Bonanzle Blog Team – A Great Way To Drive Traffic!

The Bonanzle Blog Team has been born!

What is a Blog Team, you ask?

It is a term we just dreamed up for the enthusiastic members of

Bonanzle who want to promote both the site and their own Bonanzle items in their Bonanzle Booths.

Many Bonanzle sellers have jumped at the chance to promote the site around the Internet in whatever spare time they happen to have. These members are part of the Bonanzle Action Team, they post comments and links on friendly blogs and discussion boards all over the Internet.

We thought, why not take some of that time and devote it to your own website?  But many Bonanzle sellers do not have websites, what to do?

iBusinessLogic.com created a special website development deal for Bonanzle members.  The idea is to create multiple off Bonanzle websites with blog capabilities and feed those sites with the stock the Bonanzle members already have in their individual Bonanzle Booths.  In essence, each Bonanzle seller who becomes a Bonanzle Blog Team member will concentrate on creating content about what what they know, what they sell, what they are experts about in thier own space on the Internet.  This content generation will draw in traffic looking for each persons individual content. That traffic will then be funneled back to Bonanzle through each Blog Team members Bonanzle Booth.

Sounds simple, and it is…

Those who choose to invest in their business will reap the highest rewards, but overall every seller on Bonanzle will benefit from the increased traffic and page rank all of these outside websites will transfer to the main site. We have Two New members just today and I will personally help them set up their new websites and blogs.

Why not check out the website blog offer made to Bonanzle members either o the BusinessLogic.com/blog or over at Bonanzle in the Services Discussion Forum (if you are a member).

Below is an example of the Bonanzle product feed we would insert in these off Bonanzle  - member websites. This “feed” consists of live items in our own Bonanzle Booth. Click on any item and you will be taken directly to our booth where the transaction can be completed if you choose to purchase one of these items.

Bonanzle is a very efficient and easy shopping cart system with features which would be very hard to duplicate at such a low cost.  From social marketing features, easy item insertion, free photo hosting, and multiple methods of payment (Google Checkout or PayPal or Both, plus all forms of Paper payments).  Bonanzle in effect is a low cost, high efficiency selling machine which simply needs a traffic feed.

We think each booth owner can create that traffic with good content!

Bonanzle Booth Feed:

eBay “Flea Market Closed,” Sellers look for eBay Competition – Where to Sell Now?

eBay no longer wants certain types of sellers on their site… Where to Go?

With all of the recent turmoil in the eBay community, mainly derived from comments expressed by the “new” powers that be within eBay, it is no wonder some long-time sellers are expressing more than a little angst over the quick use of terms like “retail experience” and “buyer experience” in conjuction with new performance-based discounts tied in with detailed seller ratings and feedback. It is not as though they were minor adjustments which should be obvious to everyone involved with using the eBay site for the last 10 years or so.

Lorrie Norrington – President of eBay Global Marketplaces – recently stated in a keynote speech: “….However, if you cannot, or will not change business practices to provide a great customer experience, then eBay is not for you.”

Good sellers recognize the value of the bargain image that eBay nurtured for many years. In contrast, high volume sellers appreciate the retail experience language, while low volume or one-of-a-kind & consignment sellers have a harder time with this particular message. Is there a place for everyone to be comfortable? Apparently it is no longer going to be eBay.

Mr. Donahoe, who has been running the company since his appointment to the top spot was announced in January 2008, wants the company – the Internet’s largest eCommerce site – to operate less like an unruly flea market and more like a strip mall where buyers are guaranteed to have a comfortable and predictable shopping experience. See NY Times Article

If this message of change is affecting your online business plan or if you are unaware of other venues available to sell the types of goods you feel eBay was built upon (yet now seems to no longer want), we have assembled a short list of alternate venues for your to explore. Some of these marketplaces offer a venue for your online sales of unique and one-of-a-kind items and others could be more appropriate for the types of inventory no longer wanted on eBay.

