Relentless Simplicity - The Bonanzle Blog

Now Showing: Gift Guides & Price Markdowns

Two exciting new features are now online, I wanted to take a brief moment to alert all to their existence, and how they might be useful to you.

Gift Guides

With the holiday season now here, the perenially challenging question is once again upon us: what do I get for Joe Bob when all I know is that he likes the outdoors? What are some quirky gifts for grandma? What is cool for under $10?

Gift guides allow our community to answer these difficult questions for you. Browse by personality type, price level, and a smattering of other classifications. As it continues to get used, I suspect that gift guides will become the most efficient way to shop when you have a particular occasion coming up. After the guides get built out over the next few days, we'll be adding a link to them directly from the home page, so this will be a high exposure affair.

If you're a seller, a list builder, or a person that just likes browsing, why not consider making a gift guide yourself? It's as easy as creating any other hand picked list (My Bonanzle -> Buying Activity -> Hand picked items). The only difference is that when you are setting up your hand picked list, you choose the gift guide category (or categories) that your list fits into. Once your list has enough items, it will be automatically added to our index of gift guides. Sales and fame ensue. Why not give it a shot? I did!

Price Markdowns

Price markdowns are a new promotional tool available for our premiere members that are described in detail here. The gist is that you can setup sales that last for longer than the three hours a Bonanza affords -- in total you can have sales lasting up to seven days per month. While your items are on sale, buyers will be able to see that they are getting a special deal by the price being visibly reduced: from your booth, when looking at the item, and even from on-site search results.

Brief Scheduled Maintenance

Quick FYI : We'll be doing a database update this evening between about 11pm PST and midnight PST. Bonanzle will be unavailable during this time. If we're lucky, it might take as little as half an hour.

Update 1am: Alright, that was more laborious than I was hoping, but it looks like most of the kinks should now be worked out. I'll post further updates if any other issues arise with this update.

Update 3am: All now appears to be well, except for the fact that I'm now too tired to blog about the sweet new features that you should check out. I'll work on that for tomorrow. Let us know if you find anything out of the ordinary in the meantime.

The Bonanzle Boardroom

A new monthly podcast called "The Bonanzle Boardroom" is starting on November 5th, and I wanted to make a quick mention of it for those who want to improve their selling chops at Bonanzle. This podcast is being hosted by two long-time, and well-respected members of our community, Phaedra Stockstill (attheboutique) and Judy Oglesby (bluepennylady). I've attached their press release below, check it out if you're free, I suspect that the insights/minute will be high.

Announcing the Bonanzle Boardroom

Phaedra Stockstill and Judy Oglesby have teamed up to bring you a new monthly podcast - The Bonanzle Boardroom. Creating a one stop podcast for up to date, rock solid information about selling on this exciting marketplace.

On November 5th, 2009 at 8 pm Est the premier broadcast will air on Talkshoe. The podcast will last one hour and will bring to the air the knowledge of both of these wonderful ladies. Covering updates on what's new on Bonanzle, tips from the white board, and solid eCommerce information. Our first guest will be none other than Mark Dorsey.

Airing once a month on the first Thursday of every month, the Bonanzle Boardroom will be one hour of Bonanzle information, updates, and selling tips. Keeping up with all things Bonanzle has never been easier.

For further information you can visit the Bonanzle Boardroom page on talkshoe

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=66030&cmd=tc

Or visit the newly created Bonanzle Boardroom website, http://BonanzleBoardroom.com

What's Up, What's Down, What's Next.

Wanted to give a couple updates about what has been going on lately round the ranch lately, and what you can expect to see unfolding in the next couple months.

What's Up?

Traffic, sales, and new user registrations have all grown more this October than we have seen since early 2009. Between word of mouth referrals, plus some opportune mentions in Lucky Magazine and Reader's Digest, it seems that ever-greater volumes of buyers are starting to remember Bonanzle as the best destination for finding everything but the ordinary. Given that much of the recent growth has been in Google traffic, it seems that, on the whole, the changes Google made in September have benefited Bonanzle sellers in Google Product search. Keep filling out those item traits and keyword-rich titles, ladies and gentlemen.

Also very close to being up are the first couple applications using Bonapitit, the Bonanzle API. Debuting sometime in the next couple weeks will be a Bonanzle iPhone application (oooh!), and a version of Scott Pooler's Bonanzle Webstores using Bonapitit (aaah!). In the last week, we've added the ability to insert or edit items via Bonapitit, and in the next couple days we'll also be configuring Bonapitit to be able to grab completed transactions. I'd bet these developments will spawn some nifty inventory management tools over the next couple months. I know that I'd personally like to see a developer come along who can offer a quality WYSIWYG editor for our sellers to use, and a tool that makes it simpler to import CSV/inventory files to Bonanzle.

