Relentless Simplicity - The Bonanzle Blog

Search and Category Overhaul

November 19, 2008

This evening we put a new search online along with about 26,700 more categories to sort your items into with the search.

Why the drastic changes?

When Bonanzle was first launched, we would usually have 100-300 items posted per day. All was so simple back then. You never needed to go more than two categories deep, because no second-level category had more than a couple hundred items.

Times have changed. We now often get more than 10,000 items per day added to the site. Clearly, the 300-some categories that used to be sufficient were no longer going to cut it to help buyers browse and find the items they're looking for.

The Fix

In deciding how to fix the problem, we looked at pretty much all of the popular sites to see how they had fixed it. The conclusion was that there were a bunch of sites that make it hard to browse and filter items, and two sites that do a "good" job of it: eBay and Etsy.

Ultimately, we decided to choose a search configuration similar to eBay's. Etsy's system is based on item "tags," which work reasonably well for handmade items, but have far less consistency than a category hierarchy does. Since Bonanzle allows items of all different sorts, using categories was really the only reasonable option, and we see no reason to reinvent the wheel in determining how to arrange our search such that it is as easy as possible to use.

You'll also notice many other changes with the search, such as more items shown by default per page (48 instead of 20) and the default listing format has been changed from the ugly and small-pictured list to the item gallery that is used everywhere else on the site.

Got Items for Sale?

You should take advantage of the increased levels of categorization now available! The best way to do this is to use the batch editor, where you can put many of your items into a category in one fell swoop. You can also edit your items in your booth view the same as always, too.

Note that there were a couple of categories that didn't map directly from our old category list to our new category list. These include the old categories 505, 14982, 16079, 20119, 20122, 20125, 26255, 28009, 28134, 29253, 31727, 39629, 71236, 79802, 82567, 88451, 102534, 137006, 137010, 151719. I don't have the names of those offhand, but if anyone is feeling ambitious and wants to post the category names to the comments section, you can use this category reference to figure out which categories these were.

Usual Cautions Apply

Adding the categories and updating the search were pretty huge changes, and I also managed to sneak in a couple other significant changes along with them (such as allowing you to scroll when using the new item form... no more despair for lower-resolution users!). I'd expect we'll still need to do some polishing on these over the next couple days, so please be patient with any irregularities you may find and report them to support or in the comments for this blog. (In particular, I haven't had a chance to test the changes on IE 6 yet, hoping to get to that tomorrow.. if you're having trouble with IE 6, you might need to wait an extra day (or upgrade :)))

If you sense a trend with our most recent changes, it is intentional. The focus of November is on "features that increase sales." I've still got a couple more tricks up my sleeve to further our progress toward this goal. I reckon they'll probably be online within the next week or two. Stay tuned!

Posted by Bill | 29 comments

Fix Complete?

November 17, 2008

Update 4:13PM PST: It would appear that they did indeed find the culprit. I think we should be good to go now, save maybe one more few-second blip for a restart of this or that. More details to come about the root of the problem once we receive them.
Update 3:57PM PST: They may have found the culprit.
Update Later On: The cause was eventually tracked down to a Name Server that had gone haywire ("name servers" are the things that know where to send you when you type in "bonanzle.com"). The Name Server is not something that we directly manage -- it's managed by our Internet host, Planet Argon. They say they have never seen one of the name servers go kooky like that before, but will be keeping a close eye on them in the future, and will be able to fix the problem in a couple minutes if it happens again, rather than the two hours it took on Monday.

Original post -- 3:00PM PST
Our server experts have found a problem in some of the server hardware that they are currently working to fix. It appears as though we are going to need to swap out a network card, which will probably be done sometime between 4 and 5 PM PST today.

In the meantime, there will be some slow load times.

The server folks assure us that this is as peculiar a problem as they have seen, so we are hoping that after they get to the root of it, life will remain better. In the meantime, it's probably going to be a touch and go Monday afternoon/evening.

