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The Bonanzle Marketing Checklist, Part 2

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Promoting Your Bonanzle Booth Online

A walk-through on the items listed in the Bonanzle Marketing Checklist to help those who could use a hand getting through it.

Covered topics include inviting friends and customers, adding email signatures, business cards, forum advertising, everyplacecell, various networking sites, and the bonanzle promotional forums.

Fill up that green bar and start seeing more people looking at your items!

Invite your friends and previous customers to shop with you

Use email, social networking, and word of mouth!

Friends
Yes, your friends...well, those that might be interested in whatever it is you are selling.

Previous Customers
Definitely let people who have previously purchased from you know where you are and how to look you up. Don't spam em, just send out a quick hello and let them know where you are these days.

Adding an Incentive
With bonanzle, you can create coupon codes. Just log in, select "sell", select "advanced options", then go down to the coupon section and enter a code and discount.

Send it out to previous customers and friends who might be interested and let them know how long it is good for.

Sending email
Email is a good way to get hold of people...if you have their email addresses.

Social Networking Tools
For those people who you do not have email addresses for, be sure to put up links on any social networking sites, blogs, etc. that you have a presence on. That way, people who stumble upon them can find your new venue.

Word of Mouth and Clumsiness
And of course, as you meander through life and meet people who might be interested in what you are doing be sure to let them know where to find your little online stake at.

If you printed up "business" cards ( not what I call mine as I don't technically run a business ), don't be clumsy and drop them in random places...or you might end up with new customers. Especially don't drop them where people who might be interested in what you are selling might find them...

The Email Signature

and Web Links and Social Network Links!

Your email signature
An email signature can be many things. If you are serious about selling, you should consider adding a link to your site to the end of your emails. In most modern email programs you can setup a "signature" which will automatically be appended to the end of your emails.

If you are not sure how to go about doing so, look for the help file in your email and search for "signature".

A separate email
Of course, it is typically a good idea to have a special email address for trading. That way you can keep email concerning sales and such separate from personal email.

Myself, I like to have a private email address for friends and family ( well, friends mostly ), a trader email address for selling, marketing, etc., a spam email address for signing up with various things online, and a few other email addresses just in case.

One nice thing about an email address as a trader is that when you send people notices to let them know that their item(s) have shipped out, you are also giving them a way to find you again in the future.

Web Links and Social Network Tools
In addition to email, if you have a web presence anywhere, be sure to put up links to your selling venue(s). More incoming links from outside domains is better...as is the ability for someone who finds your site to find what you sell.

Business Cards

And don't forget your fliers!

The Business Card
A business card ( or at least something that looks like one and serves the purpose ) is a great tool in many ways. If you have a printer, a computer, and a few dollars, you can print your own cards quickly, easily, and cheaply.

Most people think of them as something primarily used when two people meet up, exchange information, etc. If you are not sure why you might want a business card, then you aren't yet thinking about them hard enough.

Into the Mail
Whenever you send something out, add a card ( or two! ). With bonanzle, you might even print a promo code on the card so that anyone that finds you through one of your cards can use the code to buy from you and get a discount of some sort.

Including more than one for the off chance that they like your service so much they would be willing to recommend you to someone else. Giving the extra card costs very little and makes it that much easier for them to recommend you to friends.

Oops! I'm so clumsy!
Being so very expensive, be absolutely sure that you do not waste any cards. What would people think if you were occasionally dropping cards at the big chain giants that you compete with?

As I tend to sell primarily odds and ends, books, comics, and such, I make sure not to drop cards anywhere that someone interested in such items might find them.

The forgotten bookmark
No matter what you are into, there is probably a book on the subject. It is because of this very fact that the public library makes a fairly good place to find new customers.

  1. Put on your dark shades, trench coat, and top hat. ( or a ninja suit if that's more your style )

  2. Stock up on business cards

  3. Infiltrate nearby public libraries

  4. Slip your calling card into various books related to the things you offer.

  5. Exit stage left, avoiding the menacing security guard who sits half asleep near the exit



Taverns and Store Boards
Depending on where you live, there might be various taverns, cafes, and stores with boards for putting cards or fliers up. Ask the proprietors if they mind having your card up with the rest. Most won't mind at all. Sometimes you might even find the proprietor interested in what you have.

The friend of the card, The Flier
Like a card, a flier can be quite useful. I tend to use them in place of cards for posting to local public boards and sending to people who pick things up from me.

If you cannot afford a good graphics program, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of The GIMP (otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program) and play around with it a bit. Most of the power of those horribly expensive programs, none of the cost.

