Friday, April 30, 2010

No Auctions at Bonanzle

Auctionbytes again today announced yet another interview with Bill Harding, the founder of Bonanzle

Auctions are a different beast entirely and a different model than Bonanzle. Bonanzle is just a super platform for online sellers wanting a eCommerce website. Bonanzle handles all the nitty gritty details of secure payment cart, site maintenance as well as the Google shopping feeds. Not to mention handling all site issues and tech support. Freeing up a seller to focus on what they really need to, their business.

See the article here

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Bonanzle Raises 1 Million so they can Grow

Auctionbytes news today released an article concerning Bonanzle raising $1 million dollars to Grow the Bonanzle marketplace

Bill Harding,Bonanzle Baby daddy posted about the event on the Bonanzle Blog

You go Bonanzle!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

WebSellers Circle ECMTA Summit Wrap up Report

Yesterday it was my, Judy Oglesby, bluepennylady, distinct pleasure to be part of a conference call with Phaedra Stockstill of attheboutique, hosted by Cindy Shebley of WebSellers Circle.

The topic was our take on the ECMTA Summit in Las Vegas April 2010.

If you missed the free call live, don't worry, it is available here at the WebSellers Circle

It was a really fun time and good to reflect back on the things Phaedra and I brought back from the ECMTA conference.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

BonanzleUp Event in the Planning Stages

Phaedra Stockstill of attheboutique and JudyOglesby bluepennylady have been handed the task of planning the next BonanzleUp meetup event! Wow is all I can say.

We want to know where you, the Bonanzle community would like to see the event at. What section of the US. It just makes good sense to host the event in a part of the country where sellers want to come (or go)

So cast your vote.

Surveymonkey

Bonanzle is Growing

Today, April 20, 2010 Auctionbytes released an article concerning the Bonanzle site's growth in the past 2 years.

Bonanzle is approaching their two year old birthday in June. And the base is growing at an unbelievable pace. Bill Harding the founder and developer of the Bonanzle site is one of four employees. The site expects to employee more developers and designers in the future

Mark Dorsey, the Bonanzle Chief Raconteur, commented on the uniqueness of the site and items one would find at Bonanzle.

Take a minute to read the entire story

Pretty exciting stuff!

Thursday, April 15, 2010

ECMTA Las Vegas Conference April 13-15, 2010

The week has literally flown by! I can't believe it is already Thursday. Ever single day the intentions to sit down to post some of the events have been there, but the time has just escaped.

Phaedra and I bluepennylady met for the very first time on Monday night. Most people did not know that Phaedra and I have worked together on multiple projects including the Bonanzle Boardroom and podcast ...And we got to meet, very first time Monday night ! Very exciting for both of us.

Tuesday our agenda was full with meet-ups with other Bonanzle sellers. Wow, what an experience.

We had lunch with Bonanzle's own baby daddy Bill Harding
. that was totally fun and very enlightening.

So let me embrass Bill to death. I found Bill to be extremely gracious. Not that I expected to find him any other way. Very well spoken and considerate. He is a gentleman. You know,the kind of man that waits for ladies to walk through the door, holds the door open, offers to carry your laptop bag....that kind of man. Which in today's society isn't something you see everyday.

He doesn't miss anything. Even the most random comment. If something pricks his interest, you can see the wheels turning immediately.

I can also say definitively that Bill is constantly looking for ways to improve the Bonanzle site, For sellers and buyers alike. IT isn't just lip service like some people (or sites), it is a true and sincere desire to give the sellers tools/features/functions/exposure they need to succeed while providing the very best buying experience for the buyers.

I was impressed (like that matters :)

More info to come later. After I unwind it from my brain..

Monday, April 05, 2010

eBay 50% off Insertion Fee for Giving Works Auction listings

eBay announced today a 50% off insertion fee on regular style auction listings when the seller donates a percentage of the selling price to their favorite non-profit organization.

Donate as little as 10% of the selling price

The 50% off insertion fee offer runs from April 6, 2010 to April 11, 2010.

Friday, April 02, 2010

Bonanzle Boardroom Episode 7 April 1. 2010

Last night, Thursday, April 1, 2010 was Episode 7 of the Bonanzle Boardroom podcast.

Elizabeth Van Pelt, Anightowl, the newest member of the Bonanzle team joined the podcast. Elizabeth talked about her new responsibilities at the Bonanzle site. Approving and Improving the Item traits for sellers, monitoring payments, and dealing with help file comments as well as category images.

Elizabeth told us that the "job" has been far from part-time. She was a bit taken back by all the bells, whistles, and buttons that she sees on her monitor as one of the Bonanzle team. Thanks for joining us Elizabeth!

MKDesigners
won the Burning Bonanzle question this month. She asked what the top 10 questions since the last podcast in March and how improvements are monitored.

Ever quick to answer, Mark gave us some insight via email. Below is his response.

The process is to search the vote for improvement page, future feature file at support and also requests at each of our email accounts. Bill and I review this as time permits, at the very least once a month.


A couple that come to mind:
Sales Tax integration
Downloadable sales reports
More payment options

The Changelist is long since the last podcast. Here are the highlights covered.


P: 3/11/10
Setup monitoring of sellers with high percentages of negative feedback to be put on probation and/or removed from site.

J: 3/14/10 User profiles now have better preview text in google
And deleted old email YEAH!

P: 3/18/10
Updated offer emails to provide specific details about transactions, link to email other party, etc. Love it! You can now see exactly what sold, the amounts, offer total etc.


P: 3/22/10
Updated offer filter to allow offers to be filtered on the characteristics that buyers and sellers actually use.
Updated offers show page to update aesthetic for the 2010's.
. Now you can use some more interesting filters, such as by payment type. On left are now quick links to offers by title of item sold. Much easier to find what you are looking for.
Fixed description text when posting booths to Facebook. = Now instead of the old post that showed the meta description for your booth itself, it now shows first bit of item description.



J: 3/23/10
Added more advanced detection mechanisms to catch previously suspended sellers signing up.
Added detection of unusual transaction patterns to analyze for potential fraud
http://www.examiner.com/x-27854-Bonanzle-Examiner~y2010m3d15-Bonanzle-marketplace-implements-seller-monitoring?cid=examiner-email

P: 3/28/10
Fixed Craigslist exporter for select Windows users with which it wasn't working.


Again there were lots of good questions and comments. If you missed the podcast or could not log in (the technology gremlins were on the run Thursday) you can still here the podcast.

Talkshoe