Rest assured we're working to get it fixed as quickly as we can, though. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Bill | 15 comments

Bonanzle November Newsletter

November 14, 2008

This morning we sent out the Bonanzle November newsletter to most members who were signed up to receive the newsletter who have logged in recently. If you didn't get the newsletter and would like to see it, you can take a look here.

Deepest apologies if anybody got this newsletter more than once. Our emailer has been continuing to get a little zany at times, for reasons that still don't entirely make sense to me. We tell it to send each message once. It decides to sent each message between one and four times. I guess that Otto just thinks the newsletter is that good!

Or maybe Otto has been haunted???

But seriously, we'll be doing more testing over the next couple days to try to get to the bottom of it before we set it free with a multi-person emailing again. Luckily, the problem doesn't affect single-person emails, which comprise 99% of the mail Otto sends.

In the meantime, enjoy the newsletter and get started on some Christmas shopping while the shipping turnaround times are still in your favor!

P.S. Anyone got any ideas as to how we should spruce up the site for the season? Any artists out there who could make us some reindeer or lights to string up on the grass and banner?

Posted by Bill | 14 comments

Intermittent Connection Problems

November 12, 2008

Update 10pm: Another 10 minutes of downtime from the ISP. Our hosting company is going to call the ISP tomorrow morning and get an explanation of what the flakiness is all about. We'll keep you updated if we hear anything interesting.

Update 3pm: All is well again. There had been some attacks on the ISP originating from Asia, but they've isolated the attackers and blocked them.

Our new ISP (Internet Service Provider) has been having some problems making connections to the Internet over the last hour. You can follow updates on the situation from here.

They assure me that in the last year, this is the first time that anything of this sort has happened, so we're optimistic this is an unfortunately-timed rare incident.

Sorry if you've had trouble connecting in the last hour! On the bright side, we are proud to finally be able to say "not our fault!" :)

Posted by Bill | 7 comments

New Server Bug #1: Spamming the Heck Out of You with Forum Response Emails (fixed)

November 12, 2008

Sorry to those of you who were inundated with 10s or 20s of forum update emails this evening. Please just delete them (don't mark them as spam or our email provider gets uptight). The forum email updater has been modified to be a bit less overzealous.

It simply wants to please, you understand. But between you and me, sometimes I think the emailer just tries a little too hard. "Yes, forum email updater," we assure it, "that is a very impressive number of spurious emails you can send!"

That seems to do the trick.

Posted by Bill | 10 comments

Hello Again!

November 11, 2008

Thanks to all for your patience over the last week as our uptime dropped from its usual 99.5% to a not-as-hot 98.2%. Even when the site was up, the ever-increasing traffic was leading to ever-increasing slowness that was making life a bit harder to enjoy for all.

But those times look to be changing. You are reading this from one of the two brand new servers we recently leased thanks to our much appreciated subscribing members. Between the two servers, we now have an approximately 8x increase in capacity compared to our previous setup.

Does that mean that pages will load 8x faster? Highly unlikely, especially at first (we've only setup about half of our capacity so far). As we continue to configure our new toys, there will be plenty more tricks for us to pull out of our hat in the weeks to come. But it's our hope that pages will load noticeably faster today, and that as we hone our configuration they'll stay fast as we grow into the tens of thousands of users and millions of items.

For today (Tuesday) and maybe even the next couple days, there are probably going to be more peculiarities than usual as we get everything back into working order. Please email support if you find something you think is out of order, and we'll get to it as soon as we are able. Because of our expected higher-than-usual volume of support requests, the turnaround might be a bit slower than usual, but it doesn't mean we don't think you're totally swell.

And away go the Tuesday Ticklers!

Psst!

Not to get ahead of ourselves, since Tuesday and probably Wednesday will require time spent putting the finishing touches on the server move, but we're really excited about the next item on our todo list: more detailed categorization for items. Sellers have been requesting deeper categorization since day one of Bonanzle -- and we've agreed with them -- but so far we've dilly dallied because it's hard to find an easy way to add more details about items without making the item posting process complicated. But after consulting with a crack team of scientists, excavators, and cartographers, we think we have a beat on how to make it happen. Better item details = a better browsing experience for buyers = more sales = glee. Barring complications with the new server, I think we'll have the increased item details online by early next week.

