Posts Tagged ‘Online Business’

You Will Respect My Authoritah

Anyone who is a member of of our community likely knows that I am a fan of Cartman. It all comes down to Cartman’s understanding of marketing principals:

Being perceived as a trusted authority is a powerful marketing tool for many reasons. Here are a few examples…

• People fear making bad decisions. The fear of loss is one of the biggest emotional hurdles in the conversion process. And so we turn to authorities to help us out. This is why…
  • Google is huge and only getting bigger.
  • many scammy diets run “As Seen on Oprah” or some such on the ads.
  • Fakevertising goes so far as telling you a fake weight loss story from a specific celebrity.
  • cumulative advantage is such an important concept for online marketers to understand.
• When I was sitting in jury selection one potential juror did not feel it was fair that the DA had to prove guilt. She presumed guilt based simply on accusation, without any other facts.
• Most people are ignorant to the sausage-like nature of media, the corruption that is core to large centralized governments, and the fraudulent private banking interests that skim off the top of every transaction and enslave society in debt. We are trained to be ignorant consumers who trust authority. How else could you justify virtually nobody caring about bankers & politicians robbing trillions of Dollars from the country while budget constraints are forcing some local sheriffs to call in the national guard for security. The head of the Federal Reserve put in a half-trillion Dollar short on the US Dollar to aid foreign central banks (at our expense) and yet nobody cares! Steal from the semi-rich, middle class, poor, super-poor, unborn, etc. and give to the super rich. Let them have another round of casino capitalism until the country is bankrupt.
• If you ever want to sell anything, then people trusting you and seeing you as an authority makes sales far easier. Back when I sold a how to SEO ebook there was a month where Google rolled in a filter that whacked some branded sites from ranking for their brand. Even though our site was selling an SEO how to book ***while not ranking*** our sales that month were still 85% of the record month. Because the site had so much perceived authority it developed distribution channels outside of search strong enough to sell even when the rankings made the site look like it was (at least temporarily) lacking in credibility.
• Think of how the vast majority of searchers click on the top few listings in the search results. That is because perceived relevancy and authority. Even if you most the most relevant result down the page, many people will still click the first listing because of the perceived authority of that ranking position.
• Many of the quality links that can’t be easily replicated and are actually organic only come about after you are established as an authority. I just got referenced on the Network Solutions blog in passing…no way those types of links happen unless you already have lots of established exposure and perceived authority. But how do you develop it?

Anyway, enough of my rambling.

Brian Clark recently announced a free report called Authority Rules. Its killer, and you should go check it out right now! There are tons of gems in there like

Brain scans show that the decision-making parts of our brains often shut down when we encounter authoritative advice or direction.

You Can’t Be Everybody’s Friends

Recently I saw Barry Ritholtz mentioned that he was selling video recordings of a conference he put on for only $69, and some of the people who commented on his site wrote garbage like this:

These people have enough capital to try to trade the markets, but spending $69 for one of the most in depth and most current pieces of information about their livelihood is completely out of the question. Imagine having the gall to register on someone’s site to leave a comment like “where can we steal your work from.”

And yet this is normal (and expected) behavior on the web, even in fields directly connected money / finance / investing!!!

Every day I get some non-customers who acts that way as well. The noise does wear you down, and it really does highlight the problems with free. When some people get hooked on free they have no end to the demands, and no respect or appreciation for the work.

I personally handle all customer correspondence, which is why I recently had to increase prices to slow down our rate of growth. I am only 1 person. Customers rarely wait as long as a day for a response. This guy never sent in 3 requests, was rude and demanding and demeaning, is not even a paying customer, and expects free phone support for software worth hundreds of dollars that we give away for free.

Why would I care if that guy used our tools for free? Since he is rude I hope he can’t use them, such that any competent competitor interested in SEO has a competitive advantage over him. And that guy’s rudeness shows that he probably lacks the social skills to be successful on a large distributed social network.

When you chose your customers you are picking how much you will enjoy your job.

There are a lot of potential bad customers like that, and you don’t even want to suggest they become a paying customer. The only ways to handle people that are that rude are to either ignore them or tell them off to let them know they are not welcome in your business. If you play nice with a person that treats you like a doormat then it will only get worse in time.

