives and swords. I sold them on this site since 2009, but last year they made me remove all them and now nothing.
Sorry that happened to you chestoftreasures. Please see the above links in case they offer insight on how to put your business in a better position to get more sales.
We joined in end of last year and hope this place will be good to have growth in year 2017 and onwards.Expecting good support from Bonanza
We accept your challenge shop2deal! Thank you for your support.
There is a problem that have to be fix, every time that I search one of my item this is what I Get: No items found searching for ??.You may have better luck if you remove your search filters.
Why don’t my items show up in searches?
Thanks for letting us know. Most likely because you do not offer shipping to your location. We will only show items in search that have shipping set up to your location. If otherwise please do let us know, http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/contact_us
I have been selling on Bonanza for a year with only 9 sales. I had over 250 on ebay. Bonanza needs to learn how ebay promotes sales as this percentage is just not good at all. Also, when I edit items or lower prices on ebay, I get duplicates on Bonanza which can cause problems in my inventory. I have to keep checking for duplicates and deleting them constantly. Something else that must be corrected in 2017.
Thank you for letting us know. It sounds like your eBay sync settings are the source of the duplicates. You shouldn’t have to check your inventory on Bonanza for duplicates (that is no fun). Would you mind contacting our support team directly so we can get that corrected for you? http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/contact_us
love this site
We love you too!
Good and Thank you
You are welcome and thank you!
Yep I do get LOTS & LOTS of…What’s a BONANZA? All my Ebay offers ~ I refer here at a discount, but they are my only sales.
Please take it up a notch or 3 with your overall BONANZA advertising. The comments remind me of a movie ~ “You Got Mail” The teenie bookstore ( bonanza )that got crushed by the LARGE outlet store. ( Ebay & Amazon )
I do agree that any effort would be best on another venue?
Mel9861
What a great strategy for getting users to Bonanza Mel9861, great work!
We do have some exciting initiatives in store for 2017 that will drive more traffic to Bonanza. Stay tuned and thank you for your support.
OH yaaa…I won’t be filling out your SURVEY….ever again….WHY? You used to make me feel like my time was valuable by rewarding my survey with BONUS points in 2014…BUT not any more….sooo ditto…NOT ANY MORE
Mel9861
Keep on the lookout for our token appreciation email….coming soon!
Stop letting your sellers show audiobooks, PDFs and electronic download as BOOKS…they are not books! The books have the same picture. I need a place to shop that I can trust, it is deceptive and you can change it.
I imagine that would not feel good to a book seller and it probably would not translate into a good buyer experience either. Would you mind letting us know about that here: http://feedback.bonanza.com/forums/149038-bonanza-com
Thank you in advance!
Have Donald Trump reply to the words “Bonanza Website” he will reply “what is Bonanza” on Twitter. His followers will want to tell him what it is as well check it out. All this for free to Bonanza advertising department.
We love out of the box ideas!
I enjoy the simplicity and low fees of Bonanza. I’m looking forward to more success and your commitment of making Bonanza one of the great on line market places. Thank you
Thank you for your kind words. May you have much success in 2017 and beyond!
Thanks for being there! We have experienced a lot of growth on this site. We are hopeful that this will become our #1 venue!!!
Fantastic, that you for letting us know. You will always be our #1 :)
I checked out the Twitter page and was very disappointed in how they are using it. Only tweeting listings on the site rather than promoting and advertising the site. No hashtags being used. The marketing dept needs a lot of help.
We love Twitter and appreciate your suggestions.
#thankyou
Please buy and sell on Bonanza, we need each other
Great job guys and gals selling up a storm
I was very pleased with my order i will definitely recommend to others
I have yet to receive any tracking information or a response,
what is the Problem?
Sellers will provide this information directly. If you have not received your tracking information, please do contact us so we can assist: http://www.bonanza.com/site_help/contact_us
We had a few sales this year, and we’ll stick it out for awhile. We are waiting to see if traffic picks up before we spend any money on a subscription. Although Bonanzle/Bonanza has been around awhile, it seems not many people have heard of it, so there isn’t enough traffic for our one-off items. Our other ecommerce sites are profitable and we hope that one day Bonanza will be, too. If that happens, we’ll look at expanding here.
We appreciate you hanging in there RosesCountryCottage. May 2017 bring you much success on all your eCommerce channels.
I held off joining.. due to those saying they never sell anything…. So after reviewing and now listing items…what would really really be helpful to all sellers at all levels…allow direct checkout…we make money you make money.. It is that simple.
Also… for those of use who make items…make it simple for customers to create a custom order request…..
The variation for items needs to be more simplified….so I will not use it until it gets better…. been a few weeks.. no sales as of yet…. I been on Ebay 9 years…it has it’s up and downs….can’t let it go right now thought.