Oh geez, I almost wrote a really wordy blog without including a picture

What's Down?

Listing counts, perhaps? It seems that something of a friendly competition has unfolded over the last few months regarding the Powersellers Unite listing counts of Bonanzle and various other marketplaces. Those who have spent any time following this chart know that the numbers have a way of stopping, starting, and growing suddenly at periodic intervals. Our take? While this chart is certainly an interesting resource that sellers & marketplaces are lucky to have (we heart PSU), ultimately we don't believe it serves our users' best interests to aspire to top it. As such, we have been implementing an increasing number of measures to trim down inventory in cases where we can trade quantity for quality. Amongst these changes:

Sellers who haven't logged in for a couple months and do not respond to buyer emails will have their items reserved after a given number of warnings
Sellers who haven't specified a valid form of payment to accept (Paypal, MO, or Google Checkout) will have their items reserved after a given number of warnings
Sellers who do not pay their fees will have their booth items reserved after a given number of warnings

Combine this with our already-implemented measures limiting duplicate imported listings and inauthentic items of any sort, and the net impact of these changes will likely be that Bonanzle's order in the PSU chart remains equal to or lower than its current position for the foreseeable future. But we think its a worthwhile trade to make for having responsive sellers whose items can be purchased with minimum hassle for buyers. If you're a responsive seller who pays your fees, these changes won't affect you in any way. (This would probably be a good time to reiterate that your items will not be reserved (=removed from site) without multiple advance warnings onsite and via email.)

Of course, the ever-increasing number of daily sales has also done its part to drive down listing counts. And we don't think that is such a bad thing!

What's Next?

Our focus over the next couple months will be to flesh out Bonanzle with an emphasis on building a buyer shopping experience that is tailored around the type of item the buyer is shopping for (OK, I admit that is a bit purposely vague. But we don't want to ruin all the intrigue. This is going to be a very big deal). We think that giving buyers an experience that is memorable is the key to driving return traffic, and return traffic is the key to making strategies like marketing/advertising become financially viable.

We also intend to work with development partners to help create something akin to a Bonanzle "Apps Marketplace," where buyers and sellers can use helpful Bonanzle "add-ons" that enhance their experience without cluttering the main site. These add-ons could, for example, provide a custom shipping calculator tailored to a seller's needs. Or help a seller to track and optimize their ranking within Google Product search. Or help sellers build custom websites with their own shopping cart. With a functional version of Bonapitit driving third-party application development, we might never have to rely on our own creativity again.

P.S. Obligatory plug: Are you a new Bonanzler? Have you signed up for the Bonanzle Newsletter yet? Well, you should. It's more fun than playing with a barrel of monkeys and Adam Sandler at Disneyland. Click here if you'd like to give it a shot.

Eat it up, nerds! Bonapitit beta is now available

This evening we are very excited to debut the beta version of Bonapitit, the Bonanzle API (Bonapitit is a play on words, see? "Bon" like Bonanzle, "API" like this is our API)

This API will allow third party developers to create applications that tie into Bonanzle. These applications could vary from an iPhone application to a desktop program for managing your inventory to a mobile app for tracking your sales... or any number of endless other possibilities. Every application will have the potential to generate revenue from affiliate commissions, usage fees, advertising revenues, or whatever other creative avenues the developers can think up.

Given the existing ecosystem of hundreds of applications that have already been written for eBay, we decided to design our API in such a way that these applications can start working with Bonanzle given the minimum possible effort. In our API documentation, we have created a page specifically to answer questions for developers who have existing eBay applications that they want to update to work with Bonanzle. It isn't hard.

Currently available in Bonapitit are methods that allow developers to get full search results from the entire site or a specific booth; or get full details about a particular item, booth, or user. A list of our currently implemented methods is available in the documentation.

If you're a developer, apply today at api.bonanzle.com and get an early mover advantage on your competition. In the next week, we're planning to continue to advance Bonapitit by adding a collection of methods that, given user consent, allow a developer to add or edit items, as well as list recent sales information. Delicioso!

Bonanzle 100k Essays: Winner jsgeare

Lo and behold, for we have at last come bearing the winning essay for the Bonanzle 100k Users Contest!

Big congrats to jsgeare for his free year long membership!

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Bonanzle – The Best News in Personal Ecommerce

      On the facts alone, Bonanzle is good news for sellers who need an Internet store but have neither the time, money nor expertise to build a site or subscribe to a service. Many members say that if they did, in fact, design a site from scratch, they would have created something like Bonanzle.