Posted by Bill | 15 comments

New Server -- Scheduled Downtime 10 PM Monday (UPDATED)

November 09, 2008

UPDATE 11/10: Testing for the new server is underway. Read about it here.

Much progress has been made on getting the new server online over the last couple days. It is now preliminarily running at a secret location, and after we spend Monday putting it through some tests to ensure the smoothest transition possible, we plan to pack our bags and put it online for Tuesday morning.

Doing the actual move will require the site to be down for some time while we copy the last of the files across and get everything up and running. I am planning to start the transition at 10 PM on Monday evening, and hope to have the site back online by Tuesday morning (ideally around 2 AM).

Tuesday there may be a snag or two, since we have upgraded the software on many fronts as part of this move, but with any luck, we're hoping that with the new hardware plus the expertise of the folks helping us to manage this hardware (props to Planet Argon!), we won't have to talk about the "P" word (performance) for some time to come.

Ah, to dream!

Posted by Bill | 24 comments

We're on TV! And all the other news that's fit to print (UPDATED 11/7)

November 03, 2008

Update 11/07 (Happy bday mom!)
News link: Here is the link to the news clip we got featured in, all thanks to the BAC:
http://www.king5.com/video/consumer-index.html?nvid=299504

New server status: My current "best guess" is that the new server will be online early next week (sometime between Monday and Wednesday). We have the computer hooked up, and will be moving all the goods to it over the next couple days. Of course, those goods include more than 3 million pictures uploaded... so it's hard to say exactly when that will be finished. But I think that early next week is a pretty good guess. Please bear with some slow page loads between now and then -- help is coming!

Original post follows...

It's been awhile since I've given an update on what's happening at Bonanzle, but much has been afoot, so let's talk about it!

Bonanzle on TV!

That's right, this morning Bonanzle was featured on local Seattle news station King 5 TV. This interview was a direct result of the efforts of the BAC from two weeks ago, proving that BACers are good... they're reeeall good. We'll see if they're good enough to get us on Oprah next!

We are hoping to get a link to the interview in the next day or two. Once we get it, we'll be sure to post it here and elsewhere.

Help on the way: Bonanzle's new server should be online in a week or so

The first investment from our subscribing memberships was in that 8x faster fancy new server I had previously mentioned. The server arrived at its home last Thursday, and its configuration is ongoing. It's a big process. I'm guessing it will probably be about one more week until we finish it up and bring it online. But it be coming soon, soon, soon... and it should fix problems like the one's that many of you who try to login Monday will experience, where things bog down when several hundred people are online at once.

We are well aware of the problem, and are confident that it will be resolved shortly. Thank you for your patience in the meantime.

More most-requested features now online

Two more items from your most-voted on list went online in the last week. The first was "completed item" searches. You probably already noticed it -- any time you do a search you can now mark the checkbox that indicates you want to search for items that have sold. Note that this search includes both items that sold through standard offers, and items that were manually marked as sold by sellers. In the case of the latter, the item won't have detailed information about when it sold or what the terms of the sale were, but it should still give you a sense of what is selling and what isn't.

The other new feature, hot off the press from last night, is international shipping. Did you know that 52% of Bonanzle's new visitors aren't from the U.S.? It's true! Which is why we are now letting you setup flat-rate shipping policies for any country you care to ship to.

To setup international shipping for your items, go to the "batch editor" for your booth, and click on the link (to the left of the "Submit" button) for "Shipping options." From there, you can specify a flat rate for whatever regions of the world you're willing to ship to, and apply it to however many items you please. When a buyer from one of these regions views your items, they will then be able to buy your items immediately, without having to wait for you to approve an offer at a specific price.

Take advantage of it today and double the number of possible buyers for your items, whydontchya?

New Contest

The Grass is Greener contest is now over, but we've decided to take the "Referred Users" component of the contest and extend it through at least November. If you look at the invited users leaderboard it now shows who has invited the most users for November, along with the Bonanzle gift certificates that will be won by the top SIX best referrers.