The person who needs a lot of support BEFORE becoming a paying customer rarely becomes a profitable long-term customer. The person who needs a price break today expects a larger one tomorrow. They keep squeezing margins until you are a commodity and the model no longer works. It is just a path to self destruction because if you cater to such people you do not raise them up to your level, you lower yourself down to their level.

This reminds me of an important business lesson from a Dan Kennedy book called The Ultimate Success Secret that a great friend recommended I read about a year ago.

When I first started in the “success education business,” one of the few people in the country who was consistently effective at selling self-improvement audiocassette programs direct, face-to-face to executives and salespeople, gave me what turned out to be very, very good advice – he said: “Don’t waste your time trying to sell these materials to the people who need it the most. They won’t buy it. You should focus on selling to successful people who want to get even better.”

Over the years, I’ve demonstrated the validity of this to myself a number of different ways. And I’ve developed an explanation for it. There is what I now call “the self-esteem Catch-22 loop” at work here: in order for a person to invest directly in himself, which is what buying self-improvement materials is, he has to place value on himself, i.e. have high self-esteem, but if he has such high self-esteem, he is probably already doing well and does not have a critical need for this type of information; he will get marginal improvement out of it; but the person who needs it most does not place much value on himself, i.e. has relatively low self-esteem, which prohibits him from buying, believing in or using self-improvement materials.

I used to be all about making everything (or as much as possible) free because I liked helping people, but really most people won’t act on advice or respect it much unless they pay for it. Human nature is what it is, and there is no point fighting it.

At some point we may need to test moving from offering any tools for free to making everything paid just to filter out that noise. Such a move would likely cost us exposure, but most of that exposure is not leading to any tangible business anyhow.

An Open Letter to Online Ad Networks

by Jonah Stein and Jonathan Hochman

The FTC recently announced guidelines for bloggers that requires that they disclose financial interests, freebies and paid reviews.  This decision is seen as a shot across the bow of pay per post networks and bloggers who are monetizing through affiliate programs.    The FTC has decided that compensation is the reason bloggers choose to write about a particular topic and that readers deserve to be informed about the financial relationship.    The FTC logic is simple, “As much as those bloggers who receive these gifts would like to claim this isn’t the case, freebies like free laptops, trips, or gift cards are likely to influence a writer’s opinion of a product.”

On its face, the policy is defensible.   As crusaders against Virtual Blight, we applaud the intent of this decision.  Anything that raises the barrier to online scams, fraud and abuse even a little bit is a good thing. The FTC provides guidelines for responsible bloggers and theoretically eliminates a couple of the perks for bloggers, but it does virtually nothing to protect against fraud.

Going after bloggers’ compensation to fight online fraud is reminiscent of the RIAA attacks on individual file sharers and is just as likely to succeed. The absurdity of the power and inertia of a government bureaucracy combating individual bloggers is only matched by the ludicrous assumption the government could ever move fast enough to keep up with professional scammers who jump from domain to domain, host to host and country to country with a few mouse clicks.  Prosecution could only be effective against mainstream bloggers with an established brand that are stationary targets, but these bloggers are not the right target.

Getting a proverbial free lunch in exchange for a presumably positive review may create the appearance that some bloggers are shills who lend their prestige and celebrity to their sponsors.  That perception is not unreasonable, but the same charge could be made against almost every athlete, actor, musician or American Idol runner-up who profits from our celebrity culture.

Giving items to celebrities or other tastemakers in return for public exposure is a practice older than the printing press.   If the FTC really wants to send a message about compensated endorsements and freebies, the answer is not to go after the mommy bloggers who get a free 42-pack of diapers.  If the FTC were serious, they would begin arresting every actress wearing a designer gown to the Academy Awards and then round up the studio and network executives who rake in cash for product placements in movies and television shows.

Focus On Fraud

The statistics for online fraud are both staggering and predictable.  Instead of being distracted by the sizzling, sensational charges of payola that re-appear every generation, the industry needs to focus on the billions of dollars of online fraud committed each year.  According to the Center for American Progress, Internet-related consumer complaints are among the top ten in consumer complaints in 2008 and the number one complaint in four states.  These complaints run from auction fraud and non-delivery of ecommerce items to reverse billing scams.