      Bonanzle is “free” in many ways; free to list being the most obvious. But buyers and sellers are also free to establish their enterprise as they see fit. Such controls as exist are quite broad and allow for individual adaptation. Buyers and sellers may openly negotiate with one another to strike a deal that’s right for both. These facts and others make Bonanzle a rational and even inspiring alternative to other forms of an Internet “presence.”

      The facts alone are important, but not as important as the “quality of experience” at Bonanzle. Freedom to create and run a site, plus direct support by the owners have, not surprisingly, drawn over 100,000 members to Bonanzle in its first year. While members are unique when it comes to seller style and products offered, most all members also share in common the passion to succeed and to operate without confusing rules or procedures in their pursuit of success.

      At first, it may seem surprising that such a vast number of members deliberately choose to help others become successful, whether the help is a small technical fix or a broad marketing strategy. Newcomers, especially, benefit from an active user community whose combined wisdom and passion to succeed serve both to enable and inspire. Why are the members like that –why do they help each other? The more successful could just as well take advantage the less successful; the forums could simply be a mouth piece for mean-spirited expressions of distrust or degrading commentary. Why not stick your foot out and trip someone if it moves you ahead a little bit? Isn’t that human nature?

      The truth is that the “nature” of any human reflects, to some extent, the other people around that human. Bonanzle calls out the best in us because our instinct to be supportive is rewarded more richly than our greed. Each of us discovers what we are really like when we are, in fact, given the opportunity to be who we truly are. And what we are “like” is good news.

      And yet better news: given the freedom to be who we are, Bonanzle is truly the work of our own hands. Members have an opportunity not just to buy and sell, but to build the very space ( a “web space,” as it happens) in which we do business and interact with each other. What the world at large sees and experiences at Bonanzle is exactly what we create for them.

      Yet more good news: if who we are is a good thing, then who we can become is even better. The owners and operators of Bonanzle (affectionately known as “the boyz” to the membership) proclaim and do actually pursue the idea that simple is better. But with that comes a challenge to the members: Rather than pay high fees to support the owners’ ideas about marketing the site on behalf of all of us, it is up to us, the members, to promote ourselves. As each of us learns –and often struggles- to use search engine optimization and in all other ways to hang out our shingles, we truly become more skilled at what we do; we become better entrepreneurs. From a Google ranking to handing out business cards, we learn new skills; we expend our time, money and energy. This is exactly the situation we would face by going it alone. Bonanzle, however, provides not just the tools of promotion, but also the instructions on how to use them. And then, experienced and expert members help make it all work. Our success, accordingly, is truly earned, truly shared.

      The effect of our combined promotional activities is a stunning presence –but not an annoying saturation- of the world around us. The most sophisticated, expensive marketing strategy could not possibly deliver as credible a message about Bonanzle as do we, the constituents, deliver. Again, we become more effective entrepreneurs, cooperatively building an enterprise.

      This article is being written as Bonanzle prepares to welcome its 100,000th member. In time, sheer size and popularity will make the very word, “Bonanzle” more widely known. Members will benefit more and more from the site’s size. But the attraction to Bonanzle will also and will always be the “quality of experience.” The variety of goods, various styles of presentation, personalities, easy communication, convenient and fast buying and selling –all are the result of what the first 100,000 have made it.

      The first 100,000 may take satisfaction in knowing that each has contributed not just to the financial success of Bonanzle, but also to its character and to its style. If Bonanzle is a good work, then it is so because each of us has had a hand in it.

      If I seem to have over-looked some praise for Bill, Mark, Tom and the others who design, maintain, develop and support this “destination for everything but the ordinary,” let me simply add this: Leaders of every stripe tend to attract people like themselves, and the best leaders tend to be spend time with their constituents. The direct and personal involvement of the management here does not just create a sense of goodwill. Rather, the effective leaders here, and everywhere, take instruction from those they serve by listening and learning. While “the boyz” may justly be given credit for Bonanzle as a technical achievement, we should take the greatest comfort from their keen understanding of people. The evidence of their discernment is the 100,000 who have so profoundly affirmed the owners’ insight.

      Bonanzle, therefore, stands out as the most convincing evidence that ecommerce venues may actually serve the needs of thousands, and do it one person at a time. The mixture of insight, technical savvy, enlightened ownership and inspired, supportive members has come together to produce a true virtual “place.” The explosive growth with no loss of quality of experience is the staggering testimony that the creators, and that each of us, really got it right.