1. Bonanzle.com – The easiest and fasted way to get stuff online – Also the fastest growing eCommerce venue around.
2. OnlineAuction.com – Fixed flat rate yearly or monthly price to sell , 13 million listings live on the site.
3. eBid – $49.95 lifetime price to sell, international sites. Less active listings than OLA but growing.
4. Etsy – Free to list, 3.5% transaction fee if items sell, dedicated to hand-crafted & arts merchandise. Etsy has 870,000 registered users with 160,000 individual artists listing 1.5 million hand-made creations.
5. Yahoo Stores – Not an auction venue, but a great place to set up an online store if you do not want to build your own website with a shopping cart. $39.95 a month + 1.5% transaction fee for the basic package.
6. BuyitSellit - Buy It Sell It is an Ink Frog product. Many eBay sellers will be familiar with the Ink Frog eBay listing software solution. The BuyItSellIt basic package is free, but there are upgrades available including a digital delivery option for $9.95 per month. BuyItSellIt offers to also feature eBay listings alongside the shoping cart listing created in a merchant’s BuyItSellIt Store.
7. Amazon Webstore – While the fees are higher here – $59.99 per month plus a 7% transaction fee – Amazon Webstores provide the Amazon experience to buyers and allows merchant specific branding. In addition, the merchant may operate multiple niche-specific Amazon Webstores all under one account for no additional fees.

Amazon Webstores Details All credit card processing and transaction fees. There are no other hidden fees such as hosting, payment gateways or merchant accounts. Payment Fraud Protection for you. WebStore by Amazon uses sophisticated fraud detection tools in use on Amazon.com. This allows you to benefit from Amazon’s world-class fraud protection services and experience. Purchase protection for your customers. Customers who shop on your WebStore will feel more confident buying from your site knowing they are protected by the same A-to-z Guarantee that protects shoppers on Amazon.com. Creating multiple WebStores within your account. Each WebStore can be a customized and independent Web presence for no additional monthly fee. The option of adding Amazon products to your WebStore. Offer items from Amazon.com through your WebStore and the Amazon Associates Program allows you to collect a referral fee when such items are sold!

Every merchant must make his or her own choices when it comes to multi-channel selling. Using a multi-channel listing service which can feed inventory to many venues is also an option. This option is often the most expensive way to get product online and many small businesses cannot take advantage of the services of a ChannelAdvisor or Infopia multi-channel management solution. But if convenience and automation are your goals these are the types of services you should look into. Merchant Advantage is another service worthy of investigation if you have a large inventory and are interested in placing it in multiple online venues. The point here is that there are multiple options to explore. eBay is not the only marketplace, yet it is also not a marketplace to be ignored or abandoned. Using eBay in a smart and informed way is the best solution. Doing that while exploring the other solutions mentioned above (or many more) is a smart business plan for the future. Diversify, reduce costs, raise efficiency. These are not just terms for large corporations – they will apply to any business. See what you can do to make them apply to your business. Scott Pooler

eBay eCommerce Blogging or Affiliate Sales Why not All of the Above?

Do you have your own off eBay website?

As an eBay seller you know you should have your own website but for some unknown reason our research indicates that most eBay sellers do not. Why?

If it is because you do not have the time to set up another high maintenance difficult to control Internet presence… You may not be aware of all of the new and interesting ways to get online with your own name and brand while not having to maintain that online portal each and every day.

A website can be thought of as a more difficult animal to manage than an eBay store or auction listing business. In reality the maintenance is much lower while sometimes the cost to get started can be a bit higher. Continuing costs of a website versus an eBay business are completely different however and by an almost universal consensus the stand alone website will win the cost to maintain battle every time.

So, why eBay? Because with the massive traffic generation provided by the huge amount of inbound links and the pure enormity of eBay a seller can have a higher percentage chance of making a sale on eBay than on a stand alone website.

What if you want a website and the traffic of eBay but you do not have enough source of supply to populate your own eCommerce site to compete with the massive lists of products found on eBay or Amazon? We think you could be quite happy with the following solution.

One particularly interesting method of populating an off eBay website which will not simply promote your brand and your eBay items but also will pay you back and run on autopilot. Is to install phpBay Pro on an existing or new php based website or Wordpress CMS site.

phpBay Pro (See Link in the Sidebar) is an Ebay software script available as a plugin for Wordpress or as an API (application programming interface) for php driven web sites. It’s built for simplicity, meaning that you can have it up and running in just a matter of minutes. Both versions come with documentation.
Ebay Affiliate Software

phpBay Pro enables web publishers to quickly and easily add keyword rich eBay auction listings to your Wordpress or php driven site to generate serious affiliate revenue in a matter of minutes!