By any definition, the perpetrators of online fraud are not bloggers.  If a review constitutes fraud because the reviewer was provided a free product or had some undisclosed relationship with the company who produced the product, then every journalist with a 401k full of mutual funds needs to hire a good lawyer.  Indeed, if bloggers are guilty of anything it is tabloid journalism — writing low quality content with sensational headlines designed to attract visitors to their site in order to collect advertising revenue.  This may not live up to the highest journalistic standards, but the only crimes are against facts and the English language.

Criminals are the people and companies who create pyramid schemes, networks of spam blogs to sell diet products like Hoodia and Acai Berry cleanse, Google money trees and the myriad so called “free” offers that create recurring charges on your cell phone or credit card.

Criminals are the people who target kids’ sites to distribute Trojans, spyware and adware that infects our computers and tricks people into buying phony anti-virus products.  Most of us have either experienced malware nightmares ourselves or heard a friend’s sad story.  When online fraud is so prevalent, predatory and destructive, why are government resources being committed to pursue advertorial content?

Ad Networks Are the Key

The biggest thing these criminals have in common is that they perpetrate their scams by buying advertising through ad networks. These networks have achieved the scale that makes it efficient for legitimate advertisers to reach millions of consumers and that makes them an ideal vector for scams, abuse and deception.

In an unregulated auction-based advertising market place, fraudulent offers can often pay the highest bids for keywords. In FTC Going After Bloggers – Epic Fail, Aaron observes that ad networks that syndicate ads based on “maximizing yield efficiency“ are well suited to syndicate fraud. Advertisers of scams can afford to pay top dollar for ads because their profit margins are nearly 100%.

Ad networks are morally responsible as collaborators in interstate and international frauds perpetrated upon hundreds of thousands of victims each year.  Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and many others are far more culpable in consumers being defrauded than any blogger or network of bloggers.

In False and Deceptive Pay-Per-Click Ads, Harvard’s Ben Edelman estimated that as much as 70% of the revenue generated by some online scams actually wind up in the hands of the search engines.   He estimated in 2006 that Google and Yahoo were making over $200,000 a month from advertisements for screensaver software which contained spyware.  As of July 15, 2009, the top paid search results on Google for “screensaver” contain “add-on features” which include spyware, change your default browser settings, ad toolbars and otherwise aim to monetize by deceiving users.  Adding insult to injury, Edelman observes that many of these adware tools monetize by sending traffic through AdSense and DoubleClick, making Google a silent partner for adware companies like WhenU and Smiley Central.

Fight the Problems that Be

Scams and fraud not only harm the consumer, they foster the perception that the internet is not a safe place, hindering the growth of online business and delaying the transfer of marketing dollars from old media.  Instead of waiting for government agencies to step in and create regulations aimed at yesterday’s scams, as an industry we need to become proactive and develop a cooperative framework for mutual self-defense, a neighborhood watch designed to keep consumers safer while helping law enforcement focus resources on the most serious trouble makers.

The war on online fraud is going to be a huge struggle and one we are unlikely to ever declare victory.  The issues are complex, but the industry could significantly reduce the problem by creating a transparent mechanism to collect user feedback about advertisers.  Search engines and ad networks are quick to endorse behavioral targeting and social recommendations to boost earning per exposure.   For some mysterious reason, they have not applied these innovations to getting user feedback about advertisers.

If the Internet is the cesspool that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google says it is, one way to start cleaning it up would be to create a public reputation system for advertisers.  This would simultaneously reward honest companies while helping consumers protect themselves against the bad guys.   eBay created public reputations for buyers and sellers many years ago.  Why are advertisers free to operate without scrutiny?

It seems straightforward to build an advertiser rating system to share relevant statistics and user feedback.  Why not provide the tenure of the advertiser, normalized click volume, the percentage of users giving feedback and a ratio of clicks to complaints along with a link to detailed reviews that could surface fraud, misleading advertising and scams?  If comparison shopping engines can do it, why can’t ad networks?