      Bonanzle, therefore, is not merely the latest news in personal ecommerce. It is, arguably, the best news, as well.

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Trying to pick between this insightful, well-rationed piece, with its many qualifiers, and thus, many commas, owing to its deliberate, tone, vs. a fun+fanciful story like momspennies was a bit of choice between apples and oranges. And I happen to love both apples

and

oranges. But ultimately we tipped this way since this essay captures what we believe to be the essence of Bonanzle: a place built by community, where people help one another and everybody comes out ahead.

Server Hiccup

Update 4AM PST: Alright, the rogue server is back up with some new hardware and cables. Hopefully this time for good! Backlogged batch edits, ebay imports and such are now being processed.

At about 6pm tonight one in our cluster of servers (that's right, cluster! Aren't we the professional website?) gave up the ghost. This server was responsible for many things, including sending email, caching pages to make them faster, and doing everything that happens asynchronously (IM chatting, big (i.e., more than 50 item) batch edits, rebuilding search indexes, and eBay imports being the most noteworthy).

We currently have our hosting company on the phone with Dell diagnosing what illness may have befallen this server that we can get it up soon. In the meantime, I've setup a backup mail server to keep emails flowing. However, you'll still notice some weirdnesses here and there, like Bonanza items being missing from the top of the Buy page and people lists being absent from the bottom of the People page. And big batch edits won't process for the time being (though all the batch edits, ebay imports and everything else you submit is saved and will be run as soon as the server is back online).

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up about this. We have various backup plans brewing if the server can't be brought up by tomorrow morning, but hopefully Dell will be able to get this one figured out.

Bonanzle 100k Essays: Runner Up Momspennies

Slightly late, but I have arrived with the runner up in "Best Bonanzle Essay," as judged by your esteemed panel of Citychic, Witches Britches, Diaperchef, and yours truly.

"Runner-up," you ask? Yes, we hadn't planned to have a runner-up essay, but there were so many good ones that we simply couldn't agree upon a single winner. Thus, we present you this runner-up essay today, and we will publish the winner here in the next couple days.

Enjoy!

ONCE UPON A TIME…IN A LAND FAR, FAR AWAY, lived a geeky young prince named William (Bill) Harding.

Prince William loved playing royal games all day, and even made up a few of his own. Then one day, he turned one of those games into a kingdom he called BONANZLE.

With the help of his valiant knight Mark Dorsey, they worked tirelessly to design their game to be simple and easy to use. As the word got out amongst the villagers, more and more folks decided they wanted to play too. So the Boyz invited them to participate in the very beginning while the game was still being developed. These folks were very brave and full of hope and inspiration for a better kingdom, different from whence they came. Soon, more folks came from far and wide, through the word of mouth that was getting out about this new kingdom. Many left their homes behind and set up camps out in the lush green forests of Bonanzle.com. Each told their stories to others about what they had experienced in the past and how Bonanzle was like a breath of fresh air!

Prince William knew he had a hit on his hands…he gazed out of his castle window each day and watched the masses come in droves. This further inspired him to continue to work tirelessly on this new game and add more and more features to the kingdom that would enhance the Bonanzle experience. Combining a social network for his new subjects added a dimension not seen anywhere before, at least not one with such favorable frolicking and celebration for their fellow subjects. The laughter and excitement became almost infectious, and soon the talk turned to ways to get the word out to other kingdoms so they too could leave the overcrowded and over-run forests they lived in. Many were afraid to battle the demons of the dark and the dragons they had to slay on the way to Bonanzle.com. Those that made it wore their badge of honor proudly and committed to reach out to others so they too could reach the other side.

Sir Mark continued to work right along side Prince William and as the game expanded, they looked for someone else who had also worked tirelessly to help build the kingdom. They found one in their court jester, named Tom-Tom. Tom-Tom kept the subjects laughing with his antics and antidotes and helped to calm the folks who needed a bit more help learning how to play the game. Folks who were once quiet and timid began to emerge from their shells and started yelling “Let the Auctions and the Games Begin”! Bonanzle.com has grown into a fun social networking spot where folks now come to sell their wares and socialize with their neighboring subjects. In the cool shade of the forest, you see the numerous booths that have been set up where these folks chat, buy, and sell day and night...safe from the dragons and demons that Prince William slays on a daily basis. There was even a huge vulture that appeared in the middle of the night, ready to drop down on some unsuspecting member. But Sir Mark zapped him in mid-air while the Prince was asleep. POOF! And the vulture vanished into thin air.