This is an easy way for easy money, doing what you would do anyway: telling your friends and customers that you've moved to Bonanzle. Invite a friend today and get yourself some Bonanzlecash for your Christmas shopping.

Posted by Bill | 17 comments

Final Raffle Results, and a New Contest

November 03, 2008

The "Grass is Greener at Bonanzle" promotion is complete! This round accumulated results from midnight October 26th through midnight October 31st. In all, there were 1300-some entries for the week (where each buyer got an entry per item they bought, each user got five entries per user referred, and anyone that signed up and subscribed to the newsletter got one entry).

The top three entry-getters this week were Cindy'sCloset with a gaudy 170 entries; ASqueakyFoot followed with a rollicking 135 entries this week to take second; and thetlcshoppe came in third with 25 entries, lots of familiar faces at the top here.

Now, to pick a winner!

So without further ado, by random drawing, the winner of this week's drawing for $200 in Bonanzle goodies is raffle ticket #1006013805 AKA user #12498 AKA.........

asyourbabygrows!

Congratulations to you!

Popularity Contest Results

The end of the contest also signifies that it's time to hand out the gold, silver and bronze medals for most users invited to the site during September and October. Here are your medal winners:

Gold medal, 87 users referred: ASqueakyFoot!

Silver medal, 69 users referred: Cindy'sCloset!

Bronze medal, 50 users referred: thetlcshoppe!

Congrats to all three of you, for $300, $200 and $100 worth of Bonanzle merchandise earned, respectively!

For all of the winners above, to get your merchandise, please fill your carts with the stuff you want, enter your shipping information, and leave the cart at payment, then email support@bonanzle.com and let us know you're ready to have us pay. Paypal or Google Checkout are both fine for this.

Thank you everybody for playing! We've decided to make the referral contest an ongoing monthly one, since it was such a success. I'll talk about that in a future blog, though.

Posted by Bill | 4 comments

Mystery Gift Revealed!

October 27, 2008

Week six of our "Grass is Greener at Bonanzle" promotion is complete! This round accumulated results from midnight October 19th through midnight October 26th. In all, there were 1300-some entries for the week (where each buyer got an entry per item they bought, each user got five entries per user referred, and anyone that signed up and subscribed to the newsletter got one entry).

This week was a double mystery week! Not only do we not know the seller, but we also don't know what the prize is. That's a lot of work to get done. Let's start with the frontrunners and the winner.

The top three entry-getters this week were Cindy'sCloset with a gaudy 112 entries; thetlcshoppe (the juggernaut who accumulated 140 entries last week) followed with a strong 95 entries this week to take second; and -- who else -- ASqueakyFoot came in third with 50 entries, her umpteenth week placing in the top three.

Now, to pick a winner!

So without further ado, by random drawing, the winner of this week's drawing for a mystery prize is raffle ticket #1006011318 AKA user #1516 AKA.........

Cindy'sCloset!

I guess that having the most raffle tickets does count for something, eh? The winning ticket was one for referring cyndi18 to the site. Welcome aboard, cyndi18!

So now it's time to unveil this week's mystery prize. We'll give you a hint: it's Oprah's favorite new toy... did you guess? Probably not, cuz you saw a huge picture of it right here:

This is the final week of the Grass is Greener giveaway! This week is abbreviated, it ends on Halloween when the ghost will announce the final winner of the contest -- buyer's choice of any item on Bonanzle priced $200 or less! Don't miss out!

Posted by Bill | 15 comments

Google Base and Bonanzle: A Story of Star-Crossed Lovers with a Happy Ending

October 23, 2008

Background

Once upon a time there was a small, upstart site called "Bonanzle" that was smitten with a service called "Google Base." Google Base is a special part of Google that allows anybody to send their items to Google in a special format that Google understands. Once Google has those items in the format it likes, it puts them online for buyers to find. All the items can be searched for on the Google Base web site, but more usefully, any items submitted to Google Base also have the potential to show up in the "Google Products" search. Google Products is what you see as the three listings at the top of the page when you do a search like this. Many millions of sellers use Google Product searches every day, and the key to unlock Google Products is Google Base.