We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we see the problem and its sources. Government agencies need to ask the ad networks why they accept money for promoting fraud.  Ad networks need to grow up and behave like responsible businesses.

How To Buy SEO Services

You’ve launched your website. Everybody you show it to thinks that it is great. You’re starting to get some traffic. You search Google for your site.

You can’t find it anywhere.

If you’ve arrived at SEOBook.com, chances are you’re trying to solve that problem. Welcome to the world of SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process whereby websites can gain higher rankings in the search engines. If you find any of the terminology confusing, check out our SEO Glossary.

Can You Do It Yourself?

Of course! Here’s how to do it for free.

Ensure that your pages are crawlable, and readable, by search engines. Make a list of around 20 keyword terms that relate to your topic, and write a page on each. Create a site map pointing to each page, and link all your pages to the site map. Finally, build links.

Also read:

• SEO Basics
• Marketing Driven SEO Strategy
• Bloggers Guide To SEO

Got some training budget? Well, we would recommend this training course – of course Tells you all about SEO and internet marketing – and more – as well as providing personal support in the forums.

Should You Do It Yourself?

Like anything, doing it yourself requires a personal investment in terms of your time. It also requires a desire to dive into technical aspects of search engines and publishing on the web.

If you have neither the time nor the desire, there are many professional SEOs who can take care of the task for you.

How To Select An SEO Professional

Whilst there are training courses run by independent operators, there are no formal industry certifications for SEO providers.

The reason for this is that few SEOs agree on optimal process and practices. Secondly, the search engines have an uneasy relationship with SEO. This is mostly due to the fact SEO competes with the search engines click-driven business model, and overly-aggressive tactics used by some SEOs can degrade the quality of search results.

The way to judge SEO professionals isn’t by any claimed qualifications. SEO professionals should be judged by their results. In the SEO world, talk is cheap.

What To Expect

An SEO will adapt content and links in an effort to get you more exposure in search engine results pages.

While it would be nice to be able to pay an SEO to get you a #1 ranking for a high trafficked term, forevermore, SEO doesn’t work this way.

The search engines rank sites based on a number of criteria, and that criteria is a closely guarded secret. Secondly, even if SEOs did know the criteria, it may not help. For example, Google places weight on historical factors, such as links built up over a long period of time. These links may be very difficult to obtain.

The criteria is also in a state of flux. What worked a few years ago may not work now.

Typically, what an SEO will do is ensure your site is included in the search engine indexes. Some web design approaches make it impossible for search engines to index a site. The SEO will also tweak existing content, and add new content, with the aim of ranking pages for topic areas related to your business. This can be a hit and miss affair, but generally speaking, the more content you have on your site that the search engine is able to see, the more traffic you’re likely to receive.

An SEO will also try and get links pointing to a site, as links are a big part of Google’s ranking criteria. If you’re feeling adventurous, here is the maths that lies behind Google.

Over time, you should expect search engine referrals from targeted visitors to rise after having implemented an SEO strategy.

What To Watch Out For

Poor Metrics/Illusion Of Action – Some SEOs use poor performance metrics, one of which is ranking.

If no-one searches on a particular phrase, then ranking for the phrase is pointless. It’s the equivalent of putting up a sign in a desert, miles form the road – no one will see it. It is very easy to get a page to rank for a keyword term that has little competition. Mention the keyword phrase on your page somewhere, and it will likely rank.

Instead, consider defining performance goals based on your business metrics. Do you want more traffic from search engines? Do you want more conversions? Align these goals with your SEO goals. Ensure the terms you’re ranking for translate into measurable business advantage.

Overly-Aggressive Tactics – the search engines take a dim view of aggressive tactics, which can result in a site ban. Whilst this is highly unlikely, it can happen. If you wish to remain cautious, then your SEO should stay within published search engine guidelines. There is an appeals process if your site is penalized, however this can take time.

This is largely a risk vs reward question. The reason some SEOs are aggressive is because it can get results when less aggressive techniques fail. This is not to say aggressive techniques will always work, or that less aggressive techniques won’t. A lot depends on the site and the area in which you’re competing.