On the other side of the mountains was a kingdom ruled by Prince Williams’ old childhood friend Lord Yeba. Lord Yeba played games by his own rules as he saw fit, and changed them on his unsuspecting servants relentlessly. When Lord Yeba saw his people leaving in droves, he laughed and said “They’ll be back”! But he was wrong and he watched nervously as more and more of them ran toward the lush green forests of Bonanzle.com

Some of Lord Yebas’ most trusted knights tried to infiltrate the crowds and convince them to stay where they were. But the brave subjects had had enough and continued on their journey, and once arriving, were greeted by many who had gone before them, with lots of help along the way to build their own booths and join in on all the fun.

And so the frolicking and dancing and singing continues amongst the folks of Bonanzle.com. They invite you to come and join in with them, and bring a few friends along. This wonderful little kingdom, built from a dream of One is quickly becoming a dream of many. As more and more arrive, the community grows with new and varied offerings sure to please even the most discerning patrons of Lord Yeba.

Come breathe in the fresh air of Bonanzle and find everything but the ordinary to entertain your mind, body, and spirit. You may have to slay a few dragons along the way, but once you’ve arrived, you’ll live HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Stay tuned for more of the story, as the fair maidens of Bonanzle search for the geeky Prince Harding and try lure him away from his life’s passion to frolic and dance with them in the lush green forests of Bonanzle .com

Who will he choose to be his queen?
That remains to be seen!

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Good job, great creativity, momspennies! Your characterization of "Prince" William gives me a good chuckle, at least you got the "geeky" part out of the way right off the bat. :)

Google Base Update

Update 9/30: Two more notes on this! The first is that, as you have probably noticed, we've added to the "My Bonanzle" page a fairly detailed FAQ on all issues pertaining to the Google Base transition. It's under "Popular Links" (or somesuch) near the middle of the page. Note number two is that, after much tinkering, I have finally uncovered a way to work around the error that was preventing the last 10% of our booths from being registered. The remaining booths are being registered for Base as I write this, within the next day or so their items should all be online. All that leaves is creating a means so that you can get stats on your Google Base items. After the initial transition traffic downturn, we've recovered to the point that we now have more traffic coming in than before the Google Base transition (and that's before the last 10% of booths are online), and Google Checkout reviews are being associated with Bonanzle sellers that signed up for Google Checkout. All good things.

Update 9/24: Good progress in the last couple days! We're back up to about 90% of our pre-transition traffic volume, and about 90% of our feeds have been published. We're still waiting on a couple minor tweaks from Google so that we can post the last 10% of booths; I'm also going to be fixing a bug on our side tomorrow that caused a few booths to have their items switched around. But all in all, with Google's help, we're blazing the trail toward being what I believe is the first marketplace to get subaccounts setup and wholly working. I'm expecting that in the next week or two we should be able to add the functionality to see some stats on your feed. Oh, and to those that have been asking about how often the feed will be updated: whenever one of your items changes (either by you updating your booth, or by you selling items)

Update 9/20: We're still sitting at around 75-80% of feeds uploaded. The remaining booths are being worked through with the help of Google. We've also observed that the search placement for many items seems to have lowered from what it had been prior to the update; we are attempting to get further information on this. Being that I believe we may be the first Google client using seller sub-accounts in this manner, it will surely be an iterative process to get everything up and going smoothly, but I'll continue to post updates here as we receive them. Thanks again for your patience!

Update 9/18 10PM: Now about 70% of feeds are uploaded, about 60% have been processed and are back online. We're still working with Google to evaluate if the items are being placed as they should relative to the comparable items. Hopefully we'll hear more back from them after the weekend. In the meantime, you can visit the "My Bonanzle" page to see when your feed was last sent to Google. If it is 9/17 or 9/18, then chances are it should only be a matter of time until you're back in Product search. I'll keep updating this as developments unfold in the processing and optimization of the transitioned items. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, we've been strapped to our computers the last couple days trying to get all the loose ends wrinkled out for the new-style feeds. (If you hadn't noticed on the changelist, you can now exclude your booth from having its items sent to Google on the Sell -> Advanced Options page, if you please).

Update 9/17 4PM: Alright, thanks to Janna and the entire helpful Google Base team, booths are currently being re-uploaded to Google en masse. We've currently created & uploaded about 10% of them in the last 5 hours. If we're lucky, the GB servers might be a little speedier during non-peak hours, but if not, this would give us a worst-case scenario of all booths having their Google feed restored by around Saturday. In the meantime, we'll be adding the option to opt out of having your items syndicated to GB in the near future. Stay tuned...