So, back to that story: all was proceeding quite swimmingly between Bonanzle and Google Base until one day in late August, when the founder noticed that Bonanzle's traffic had dropped for the first time ever. Worried, he looked through the traffic sources for the site, and noticed that traffic to Bonanzle from Google had dropped precipitously, by more than half of its usual volume. After a little more digging around, the founder discovered that Google Base had taken all of the tens of thousands of Bonanzle items out of the product search. The concerned founder sent a letter to Google Base, and eventually he learned that a handful of the 100,000 items online at Bonanzle were video game "mod chip" devices, which go against the Google Base terms of service. The founder quickly fixed the problem, and about a week later, Bonanzle's feed was back online and the situation was forgotten about.

Until a few weeks later, when it happened again: this time because certain items submitted to Google Base were no longer on the site (presumably because they had sold during the day). Then, last week, it happened a third time: this time for reasons that have yet to be revealed to the Bonanzle team. But even without hearing the specific reasons, what had become clear was two things: 1) Google Base is an incredibly great service that can provide huge amounts of traffic, free of charge, because Google is run by a bunch of sweethearts and 2) That this fantastic service was not going to do our sellers a whole lot of good if Bonanzle could not police each of its hundreds of thousands of items well enough to keep the feed online. A solution to reliably keep Bonanzle items online with Google Base/Products was needed, and I'm happy to report that we now have it (er, at least the preliminary version of it :))!

The Solution? Empower You!

Bonanzle is now equipped to be your partner in creating your own Google Base account. We have created two easy ways (one takes about two minutes, the other takes about 10) to get your Bonanzle items up on your own Google Base account. There are numerous advantages to publishing your items on your own account:

• It won't get taken down repeatedly, unless you're putting bad items in it.


• You will have access to all the stats on how many people saw your items, and how many clicked through to them.


• You can edit the items by hand in Google Base, to include extra attributes that Bonanzle doesn't allow you to specify (ISBN, UPC, etc.). This extra detail will help your items get shown higher in the Google Products search.

Of course, there is one disadvantage, which is that you have to setup your Google Base account, but it's really not as hard as you think. And even if it were hard, it is probably the difference of 50% more traffic to your items by setting it up, at no cost to you. Well worth doing!

I've added some detailed help instructions on how to get rolling with your own Google Base account. If you have a booth setup, visit "My Bonanzle" and (duh) "Add your booth to Google Products search."

I can not overstate how important I think it is for every seller to take advantage of the free traffic that Google will give to your booth if you setup a Google Base account with them. When Bonanzle submitted its feed to Google automatically, there were an average of 3-10 potential buyers per day for each booth through Google Products traffic! When you set up your own Google Base account with your Bonanzle items, you'll probably get at least as much. So go git em, tigers!

Posted by Bill | 65 comments

And the iPod Raffle Winner Is...

October 20, 2008

Week five of our "Grass is Greener at Bonanzle" promotion is complete! This round accumulated results from midnight October 12th through midnight October 19th. In all, there were 1623 entries for the week (where each buyer got an entry per item they bought, each user got five entries per user referred, and anyone that signed up and subscribed to the newsletter got one entry). Lots of those tickets generated through sales happening in the last week, congrats to our many sellers!

The top three entry-getters this week were thetlcshoppe with an astounding 140 entries (!); one of our old favorites morejunk4u was in second with a strong 59 entries; and in third was Guilty*pleasure, accumulating 45 entries and sporting an adorable profile picture. Honorable mentions for more than 20 entries go to to ASqueakyFoot (indefatigable!) with 35 entries, patsyshort with 35 entries, and ScarletsLounge with 20 entries (not content with just her chicken suit, apparently!).

Now, there's just one more thing... picking a winner!

So without further ado, by random drawing, the winner of week two's drawing for their very own iPod Touch 8GB is raffle ticket #1006008138 AKA user #9007 AKA.........

BestSeller!

With a mere one raffle ticket, BestSeller has defied some stunning odds to come away with one of the raffle's most expensive prizes. WTG BestSeller!