Guarantees – there are no such thing as ranking guarantees, especially if they imply the SEO has control over the search engine results. They do not.

Carefully examine the terms of the guarantee. Worthwhile guarantees, as far as the client is concerned, are where the SEO promises to satisfy criteria based on measurable, business metrics.

Resources

For an indepth look at selecting an SEO provider, members can take a look at Aaron’s “Buying SEO Services“

GPS Crackdown You Will be Ticketed While Driving

If you sell Aftermarket Car Accessories then you may see some sales increase on voice activated GPS Systems. So you knew it would happen at some point. They did it with cell phones now go after the GPS.

We read this  By ROB JENNINGS • STAFF WRITER at DAILYRECORD.COM

A cell phone has little in common with a global positioning system mapping device, other than both have the potential for driver distraction. The hand-held cell phone ban, which also prohibits text-messaging, took effect in March 2008. Now one lawmaker wants to expand the law to prohibit manual operation of GPS devices. Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith, a Democrat from Jersey City, introduced a bill June 8 specifying that only a voice-activated GPS may be programmed while driving. Violators would face the same $100 fine as anyone caught text-messaging or using a hand-held cell phone. It was only a matter of time before someone proposed expanding the cell phone law to encompass another popular, high-tech device. Smith, the undersheriff of Hudson County, could not be reached Friday about his bill. To be sure, manually programming a GPS unit from behind the wheel — the voice-activated model tends to be more expensive — is not a good idea. AAA in New Jersey spokeswoman Michele Mount noted that the GPS instruction manuals urge motorists to avoid programming while driving.

“I think it would be too hazardous to program it while you’re driving,” said Mike Baldini of Boonton Township, who bought a $150 GPS unit last year that he rarely uses. Baldini described the protracted process involved in generating a GPS-guided route from point A to point B.

“You touch a couple of buttons. Then you get to a menu. Then it asks the town you want. Then you find the street (and) it goes to the street number. Then it asks if you want to take toll roads, or highways, or the least amount of highways,” Baldini said.

Wow, that seems like a lot to do while monitoring traffic flow and exit signs. Still, is a GPS device necessarily more distracting than a satellite radio box featuring hundreds of stations and streaming all the major league baseball scores on a tiny screen?

Maybe, maybe not. But, to our knowledge, no one is proposing a ban on manually operating satellite radio. Perhaps satellite radio will be next, which is the fundamental problem with the current piecemeal approach to distracted driving. Simply put, lawmakers will never be able to keep up with all the distractions and the process is fraught with subjectivity. “What’s next, iPods?” Mount mused.

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who chairs the transportation committee, favors a broader approach to combating distracted driving. “You could literally do a statute banning grooming, eating, changing the DVD, changing the CD — the list goes on and on. But is this really how we want to proceed,” Wisniewski said. Wisniewski proposed a catch-all ban on distracted driving in 2006. His bill, which was overshadowed by the ultimately successful cell phone ban, would have banned drivers “from engaging in any activity not related to the operation of the vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle,” according to the bill summary. Critics of Wisniewski’s measure argued that it would overlap with the careless driving law. He argued, though, that police might hesitate in assessing careless driving — a two-point offense — to a motorist caught applying their makeup, for example. Wisniewski’s bill proscribed a $100 fine, but no license points. Regardless of the law, common sense should apply.

“No one should be programming their GPS device while their car is moving at 60 miles per hour,” Wisniewski said.

Affordable Web Design and Optimization Services

In today’s business, companies large and small need a website and an online presence. Whether you are a large manufacturing company, distributor, a small business run from home, or perhaps considering setting up a small business, a website will bring new clients to your business and give you the opportunity to attract new clients and new business opportunities. Our Ecommerce business website designs have you in mind.

It is important that any small business website design gives prospective clients the right impression of your company and presents your company as a professional, competent business. To do this your website must convey such an image and Identity and will only do so if it is professionally designed itself.

Selecting the right website design company is an important factor when setting up a new site and ideally it will be the start of a long relationship, so you need to feel comfortable with your website designer and ensure they will always be available when you need them.