Forum advertising for fun and profit

Goodwill goes a long ways

Forum Advertising
Forum advertising is the fine art of advertising via forums without getting banned, shunned, or worse.

Ideal forums
Ideally, you want to sell things you are interested in and find forums that you might be interested in being part of. If you found this lens, it is probably because you were on the bonanzle forums looking for an answer to some question.

Help, don't spam
Some people just jump into a forum and start placing links to their store or web site for no apparent reason. While that is just fine for forums that are set up for that, it normally is considered to be spam and will get you warned or banned.

Rather than just post links to your sites or stores, it is far better to simply take part in conversations and/or answer peoples questions. If you are fairly interested in something, chances are that you are also fairly knowledgeable about that topic. Help those less familiar with the things you know and put the information they seek at their fingertips.

You might even (hint, hint) create lenses talking about the things you are interested in then browse forums and post answers to questions that your lenses answer along with a link to said lenses in case they want more information.

Interlinking
In addition to posting to forums, you might consider interlinking pages you refer people to. For example, if you have your own site and create FAQs about different things to refer people to, be sure to put links to other related FAQs as well as magazines or books on related topics and/or links to your store.

If you can find affiliate links to such materials, all the better. Just don't refer people to go buy things you are unfamiliar with unless you want to risk getting a bad reputation. Personally, I won't recommend anything to someone else unless I have tried it and found it to be quite good.

EveryPlaceSell.com

What? Aren't you on Bonanza to sell?

What it is
EveryPlaceISell.com is place where you can register and setup all of your selling venues.

The benefit to you
EveryPlaceISell offers a place where those who buy from you can go to see all of your venues and look over all of the items you have available at them.

I really cannot say much more than that as I looked over their legal terms and conditions and decided that I wasn't really interested in such a deal.

However, a lot of people say they are great, so if you don't mind their terms and conditions, you might want to get an account with them and get it set up.

Other sites - Squidoo

Hey wait, that's what you are reading now!

Share your knowledge
If you are selling things you have an interest in, it is quite likely that you have more knowledge concerning them than the average man or woman.

Because of that, squidoo can be an excellent way to share your knowledge while advertising your own items and even making a bit of extra cash on occasion.

Some ideas for lens creation
You might start by simply making a lens that talks about your interest in the types of items that you sell, talks about your selling venues, and gives people insight into who they are dealing with.

Alternatively, you might start by creating lenses out of the blue that you think would be interesting to others. Depending on how many people are looking for what you are sharing, this can work quite well.

Another idea is to look to find questions that you can answer, but not in two to three sentences, put together a lens answering the question(s), sharing any extra related insight, etc. From there, answer the question(s) on the forum and link to your lens ( or, if that is not allowed, put the lens in your profile or something ).

As similar questions crop up over time, you can tweak your lens to answer them as well and do the same thing. This keeps you working on your lenses and getting people to them.

Of course, whether you do one or more of the above, you might want to be sure to slip a link into your selling venue while doing so, at least on lenses where doing so makes sense.

If you answer a lot of related questions, be sure to use the lensroll to link them together. You do this by going to one of your lenses and then finding the "lensroll" button in the right hand side ( in view mode ). Select that and then choose the lenses you want to add your lens to. Once done, that lens will show up linked to the chosen lenses on the right side in a section titled "Your Name recommends...".

You can also add a featured lens widget and populate it with related lenses.

Other Sites - Plumdrop.com

A strange, though interesting sort of place

What is Plumdrop.com?
Well, at first I was not quite sure myself. I went ahead and joined as I saw a few people in the Bonanzle forums talking about it and figured I would see what the hype was about.

What is in it for you?
Well, once you sign up, you can place your various venues up for others to see.
Additionally, you can join various groups, find other sellers and see what they offer, befriend other sellers, rate their stores, post blog entries, and a variety of other things that I am still exploring.

Deals
With plumdrop, you can setup deal alerts for plumdrop users looking for deals.
To do so, just log in, select "my account", and then select "deals".

From there, enter in the details of your deal ( coupon or discount ) for all plumdrop users to see. I put one up for fun. Good stuff.

A store blog
If you do not already have a blog or do not yet have a blog setup for your store, you might choose to simply use the blog provided with a plumdrop account as your store blog.

For me, this is nice as I can post quick blog updates here and there without having to either take the time to setup a second blog or clutter my primary day to day blog with random selling related information that has nothing at all to do with the main topics of my blog.