Update 9/17 4AM: The creation of accounts under the Bonanzle name is now underway. We are actively working with Google to help iron a couple kinks out of the new upload process, but are optimistic that with a couple more minor modifications on their side we'll be able to get our items back up onto Google Products shortly. This will remain our top priority until it is complete.

Original post: I wanted to post a quick update with regards to our status transitioning to the Bonanzle-managed feeds for Google Base. As of last night, we have completed and tested our revised system for creating seller sub-accounts under the Bonanzle name and uploading feeds directly to Google. I have since contacted our friendly Google representative about how we can best make the transition from using individual feeds to the consolidated Bonanzle feed.

Upon receiving her response, we will do as we are told to make the transition as smooth as possible. After we begin this process, it will probably take something in the neighborhood of a couple days to actually create accounts for our 20k+ sellers and upload feeds for all of them. So, while we have completed everything necessary on our side to make this transition, there could potentially still be a few "in between" days over the next week where some items are not being submitted to Google, depending on whether Google is able to let us setup all of our seller accounts while many of the sellers still have their own accounts. I'll try to remember to post a follow up here once they clarify how exactly they want the transition to work.

Also worth noting is that, now that all feeds wil be under "Bonanzle," we have been revising our exporter to tighten up the rules for permitting items into feeds. We are striving to be a model Google citizen, so the less feeds that violate Google Program Policies, the better. Here are some of the rules you'll need to keep in mind to have your items get submitted to Google:

Item must have a category, and that category must not be vehicles, powersports, or other car-related categories (those belong in a different type of feed, which we aren't generating)
Item can not be mod chips for games, or other prohibited items as outlined in their program policies
Item title/description can not contain any foul language
Item must have shipping setup within the US ("See description" is OK, but I believe Google will rank you higher if you specify a shipping cost)
Item can not be free
If multiple items are the same except for size, only one item will be submitted

As with above, we will continue to be in touch with Google to revise or add to these rules to ensure that we are compliant with their Program Policies.

Hope this helps clear up some of the questions that have been raised about the transition. Once we hear back from Google, we plan to begin direct uploading seller feeds immediately. Within the next couple weeks, we also plan to build in the ability to receive stats and information about the status of your feed.

Milestone: 100k Users

A big thanks to everyone who has signed up over the last year to drive Bonanzle membership to 100,000 as of 3:10pm PST today. The good news is that your creative & unified efforts have driven unprecendented growth to the ranch over an incredibly short period of time. The bad news? Well, there is none yet. But we are closely charting whether, in the course of realizing further milestones, Bonanzle could inadverently become "too sweet," possibly disrupting the delicate balance of the universe. To illustrate the potential issue, we have commissioned a team of highly paid artists & scientists to create the following schematic, which meticulously details the situation as it stands. As you can see, this most recent milestone has pushed us past "ice cream" and to the cusp of a very fine line. Please be advised and stay vigilant. Thank you very much, and keep up the great work!

Introducing Booth Panels

Update: Since me and Mark's booth panels admittedly left something to be desired, here are but a few real examples of people using their booth panels for greater sales and fun. More than 100 booths setup panels just today, this is going to be great to watch evolve!

Original Blog:

We have unveiled yet another groovy feature for our "Plus" and "Premiere" subscribers this evening -- the ability to customize what shows up in your booth between the chat window and your items. Until this point, that space has been reserved for showing your location, your booth discount, your Bonanza, and your pickup times.

But now, in addition to showing those, you can also show a personalized message to your buyers and/or a picture that you upload. It's probably easier to show this than explain it, so just take a look at my booth and Mark's booth to see some absurd examples of how the new functionality could be used.

To customize your own booth panels, go to My Bonanzle -> Update Appearance (under "My booth") -> Set booth panels. There you'll be taken to a screen with instructions on how to add or modify your panels.

Since this feature is still brand spankin' new, there will probably be some usability issues with it initially. Amongst the known issues with it, it doesn't yet support reordering of the panels or uploading images if you're using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 (we hope to get that fixed soon, but Internet Explorer is notorious for making complicated tasks difficult). Also, in the long run we'd like to consider allowing booth panels to span the entire width of the page, but currently the rightmost area of the page is still used when a Bonanza happens, so we are limiting the booth panels to the area above the items (not above the cart).

Not a member yet but want to setup your own booth panels? Here's a link to becoming a member. In addition to booth panels, you'll get all sorts of other features to enhance your booth, including detailed statistics from Google Analytics and the ability to customize the order your booth items are sorted in.

We're looking forward to seeing some of the creative uses for these panels that our sellers will come up with!

