We're 10,000 Items Old! Now What?

August 18, 2008

Well, August has been quite a month for Bonanzle, and to think it is only half way over!

As you may have heard or seen mentioned, Bonanzle recently had it's 10,000th item posted. At a time where our competitors are paying their users to refer their friends and post their items, we take it as the utmost compliment that so many of you have voted that you'd rather have an enjoyable user experience on a friendly marketplace than a couple bucks or a chance to win a prize on a worse one (but don't worry -- we'll get around to some gimmicky promotions soon). The momentum and positivity building at Bonanzle have been amazing to witness, and I hope you guys are enjoying the ride as much as we are!

With so much growth taking place so rapidly, I wanted to take a minute to cover where we are today and what our vision for Bonanzle is in the weeks and months to come.

During the year we spent programming Bonanzle before launching it, we asked ourselves who we thought a site focused on simplicity and usability would appeal to. The answer, it seemed, was Craigslist refugees.

We were wrong about that. So sue us. (No, not you, eBay. Don't sue Bonanzle, please! I heard Craigslist still had a few million more bucks to be pilfered).

Of course, Craigslist users have been positive about Bonanzle, but we now predict that they are going to adopt Bonanzle en masse in about 6-12 months, when there's more media coverage and such. At this point, it is collectors, small stores, and other folks united by distaste for evil that have become Bonanzle's community.

Why do I mention this? Because in this context, it's easier to understand why sort-of-obvious powerseller features like a USPS shipping calculator or a way to automatically charge sales tax for a given state aren't on Bonanzle yet, while features like defining a custom pickup location have been removed from the site because they weren't getting used.

Given our current situation, these are our top three priorities, in relative order of importance:

1. Make Bonanzle the most buyer-friendly marketplace on the Internet. Anyone who has setup their booth knows we are serious about being the most seller-friendly marketplace, period. But we have designs to make the same quantum leap forward for buyers. We think the inventory here already is great. Our bottom-line focus is to help sellers promote these items so they sell. Features like "no registration buying" fall into this category.


2. Get Bonanzle ready to grow from thousands of visits per day to tens and hundreds of thousands. It's an immense technical feat to build a huge and robust site, and we're working hard to make this transition a smooth one. Features like full text item searching fall under this mantle.


3. From seller-friendly to seller-friendlier. Tripling the number of items on the site in a few weeks is a pretty strong testament that we're on the right path, but we can do better still. That whole "relentless simplicity" mantra means we're never done. Helping sellers to ship their items without stopping at the post office is an example of how we plan to make selling friendlier still.

That's the features focus.

From a marketing standpoint, the end of our beta period, in September, is going to be the beginning of a more aggressive marketing strategy to continue the growth of Bonanzle for buyers and sellers who want a better way to shop than the evil giant and friends. The details of this strategy are still being hatched, so keep your eye on this blog to all the latest.