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My New Booth At Bonanzle

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AvocadoLane is the name of my new booth at Bonanzle

For those of you who have already read this lens please skip to the end as my views of this endeavor have changed greatly since I started this lens in 2008.

This lens is to talk about my new experience with looking for cool places to sell online and finding the best most simple place to do so. Bonanzle is the height of simplicity for selling online. I literally had a booth up and running within an hour.

When I first arrived at Bonanzle through an invite from a friend, I was wary of yet another online selling site, but within an hour or so of signing up (which is free) to investigate I knew it was a place I wanted to try.

The community support from the owners of the site and from the great members was very inspiring. I contacted Bonanzle for support over a mistake I made setting up my account and received personal help and resolution of the problem within the hour. That was a first!!

If you are looking to get started selling online for the first time or if you are from another selling site and looking to spread out, then this is definitely worth looking into.

I invited a few friends to check it out and one of them contacted me within a couple of days to thank me and let me know they had made two sales already.

I set my booth up and then went to the forums to introduce myself. I was overwhelmed with the pouring out of support and visitors to my booth. One member who visited and saw that I had not put up a banner yet took the time to make one and send it to me with a nice note. Another big WOW! (This opinion has been revised at end of article)

I read somewhere that someone thought Bonanzle was just a new selling site where sellers were buying from other sellers. Well folks, I personally do not see anything wrong with that. When I joined a week ago there were about 11,000 members, and today just at a week later Bonanzle has over 13,000 members. That is a wonderful growth rate and if we are 13,000 people supporting each other and looking to buy in our own community first, then I see that as a great thing! Just imagine where we will be next month and then again next year. Well, next year is here and Bonanzle is over 140,000 members strong.

Then I hear from people that they are not able to leave other places yet. Well, there is no rule that says you have to sell on just one site. It is just not wise to "Put all of your eggs in one basket."

It is free to list on Bonanzle. You only pay very reasonable fees on the items you sell, so there is no big loss to be suffered if it turns out to be something you wish to change at a later date.

For buyers it is a wonderful place to find items at reasonable prices, and at times from sellers you have dealt with in the past in other places. I personally have found many people there who are familiar to me with whom I feel comfortable doing business with. There are many payment methods with the same security you have had in the past.

I am sure I will have additions and/or revisions to this lens in the near future as I learn and grow with Bonanzle.

Hope you enjoyed and maybe learned a bit from this lens. I have included links in this lens to the Bonanzle homepage and to my Bonanzle Booth. Hope to see you there!

Updating this lens to add that at this time 01/07/09 Bonanzle has over 18,000 members and is still rapidly growing.

January 20, 2009, Bonanzle is over 21,000 members and close to having one million items listed.

February 1, 2009 update: Bonanzle continues rapid growth with over 24,700 members and over 1 million unique items listed.

February 18, 2009: Bonanzle has 31,354 members now and continues to grow daily.

I continue to be impressed with Bonanzle. I learn new things every single day about online promotion and selling. It amazes me how the members of this site pull together to promote the site and help each other. It really is exciting to watch Bonanzle grow and to be a part of it.

April 25, 2009, Bonanzle hit 50,000 members. What a great day!

December 16, 2009, Bonanzle is over 140,000 members now and still growing strong.

May 4, 2010, Bonanzle has 246,763 members this morning and appears to still be growing strong.

Selling on Bonanzle is not so new for me anymore, however, it has been an interesting year to say the least. They have made many changes, some great ones and a few not so great ones, but overall the good has far outweighed the bad. Bonanzle still needs many improvements as of now (May 4, 2010) it still would not do as a single site for the serious seller, but is just fine as an added venue. Bonanzle just received funding to hire a few new techs/programmers and only time will tell if this brings about a smoother running site.

The checkout/invoicing systems needs to run a bit more smoothly, as it is very confusing for the sellers and buyers. We need a good shipping calculator integrated into the site. Google base submission needs to work more seemlessly and sellers need to be notified when their feeds are being rejected so they may fix them.

As a seller I would certainly like to see the site managment/owners become a bit more transparent with fixes and what is going on rather than keeping the members in the dark. I know the site is touted as being free, but the fact is it is not completely free. Once you make sales you pay a final value fee, and there are paid memberships, which once money is taken makes management a bit responsible to thier members and keeping them informed about issues and fixes which might affect their sales.