The majority of our clients are home based small businesses. We have helped many of them set up new sites, often from the smallest pieces of information, such as letterheads for example. It’s one thing knowing you need a website, but another matter trying to find the time to decide what it should look like and what it should contain. We can take most of the strain from you in that department and help to point you in the right direction. With our integrated SEO, SEM, Landing Page Optimization and Conversions Help we can bring you to the top by creating a quality website and help achieve a high ranking for your site in Google, Yahoo and other Search Engines through personal training.

Add value to your business. Your company website may be the first point of contact with your clients, it is a natural thing to search for products and services on the internet these days and your website could bring you new business and new clients.  However, you should consider how a professional looking website will stimulate sales further than a ‘home made’ web site and present that all important first impression to prospective clients.

Cost is obviously one of the main concerns with any new venture and as a small business we appreciate this. Our small business web design packages are very affordable and we will keep you on budget. We have a range of solutions available for the small business owner, so if you would like any advice or information please feel free to contact us for small business advice under no obligation.

Interested? Then in the first instance please contact us (rwcasandra@turnkeydropshipbusiness.com) and ask for a free quote for your project, under no obligation. We also offer free after sales support and free Limited alterations after completion. Our other services include ecommerce solutions, logo design,  Blogs, Forums, search engine optimization and marketing, Data conversion solutions and Pre-built Turnkey Dropship Business’s.

Thanks, R.W. Casandra

Making Your eBiz Legal: Why and How

If you plan on buying from Wholesale Distributors for your own stock or you intend to dropship. This is a very Informative article and if you plan on going beyond ebay with your garage sale stuff this needs to be in your plans. If you are running a retail website or would like to and you want to buy wholesale ”get legit” There is a video at the bottom that is related. the article is from Worldwide Brands, by Chris Malta & Robin Cowie

It’s not uncommon for new Internet retailers to be intimidated by the thought of acquiring reseller certificates, EINs, and DBAs. But if you sell physical goods on the ‘net, you can’t afford to let a little paperwork stop you from experiencing the benefits of being a legally recognized business. Because, if you want to buy your inventory from real wholesale suppliers, you must be an official, legal business. The Taxman Cometh According to eBiz attorney Cliff Ennico, of CliffEnnico.com, wholesalers require proof that you’re a legal business for a very good reason. They keep this proof on file, to protect themselves, should they ever be audited. In the U.S., wholesale transactions aren’t taxed. “Wholesalers don’t charge taxes to their retailer customers, because those retailers are going to charge taxes to their customers,” explains Ennico. “As long as someone is paying taxes on those goods at some point during their journey to market, the IRS is happy.” However, if the IRS were to catch a wholesaler selling tax-free goods to an end consumer, that wholesaler would wind up in a world of legal and financial trouble. So every business they sell to must demonstrate that they’re a legally authorized reseller, buying their goods for resale and not for personal enjoyment. I’ll Need to See Some ID, Please… As an online seller, you’re responsible to collect and pay sales tax on all sales to customers in your own state. Therefore, you’re required by law to register for a state sales tax ID (a.k.a. reseller certificate) when you set up your business. Registering is as easy as going to your state tax authority website, clicking on ‘Forms and Publications’, and filling out the registration form. (One helpful resource is TaxLinks.com, a website that provides links to the state tax authority websites for all fifty states.) Typically, you’ll use a copy of this document to verify your business’ legitimacy. Not every state imposes sales tax on retail items, however, and that complicates the issue. If you live in a tax-exempt state, you’re unable to acquire a reseller certificate. In that case, a wholesaler will need another form of identification proving your business’ validity. Some of the most common alternate forms of proof are as follows:

Amazing World Stats Video

Check out the video. Did You Know? 3.0 (Official Video) -2009 Edition United States, China, Japan, India Comparison and Stats plus much more….

If you are having a problem veiwing here is Direct Link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHmwZ96_Gos

New auction sites challenge eBay

Move over eBay. A number of new Web sites have sprung up to provide another venue for auctioning items and scoring bargains:

Overstock.com: Great for designer labels. You’ll find Prada pumps and Gucci satchels as well as auction-only merchandise.

Sam’s Club Auctions: Best for big-ticket items such as vacuums, comforters, TVs, tents and more.