But don't despair, thetlcshoppe and morejunk4u, you guys are in second and third place for overall most users invited, putting you in prime position for some fat gift cards as we start to come down the home stretch of this contest! It's still anybody's game for spots 2 and 3 in the user inviting. Last week, I don't think thetlcshoppe was even on the list, and now they're in second place!

Go get 'em, tigers! Next up is the Mystery Gift Week! What will it be? The most intriguing prize of the contest, that's what!

Posted by Bill | 6 comments

Membership Concerns - A Word from the Founder

October 17, 2008

Lately there have been concerns from a vocal minority of Bonanzlers about the effects of our new voluntary membership program. Below I'll summarize the origin of these concerns, as well as our reaction to them.

What's the Fuss About?

1. Misinformation. The first post in the Bonanzle forum thread about memberships begins with some confusion about whether memberships will allow certain users to gain an unfair advantage in the search results. The answer is no, and the membership documentation is pretty clear on that point. If someone is looking for the items you have for sale, they will be able to find them equally well whether you're a member or not.


2. "I've Seen this Before." Some users have drawn broad analogies between our memberships and the memberships that have led to sellers being on unequal ground on other sites. What these analogies fail to note is the numerous successful sites (Amazon with Web Stores, Google with AdWords) that allow sellers to get extra exposure for a voluntary fee. Like Google and Amazon, non-paying Bonanzle sellers are on equal ground with paying Bonanzle when a buyer is searching for a specific item, or browsing through items.


3. "Profile Stars Create a Caste System." Does the Bonanzle Action Club icon create a caste system? Do Biznik's membership stars create a caste system? The profile stars acknowledge our appreciation for those who have the means to help provide a revenue source we can use to continue to grow Bonanzle. The negative connotation of a "caste system" is that the lower rungs of the caste bear undue suffering as a result of their unchangeable position. I do not believe that basic (non-paying) members are enduring undue suffering as the result of not having a star icon in their profile.
   
4. "But I've Been Promoting Bonanzle Tirelessly, Don't I Deserve Perks?" Of course you do! And we're working almost every hour of every day to add the perks you request to the site. Though our original intention had been to make the features currently listed under "Pro Booths" into features you had to pay to use, we instead opted to continue to keep everything free that had been free before. The perks of being a basic Bonanzle member will continue to grow with each day, as we work through your top requests on the Next Up Improvement list. Furthermore, we hope that when you're promoting Bonanzle, you are promoting your booth. The reward in promoting your Bonanzle booth is the increased sales you'll reap when you do so.
5. "It's Too Expensive!" So is a new Winnebago, but you don't have to buy one.

So, What's Next?

What's next is that people will make their own decision about whether they think that by offering the (completely voluntary) option of becoming a Bonanzle member, that we have ruined their day. Those that think we have will continue to say so, while the majority of people will continue to either not care or think it's a great way to support Bonanzle.

I think Kathy Sierra puts it best when explaining why a minority of people would become so upset at the prospect of Bonanzle offering memberships: If some people don't HATE your product, it's mediocre. Give the article a read and you'll understand that this won't be the last time that there will be people who are upset with Bonanzle's direction.

That said, we are quite confident that offering the benefits of exposure, Google Analytics, and an icon do nothing to affect the fairness of the marketplace as a whole. If you feel the same way, your best bet is to speak your peace in the forums once or twice, then just agree to disagree with those that feel otherwise. Most people who have made up their minds don't change them, and most people have made up their minds by the time they post their opinion.

And One More Thing!

There is no question that, with the support of both our paying and non-paying members, Bonanzle is going to continue to move forward as the best marketplace to find friendly people and enjoy each other's company as you buy and sell everything but the ordinary. Our growth has continued to increase exponentially every month, regardless of occasional differences of opinion between users like this one (September "Fees" thread, anyone?). We're now growing by more than 100 users per day, sometimes by as many as 300!

There are plenty of exciting times ahead, so take a breath and savor the community you all have built on Bonanzle. The fun we can have buying and selling extraordinary items together will undoubtedly grow with every new day and new user.