What this means to those who may not be aware of the terminology used in the phpBay Pro company literature is…

With phpBay Pro any website can import any eBay listing category, store, or keyword group directly into a stand alone website or Wordpress based self hosted blog. When the owner of such a website signs up as an eBay affiliate at Commission Junction, the resulting traffic directed to eBay from these listings inserted into any own website or blog will generate 24 hour a day revenue for that site. Those same listing imported into your off eBay website add constantly updating and new content to that site. For SEO this is a great advantage. Your site can be relatively static, yet always have new listings imported providing recent and relevant content for search engine spiders to chew upon.

These imported listings can be from your own store, your favorite category, or of the best items from eBay’s hot list. The best part is that the imported listings will look as though they are designed as part of your original website. It won’t look like some eBay generated widget or html builder import. Well, actually… the best thing is that as the website owner you can make money on any item sold via your listings imported from eBay and you will not have to ship or stock or inventory any of them.

Check Out phpBay Pro – Follow that link below…. Tell em the All Business Auctions sent you! Or give us a call, we use phpBay Pro ourselves and would be happy to help you set up a website which can take advantage of this technology. We will insert eBay live listings with phpBay to a new site which could also contain not only your eBay listings from an existing eBay store but also have a page of eBay listings from other sellers stores (a great way to test niche’s) and also have a web 2.0 style blog attached to build a sense of community with your buyers. The options are endless!

eBay Feedback Changes 2008 – Sellers Dismay – Buyers Hooray?

Feedback has always been an issue on eBay both for buyers and sellers since the creation of the once-neighborly online auctioneering service.

The feedback system was originally devised by eBay over 10 years ago and is one of the primary reason why eBay not only prospered but thrived in the marketplace it has dominated for the last 10 years. The idea was that when both buyers and sellers could report on the results of a successful or unsuccessful transaction, everyone would be on thier best behavior to avoid developing a bad reputation. It has been recently reported by as yet unnamed business journalists that this eBay system of feedback, which has worked to a degree for over 10 years, was considered the “Wild West” of eCommerce.

A recent Google search for the keyword eBay feedback revealed over 11 Million hits with some mention of this infamous or dubious system. Google Results xxxx of about 11,100,000 for the search term ebay feedback. (0.22 seconds)

The feedback system on eBay has always created stress and controversy among the site’s users.

• Some would argue that sellers abuse the system by not leaving feedback immediately for honest buyers who fulfill their part of the bargain by paying promptly for an auction item won or purchased.
• Others (the Sellers) have always maintained the policy they have adapted is necessary due to the millions of not-so- honest buyers in the world who would threaten poor feedback posting if the seller will not perform some service such as provide reduced shipping or a partial refund.  Sellers have experienced the gamut of buyer feedback faux pas from simple mistaken premature feedback to all-out attempts at extortion over a simple feedback placement.

Sellers’ only defense against such negative feedback threats has been to withhold feedback left for buyers until they receive positive feedback from the buyer.

Until Now…

eBay has announced - in the midst of its recent round of fee increases and hoopla over the changing of the guard from Meg to JD – that sellers will no longer have the ability to protect the feedback rating they have earned.  Sellers will have no choice in the feedback cycle at all.  If a buyer pays, they get positive feedback…period.  A novel and honorable standard – in a perfect world.

News Flash – Internet retailing is not a perfect world.  Buyers are not always right and sellers are not always bad.  The opposite truths could also be argued.  It really boils down to a case by case basis.  A sweeping policy such as this can not be considered fair or just and the only parties being penalized are the sellers, with small sellers being penalized the most.

High volume sellers already have no problem with poor feedback. They collect hundreds of negatives each year with very little effect on the bottom line because these same sellers collect thousands of positive feedbacks in the same time frame. The percentage change for a negative dropped on a high volume seller is minuscule.

Small sellers, mom & pop sellers, consignment sellers and sellers of unique and expensive product lines with low volume will be the segment hurt the most by this new policy.  One negative for a new seller can put that seller out of business. One negative for a seller with less than 100 feedback will remove any discounts or other incentives eBay is so proud to offer under the new fee plan.  It is not a reasonable incentive if it cannot reasonably attained.