A blog can be an excellent way to give people more information about something as well as a tool to help get a bit more traffic from search engines.

More to come
More to come once I have had some more time to play around with it.
So far I would have to say that it looks to be a great place. Give it a try ( and a couple of days ) and see what you think.

Aha! And what is this?
View My Plumdrop Profile!

The Bonanzle Promotional Forums

Yet more forum madness

Where are these promotional forums?
The Bonanzle promotional forums are the designated forum to promote your booth.
You can reach them by simply selecting "People", then "Discussion Boards", then "Promote Your Booth".

My initial bit of self promotion is shown above.

Some ideas
Keep a threat for promoting your shop and update it when you do anything related to it, whether it be adding a bunch of new items, schedule a bonanza, alter shipping costs, or even do some outside writing which is relevant to your booth.

By updating one thread, you keep things neat and have a history of what you have been up to which you can look at as time passes to see how you have progressed...especially if you make time in it to note when you have reached new milestones ( maybe posting a certain number of items, making your first sale, making X sales, making X sales in a timeframe, getting X views, etc...whatever floats your boat that might be interesting to look back at during those times when it feels like you are not making any progress ).

To be able to quickly find your primary promo thread each day, be sure to bookmark it in your browser or with delicious.com. Personally, I like to bookmark store related sites with delicious so that people searching delicious for things might stumble across links to my booth and check them out.

Serious Reading for Further Ideas

Good ideas, free of charge

As much as we try to cover everything, there is always something we have not considered.

As you have time, consider giving the following eBooks a quick read as they might provide some insights that you had not considered before.
101 SuperTips by Harvey Segal
A variety of basic marketing ideas
Forum Marketing Supertips by Harvey Segal
Some good tips related to marketing on forums.
Viral Marketing by Harvey Segal
A free introduction to the idea of viral marketing.
And no, it is not marketing via a virus.

Sharing ideas, tips, and tricks

Recently, Bonanzle started a new piece to help out sellers called the Booth Optimization Project.

Currently, they are looking for people to submit articles on the following topics:

  • Overview of the tools available to help sellers price their items

  • How to frame a product photo

  • Increased sales through effective use of booth chatting

  • How to effectively use Facebook as a promotion channel

  • How to effectively use Twitter as a promotion channel

  • How to have a successful Bonanza

  • How to promote your online store in the real world

  • Best ways to make use of your Bonanzle subscribing membership

  • Where are the best places to promote for a given category of item?

  • High effectiveness, general purpose ways to grow booth traffic


So if you have ideas on these things, be sure to check the project out and contribute. From the sounds of it, they are looking for all kinds of articles, but the above ones are those they are specifically looking for.

More Bonanzle Related Lenses

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Find this information helpful?

Consider helping me out!

If you found the information on this lens helpful, please consider dropping by my Bonanzle Booth and seeing what I have available.

If you find something you like, but don't really have the cash on hand to pick something up, consider picking up a $10 coupon and using it to pick up what you are interested in...absolutely free. Full information on how this works is found on my squidoo booth lens.

And if you know someone who might be interested in what I offer, please consider passing the word along. By letting friends know about booths that they might be interested in, we can get more people to become aware of Bonanzle while helping them to find cheaper ways to acquire what they are looking for!

Any questions?

Ask and I will answer as best I can.

  • LibertyUnchained Apr 10, 2009 @ 8:43 pm | in reply to kayceestudios | delete
    Many thanks. I'll have to make note of that and update my Bonanzle links accordingly.
  • kayceestudios Apr 10, 2009 @ 5:33 pm | delete
    Again, a very well-thought-out and and nicely written piece. I might add that you can use the Bonanzle referral link as a link, too, then you get some credit for new users. Just add on "?referred_by_user_id=XXXX" (where XXXX is your Bonanzle member number, you can see it at the end of your profile URL. Mine is 6538, for example.) to the end of any Bonanzle-related URLs and it should work. To directly sign up new users it would look something like this: http://www.bonanzle.com/users/new?referred_by_user_id=6538
  • LibertyUnchained Apr 1, 2009 @ 8:42 pm | delete
    Thank you! Much appreciated. If you see anything that isn't clear enough, is confusing, or is otherwise unhelpful, be sure to let me know and I'll update as I have time. Be well!
  • sellingnicestuff Apr 1, 2009 @ 8:37 pm | delete
    A "must" read for all new Bonanzle sellers. Outstanding information!
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LibertyUnchained

I am the stay at home father of two and spend my free time studying mostly law and sales related topics.
I started out simply looking for ways to mak... more »

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