Posted by Bill | 48 comments

Be a Member (Re-Updated)

October 16, 2008

Update 10:30AM: Memberships should now work in Internet Explorer!
Update 8 PM: Yes, we will accept money order for memberships as well. If you'd like to sign up that way, email support@bonanzle.com for an address. I had hoped to get Amazon payments setup to accept subscriptions through, but after further research tonight, it is clear that that would be at least a day-long project, and we don't have a day to spend on it right now. So for the time being, Paypal or Money Order will be the two options for subscriptions. Thanks to those that have signed up already! It's been an overwhelming response, and we are thrilled about the technology upgrades it will allow us to make.

Original Post:
Today was a very busy day in Bonanzleland, but as I get ready to go to retreat to my peaceful slumber before the sun rises, I wanted to briefly mention the new link you might notice in the "My Bonanzle" section labeled Member.

This story begins, long, long ago (last week), in a place not too far away (here). We tried to setup donations to the site, but within 15 minutes of donations going online, Google had suspended our Google Checkout merchant account and told us that it would be patently illegal for a company not registered as a "non-profit" to accept donations of any sort. "But," we argued, "it will help us pay for better servers and more things that we want to have!" Still, Google held firm to their rules (which are actually the government's rules, if you want to get technical), so donations were officially out.

But we have heard from many of you that are grandfathered in without FVFs, and from various others, who want to help Bonanzle stay financially solvent so that we can continue to add server power and keep this train headed forward at full tilt.

And that brings us to memberships. There are two types you can choose from: Plus Membership or Premier Membership. Both offer advantages to sellers beyond helping Bonanzle prosper. I'm not going to go over the specifics of those advantages here, because they're already spelled out on the membership page. Suffice to say, if you are interested in helping Bonanzle to continue to grow and provide a place where it's fun to transact, take a look at our membership packages and consider joining.

We have a long list of features we plan to continue to add to both the Plus and Premier membership packages over the coming weeks, so sign up today. The deal is good and getting better.

And remember -- if you don't got the cash to become a member now, don't sweat it. We are purposely setting up our membership benefits so that you can still continue to use Bonanzle and prosper even with just a basic (free) membership.

P.S. More payment options for membership coming soon. Google doesn't allow recurring payments, but we have our eye on a certain other payment gateway that I know Bobbi is going to be pleased to see up on the site.

Posted by Bill | 45 comments

On Our Radar

October 15, 2008

Just to keep you guys in the loop who have voted on "Next Up Features" that haven't gotten done lately, wanted to provide an idea about what we're up to and what our next priorities are:

1. (Obvious) Continue to iron out bottlenecks to maintain speed during peak hours. Many improvements were made on that front today, but with our current growth, it's only a matter of time until more improvements are necessary. We are currently in the process of planning a move to another new server, this one with approximately 8x the computing power of our current one. But that requires some cashola, which explains objective #2:


2. Implement site memberships. As soon as the site stops being slow, we plan to add the option of subscribing as a member of the site. This will have many perks, chief among them from our perspective, that you will help us afford an 8x faster server. :-)


3. More measures to reduce spammers/frauds. Previously an undiscovered part of the community, with traffic comes spammers, so we plan to spend some cycles making it harder for them to get access to and do business on Bonanzle. In the meantime, PLEASE REPORT ANYONE INTERESTED IN RECEIVING PAYMENT VIA WESTERN UNION, and please be very wary of sellers with no feedback selling expensive items (doubly if they aren't active in the community). It isn't that these sellers are necessarily frauds, but, well, it can be hard to tell if they are. Your best bet to protect yourself from fraud is to use Google Checkout or Paypal, so you can work with them and your credit card company if you do happen to get unlucky and find an unscrupulous users.

As you can see, this list doesn't include exciting new features, because to be honest, right now, I think it's most important that the site performs smoothly and makes it as difficult as possible for the spammers and frauds. But hopefully the days of new features will return soon. We're sure to sneak some in here and there anyway. When we do get back to features, I have a number of ideas I'm excited to go forth with to help sellers make more sales and buyers find more cool stuff to buy.

Posted by Bill | 30 comments