Big Google Announcement

Sellers of the world, rejoice! Google today announced that they are going to begin offering support for marketplaces to manage their sellers feeds directly. You can read all about it at the Google Base Blog. This will allow us to eliminate one of the most tedious processes that our new sellers had to endure upon setting up their booths.

We plan to support this new process as soon as possible, hopefully automating submission of all Google Base accounts within the next 2-4 weeks. We'll make an announcement once the final changeover has been made.

Note that, even after the change, your product search attributes (as derived from your item traits or set manually) will continue to earn you greater traffic volumes for your Bonanzle items.

Bottom line: no action is required by you. But we wanted to let everybody know that within a few weeks time you should no longer have to worry about the hassle of submitting and maintaining your Google Base items. Hooray for Google!

Goo-goo, gah-gah. We're One!

That's right -- it was one year ago today (September 3) that we dropped the "beta" label and officially became "Bonanzle." Slogan: Real People. Real Deals. Real Time. Can I get a witness? Anyone remember back that far?

No? Well, me neither. But this blog remembers. Ah, how times change...

We stopped being entirely free. We were welcoming our 1,000th user (scurvydog). And we recently reached 10,000 items. Ahhh, weren't we just awdoh-able?

Exhibit 1: Cheetah. Would probably be faster on ice skates. But still not as fast as Bonanzle improves.

Those were the days. But no need to reminisce about milestones past, for we have one nearly upon us with our 100,000th user set to sign up at some point in the next few weeks. There will be pomp. There will be circumstance. And there will even be a contest with a free one year premiere membership, courtesy of Augenti Law.

To get more details about the contest, sign up for the Bonanzle newsletter. Not only will we have the link to the contest in there, but If Arlene's last newsletter was any indicator, this may quite possibly be the most amusing email that arrives in your inbox for the day.

What to expect for year two?

Year one was just a warm up round for what we're planning to bring you this year. We believe that the top reason to make Bonanzle your marketplace home is our commitment to improving faster than a cheetah on ice skates (don't imagine it, just go with your gut here... cheetahs are fast, and anything on ice skates is faster). In the next few weeks, we'll be releasing our Bonanzle API, which will allow third-party developers to create nifty stuff like iPhone apps, desktop software, Facebook apps, or browser plugins that interface with Bonanzle. I believe we will be the first marketplace outside of the Old Guard to offer a full-featured developer API.

After that, we have our sights set on October as the month we will begin development on the next generation of Bonanzle, for hopeful release by late October or early November. Expect to hear more around that time about how we plan to offer buyers an experience worth writing home about.

This message made possible by you.

Sometimes I feel a bit like a broken record saying it, but we would like to again thank the many buyers and sellers that have propelled us to such remarkable growth over such a short time span. From those 1,000 people that were signed up when we dropped the "beta," to those that signed up this week, our success is nothing more than the accumulation of everybody working together to help each other in the forums, create stunning hand picked lists, and list merchandise that buyers can't help but buy. We are truly grateful for the opportunity we've been given to deliver a product that serves nearly one million different people every month, and we pledge to continue working hard in year two to see that "we make shopping fun" can be more than an overused marketing slogan.

Bonanzle on the Move

Update: And we're back! As of about 7am PST. It occurs to me that "pulling an all-nighter" when I was a youngster had a much more carefree feel about it than this adult version of the same event. But in any case, our servers have migrated north, and are now (mostly) online. As promised earlier, the site will probably be up and down throughout Tuesday as we work the kinks out of our new getup. In addition to moving networks, we've also upgraded the memory in two of our four servers and added a new load balancer, so there is much to be tinkered before we're running more smoothly than we had been. The good news is that, after getting our configuration right, this setup is going to increase our speed and stability across the board. So thanks for your patience while we Bonanzle back to that buttery smoothness we've all come to love. I'll try to post some pictures of the trip later.

P.S. I just rebooted the database around 8:50AM, so load times are going to be slow through probably 9:15 or so...

Update: We'll actually be taking the servers down closer to 11pm PST than 10pm PST.

A quick maintenance note: we will be switching our web host on Monday evening, which will require us to physically move our servers from one location to another and re-setup all of the connections to and between them. We're planning to start the move at 10pm PST on Monday evening, and we'll be back online sometime in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. There could quite possibly be some intermittent issues on Tuesday as we iron out any hiccups that come about as a result of the move.

On the bright side, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to finally meet our servers face-to-face. Though these servers and I have had an intense online relationship going for more than a year now, they've been computing away in Portland, OR while I've been stuck up in Seattle, wondering if the time would ever be right for a real life encounter. Now that it's settled and we have a date set to meet up, I've got to come up with something charming to say when I meet them. Like, maybe, "Was your daddy a hacker? Cuz I think you just overclocked my heart." Or, perhaps, "If I had a nickel for every time I met a server that ran as hot as you, I'd have five cents."