Shopgoodwill.com: A great place to find collectibles such as tea cups and decorative plates. You will also find inexpensive clothing on this site. However, everything is sold “as is” and cannot be returned.

Ubid.com: This is the place to go for electronics. The site sells excess inventory from manufacturers such as Apple and Hewlett-Packard. A lot of it is refurbished, which means that warranties vary.

What is Bonanzle?

“Quite simply, [Bonanzle is] the best I’ve seen in my four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces” –Vangie Beal, on behalf of Ecommerce Guide.

Bonanzle

At Bonanzle, we think that online shopping is stuck where online search was 10 years ago, in the age before Google. Many users today think that eBay and Craigslist are “good enough,” and the “rules” for online shopping are set: items get posted through a series of selling pages, buyers browse static listings, buyers buy items and hope that sellers are trustable.

We think there’s still a lot of room for improvement over the precedent that eBay and Craigslist set 10 years ago (and that the eBay/Craigslist lookalikes have copied ever since).

Here’s how we think online shopping ought to be:

• Relentlessly simple. Remember five years ago when it was easy to post and browse items on eBay? We have spent more than a year designing the easiest selling process, and re-invented the concept of a “store” to revive that refreshing feeling of ease eBay once gave you.
• Instant. Every seller on Bonanzle has the option of tying their Instant Messenger to their group of items, so buyers can get questions answered (or deals made) instantly. For local items, sellers can pre-schedule pickup times to take the guesswork out of which of those Xboxes you could pick up today.
• Engaging. On Bonanzle, the journey to buy or sell your items is part of the destination. With built in user-to-user messaging and pervasive chat, you’ll find that shopping isn’t nearly as lonesome as you remember it being on Craigslist.
• Safe. It sucks to have no idea who you’re dealing with. At Bonanzle, we’re committed to building a community of friendly, everyday people. Bonanzle is not (and will never be) a place for adult content or unseemly message forums.
• Free and Almost Free. There is no reason that you should have to pay a percentage of your item sales to The Man. At Bonanzle, listing is free and fees are dirt cheap. They’re also guaranteed not to raise an iota through 2010.

What Does “Find Everything but the Ordinary” Mean?

While everybody is welcome to sell on Bonanzle, our most successful sellers are those that have items that aren’t new, shiny, and mass-produced. Why? Because we believe Amazon already does a darned good job at helping people find new DVDs, CDs, electronics, computers, and books. We specialize in helping you buy and sell everything else.

I’m Still Not Sold. Is Bonanzle for Me?

“[Bonanzle] is without doubt the cleanest and easiest to use selling platform I’ve ever listed anything on.”
– Auction Wally, Marketplace Writer & Antiques Expert, in article eBay Alternative Bonanzle is Super Simple

“The runaway winner as our Best eBay Alternative is Bonanzle. This startup combines an easy listing process with cutting-edge features such as on-the-fly image cropping and live chat and an avid seller community.”
– SmallBusinessComuting.com, Marketplace Journal, in article 2009 Awards: Reader’s Pick the Best Small Business Tech Tools

“Bonanzle is putting the fun back into online selling.”
– Randy Smythe, Marketplace Analyst, in article You Can Find eBay’s Soul At Bonanzle.com!

“If there was just one eBay competitor to watch, I might just put my money on this one.”
– Scott Pooler, Marketplace Journalist, in article Bonanzle – Bodacious eBay Competitor Gives Birth to Fresh Merchandising Format

“There’s a reason Bonanzle is experiencing tremendous growth. Well, ten and a half reasons, actually. But it all boils down to a simple business model that promotes communication and builds trust among members, a simple interface that’s easy on the eyes and even easier to use, tools that make simple things even easier, and reasonable rates.”
– Salehoo, marketplace review blog, in article Bonanzle: An exciting eBay alternative

… And that’s not to mention the many thousand positive messages about Bonanzle on the Powersellers Unite forum, making it the most talked about eBay alternative in the four year history of this popular site!

Intrigued?

Sign up for an account now, or jump straight to selling your items. It won’t hurt a bit, that’s the whole point!