UPDATE October 28, 2010

Well here I am almost two years later and Bonanzle is now Bonanza with 381,817 members, but we have no idea how many of those are members with multiple ids, dump and runs, or just ids that have not been taken down from members who no longer use the site. The forum is a joke and very uncomfortable because it is overly censored. The checkout is still the same if not worse. The shipping calculator is still not there. Google attributes are still glitchy. The name change was done suddenly with no warning to the Bonanzle customers/sellers and has caused many to have a severe drop in views and sales just before the holiday season.

Needless to say, I no longer promote this site. I closed my main booth and will sit back to watch and see if the site improves before I invest anymore of my time into it.

God Bless

Thoughts on Bonanzle

If you are looking for an alternative site to sell I would not make Bonanzle the only one as the sales are just not happening there the way they do on eBay. It is however a great one to add to your list of venues. Bonanza in my opinion is not worth the time spent to list items. Possibly in the future they will get the kinks worked out.

Twitter AvocadoLane

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My Bonanzle Booth: This is my Bonanzle Booth. I would love to see you there.

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Jan 12, 2010 @ 1:40 am | delete

Good work keep giving us this kind of information, its very encouraging to find info that can be used to help improve my current position, keep it coming chamomile lavender peppermint bean bags

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Pacesetter Dec 16, 2009 @ 9:33 am | delete

Hello Avocado Lane, had fun going down memory lane of the last year at Bonanzle. So glad we each other to go thru these historical first years of Bonanzle. :)
Pam
Pacesetter Eclectica

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praise Jul 29, 2009 @ 1:31 am | delete

Another fine lens, will look in Bonanzle. Visit my lens at your leasure and add your Blujay store to the link. Cheers.
Debra

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ImperialDesigns Apr 6, 2009 @ 12:46 pm | delete

Yum...I just love avocados! Nice lens! Rated & rolled you. Check out mine and tell me what you think.

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milkcananime Feb 13, 2009 @ 11:26 am | delete

VERY CUTE BOOTH NAME! SUPERB LENS! 5 STARS!

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SandrasACRE Jan 29, 2009 @ 8:35 am | delete

Great lense on Bonanzle. I joined Bonanzle and love it there. Easy to list, very quick. Here is my Bonanzle: http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/SandrasaCRE.

Sandra

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envision@bonanzle Jan 29, 2009 @ 2:40 am | delete

if you're looking for a New Site to buy and sell it's Bonanzle
Collectables, antiques and rare items
Visit my booth
http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/envision
combined ship available lots of cool items
FUN FUN AND FRIENDLY PEOPLE Come VISIT, even to chat and browse :)

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Bonanzle Jan 29, 2009 @ 2:35 am | delete

http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/clothesout
for fine clothing and accessories

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EyeCatchingBeauty Jan 25, 2009 @ 10:52 am | delete

Another great Bonanzle Lens -

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Cabanalolita Jan 25, 2009 @ 8:57 am | delete

Love Bonanzle, welcome to a fun place to sell online!

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StatMan19 Feb 8, 2010 @ 6:38 pm | delete

I sell on Bonanzle as well - I sell football cards:
http://www.bonanzle.com/StatMan19

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Alilbirdy2 Jan 25, 2009 @ 8:49 am | delete

I joined Bonanzle The last week of oct. 2008. I have sold 14 items as of the writing of this message. My earnings from those sales have netted me close to 150.00 after fees were deducted. I'm glad I found Bonanzle, in the same time frame I sold zero items on my other selling sites. That says a lot right there !

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SwellStuff Jan 21, 2009 @ 10:19 am | delete

Very nicely written and well put together lens with some great links

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gemgh Jan 13, 2009 @ 6:39 am | delete

OK, I am hungry now. All those wonderful pictures. Great lens
5 stars to you....

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LouAllensEbooks Jan 11, 2009 @ 1:58 pm | delete

Cool -- another place to buy online! I've never heard of bonanzle so this is all new info for me! Thanks, awesome lens!

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CabinFeverStudios Jan 10, 2009 @ 7:57 am | delete

Woo Hoo!!! Welcome to Bonanzle and Twitter too! I wish you huge success!

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JaguarJulie Jan 6, 2009 @ 10:12 am | delete

How cool -- another place to sell online -- just learning about bonanzle. Thanks for dropping by today -- good luck with Squidoo!

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gemgh Dec 29, 2008 @ 5:33 pm | delete

WOW! Cool ideas here. Great to see a fellow writer and inspirer. Love your links. Cooking is my forte. Keeping on girl. You are doing great!