Wish me luck...

The Bonanzle Affiliates Program

The General Idea

At long last, it has arrived! The Bonanzle Affiliates Program (aka the Bonanzle "Syndicated Seller" Program) will provide our sellers a golden opportunity to leverage Bonanzle's ridiculously low fees to boost buyer traffic to their items. Here's how it works:

Let's say you have a set of golf clubs you want to sell for $100. Normally, Bonanzle would charge you $5 when you sell your golf clubs. But let's say you're willing to pay $10 to see them sold. The Syndicated Seller program can take that extra $5 use it to tempt blogs and web sites to send new buyers to your items.

Who could forget the fabulous prizes from our last contest? Sign up for our newsletter now and don't miss out.

If a buyer finds the item while browsing through Bonanzle, you still pay just $5. But if a third-party web site or blog (aka an "affiliate") sends the buyer who buys your golf clubs, you pay the full $10 that you bid.

Put another way, Syndicated Sellers get all of the benefits of selling their items at one of the best priced marketplaces online, but they also get the benefits of selling at a more expensive mainstream marketplace, where the 10-15% fees charged are used to pay third parties to refer traffic to their sites. But when you start earning return buyers, should you really have to pay a 15% fee to a marketplace for those buyers? We think not. And that's why we think becoming a Syndicated Seller is a great opportunity for sellers (who only pay when an affiliate helps them) and affiliates (who get paid more per transaction, because Bonanzle isn't hogging all the moolah).

Ready to learn more and sign up? Here's where to go.

The Contest

One of the litmus tests we use when gauging where to prioritize the assortment of Bonanzle-first features we could implement is "How long might it be until this idea starts getting copied?" If it's likely to get copied quickly, we want to get it into our seller's hands as quickly as possible. So how long do you suppose it will take until a "name your referral fee" model begins to proliferate amongst other marketplaces? In the next couple days, we're planning to start a contest to see who can guess which site will be the first to copy "name your own referral fee" item syndication, and how long it will take them to copy it. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter if you'd like to participate -- the prize is sure to be fabulous.

I Like to Read Long Blog Posts, Can You Please Blabber Away Some More?

You bet! Here are some more Q&A details about the Syndicated Seller and Bonanzle Affiliates program.

What's the difference between a "Syndicated Seller" and a "Bonanzle Affiliate?" A "Syndicated Seller" is a Bonanzle seller who has signed up to offer referral fees when their items sell to a buyer who was referred via a Bonanzle Affiliate. A "Bonanzle Affiliate" is a web site or blog that has signed up to receive commissions when they refer paying buyers to Bonanzle items. You can sign up as a Syndicated Seller here or as a Bonanzle Affiliate here.

Can a Syndicated Seller also be a Bonanzle Affiliate? Technically, yes, but do you really want to pay commission fees to yourself? The only circumstances under which you, as a seller, would benefit from being a Bonanzle Affiliate is if you have a web site and you plan to refer your visitors to the items of other Bonanzle sellers. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can sign up at our Affiliates site.

Does the Bonanzle Affiliates Program affect anything about my shopping experience on Bonanzle? No. Whether you are a Syndicated Seller or not has no bearing on search results or any aspect of the experience people will have when they're shopping at your Bonanzle store. The only difference is that our affiliates will send more buyers directly to your items.

When I sign up as a Syndicated Seller, how many more sales will I make? At first, probably not very many, because it will take time for us to build our network of Affiliate Partners. But in the long run, depending on what you offer as a referral fee, the sky's the limit for how this might affect your buyer traffic.

I Have More Questions. What Do I Do? Try reading our Syndicated Seller FAQ. That ought to set you straight.

And In Other News...

Thank you to everyone who applied for our Twitterer and Newsletter positions. We've gotten a great response and a number of excellent applications for both positions. After days of careful evaluation, we have chosen Bonanzle old-timer attheboutique to be our official Twitterer. Everyone who has had the fortune to cross Phaedra's path since she's been here knows that she's the embodiment of professionalism. But what you might not know is that she's also an entertaining Tweetaholic that ought to give a real jolt to the crusty ol' Bonanzle Twitter feed. Let's give the lady a hand! And if you haven't already, follow the Bonanzle Twitter account, it's about to get interesting. For reals this time.

We still have yet to settle on our newsletter writer yet, but expect to hear more news on that in the next few days.