Thank you for your suggestions myhairillusion. We have good news for you, we plan on launching direct checkout within the next month!
On the variation opportunity, it would be super helpful if you were to suggest that improvement on this page: http://feedback.bonanza.com/forums/149038-bonanza-com
Thank you in advance for your help.
Although we are new to Bonanza in 2016 we look forward to the growth and awesome services you guys provide. Thank you!
You are welcome! And thanks to you StandoutHoldings!
Like many others, I like this site. I put a lot of work setting up my booth a year and a half ago, and made two sales.
The problem here is primarily the lack of traffic, and secondarily that browsing/searching in my sector, laptops and netbooks, is not granular enough to be effective. For example, there’s no “netbook” subcategory. The shopper is confronted with a wall of disparate products that is hard to weed through.
I just did a google search for the unit I currently have listed, and it didn’t come up even when I restricted the search to bonanza.com. I’m afraid the advertising footprint simply is way too small here.
The next advertising level mainly entails publishing to ebay. If a unit sells there. i still have to pay ebay’s fees plus a reasonable bonanza fee. I’m not sure what the benefit to that is. It seems to me that bonanza’s ad levels are too dependent on ebay, which I and others are trying to escape.
I like this site, but I think there needs to be fundamental change to the advertising model.
Thank you for liking Bonanza GoldenRuleComputing. We appreciate what you have put into your booth and want you to know that we are doing our best to deliver you the most effective seller tools that will put you in the best position to achieve the most sales possible. Thank you for caring and for taking time out of your day to let us know how we can be better. We sincerely appreciate it.
It would really be nice if Bill or someone from Bonanza responded to the consensus feedback left in this section i.e. lack of advertising and lack of traffic to the site. We can comment and make all the suggestions in the world but if we do not get any response from Bonanza, our thoughts may be falling on deaf ears. Feedback from Bonanza on our feedback would be appreciated (by me at least…). I would love to know what Bonanza plans are to increase advertising, traffic, loyalty (i.e. rewards type program)…
Thanks DaveMinNJ. With the holiday we did not get to this blog as soon as we normally do. We did respond to the advertising suggestions (Please see above replies).
One thing you can be sure of, we do listen and review all feedback from our users. We are grateful to receive so many suggestions from the people who matter the most to us, our users. Thank you for taking time out of your day to share.
I just start to list items in my shop. After reading this, I really hope 2017 will be great in sales, in special that I am one of not to many selling the same stuff here. Custom canvas prints.
We are confident that 2017 will produce many more opportunities for sales than years past. In order to put yourself in the best possible position for sales, make sure to utilize all of the unique seller tools we offer you. They really do work!
More advertising is needed. I tell dealers about Bonanza and I get “deer in the headlites” stare. Bonanza is “non existent” to most people!!!
Thank you for sharing Bonanza with the dealers. We are grateful that you let your friends know about us. That is an endorsement that we will not take for granted and we will work each day to continue to earn it.
I just don’t understand the Bonanza site. That’s why I don’t use the site to list items. Add to that. Compared to eBay, I don’t have the money to pay the $144 up front that it would take to open a store as the way I understand it. The price for the store is $12 a month and paid annually. Whereas eBay takes the fee on a monthly basis.
There is no charge to open a booth on Bonanza. You only pay a small fee when you sell an item. We do offer alternative premium services but they are not required to sell on Bonanza.
Okay—I read the comments and I’m not alone—the majority of these posters think this site needs way more traffic. I’m not sure you could do much advertising to get a big enough bang for your buck—but you could turbo charge the site.if people are selling they’d be okay with increased fees once they saw sales rolling in.
Looking forward for a mutual success in 2017!
need more advertisement
Excellent work!!!!
Single digit views the past 3 days for me.
I guess Bonanza has their model for the site that they will follow. Provide a free platform, and charge for exposure.
I think they need to change.
Ditch the “anything but the ordinary” approach, that is really Ebay (with it’s burnt toast w/images of the Virgin Mary, and Oprah selling her items), and promote it for what is. A free e-commerce site with low fees. And provide the same visibility and advertising for all items. And then advertise.
Sales would pick up, the site would grow, and they would make more money too.
It’s been 9 years. Time for a change.
Thank you for your suggestions!
Make it easier to refund a customer when they decide they don’t want it or they have returned it to us.
We have tried to make it as simple as possible (just visit your seller fees page to request a refund). If you have suggestions on how we can make it more simple, please do share: http://feedback.bonanza.com/forums/149038-bonanza-com
Thank you for the replies, Mark!
Ditto the above comment. This is why I do love Bonanza and try to make suggestions to improve the site. I would love it if I never had to go back to eBay. Not there yet but I am hoping one day…..
sounds good :)
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