This new feedback plan is almost universally considered as a poor move by eBay among long-time sellers who are posting their vitriol and vehement opinions on the eBay forums.  It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

In our business, we plan on leaving positive feedback as soon as we receive payment and hope we do not receive too many helter skelter buyers. After all, we all wish we could live in a perfect eBay world – may as well try to see how it works before deciding it does not exist.

eBay Stores and e-Commerce Website Choices – Build it in-house or hire a professional?

When you’ve made the decision to get your products online via eBay and/or your own eCommerce website, what is the next step?

First Question: Build it in-house or hire a professional?

Yes, you can build your companies eBay store and website with talent already existing within your organization.

Website design is taught at most high schools or community colleges these days – chances are good that your employee pool may have budding web designer talent lurking deep within…

The next question is… are you ready to trust your company marketing and image to this untested talent?

eBay provides numerous tools and a great deal of information for anyone to accomplish the task of getting a store up and running.  The quandary is… does eBay provide these tips and tricks to help your as a business to thrive or to help their business prosper? Obviously, if you are a seasoned business professional you will soon realize that a company such as eBay does nothing without a reason.

Most of eBay’s teaching tools and to a certain extent, eBay’s entire growth strategy is based upon making the process of setting up an eBay selling account and consequently an eBay store easy for home based businesses. eBay wants mom & pop to go garage sale shopping with an eye towards making a few extra bucks for the cookie jar. To that end they want to get mom & pop up and running with an eBay store as soon as possible (and funneling fees into eBay). Just because eBay has based a majority of their marketing focus on home based businesses does not mean that an eBay store is not a valuable asset for any established brick and mortar retailer or other “real” business concern. eBay is simply going after the largest number of potential users of their products.

Unfortunately this also leads to numerous eBay store failures…

These home based eBay store owners do not have the prior background, sources or resources to take advantage of the world wide marketing giant and revenue producer now known as eBay. Therefore, while getting your company eBay store up and running may seem to be an easy in-house task for any intern, or kid just out of college with a great computer science degree… the real nuts & bolts set up and operation of an eBay store or e-commerce solution or both in tandem (the best option) is better left to professionals who work with eBay and e-commerce each and every day. If you are reading this because you are interested in moving your business more into an Internet sales based program you should consider the wisdom of hiring eBay and Internet marketing professionals to help you and your company get a head start toward those goals.

Still Thinking About Doing it yourself?

Building an online business requires ability in several completely different arenas: graphic design, programming, database development, Web design, copywriting, photography, and online marketing. This is just a short list of what is required to start from scratch or to add Internet marketing to your sales operation. If you have these skills in-house or if you plan on learning them yourself, please take this advice to heart.

Make a list of your employees’ available skills as well as which skills they can learn. When you have a choice between learning a skill that will directly translate into making more money for your company or learning a skill that will let you do cool stuff on the Web, make a careful choice. Decide how much time you really want to devote to learning and doing things that really don’t help you sell more products. Do you want to be an online retailer, or do you want to be a Web developer? The highest and best use of your available time & resources probably isn’t learning the ins and outs of XHTML, but taking care of customers, finding new products, and promoting your business.

Making it Happen

Anything you can do yourself on a website design or to a eBay Store can be delegated or outsourced. You can hire eBay Stores Certified design professionals to design your eBay store from the ground up, create a custom logo, develop a corporate identity with unique colors and fonts, build your store product database, take product photos, write sales copy, perform search engine optimization on your site, custom-build XHTML templates that do almost anything you want them to do, and even manage your orders and perform customer service. It all depends on your budget.

After you’ve decided that you need help, you have lots of choices to make. The first decision is the size of your budget, which determines who you can hire. You can find prices for “building a eBay Store” that range anywhere from $300 to $5,000 and up. You can get a bargain using offshore designers (working anywhere from eastern Europe to India), college kids, or even professional designers moonlighting out of their basement. If you want a more “professional” experience, expect to pay up to $15,000 for a complete branding, marketing, and design package from top-drawer eBay store and Internet marketing firm. Both your web e-commerce site and your eBay store should present your branding and image as you expect them to. Getting the eBay image and your website image to mesh almost seamlessly is your goal, this can be quite difficult for even experienced web designers.

Using a CMS or Content Management System type of website design can significantly reduce your web design costs. There are a huge amount of new and exciting options available for web development, do not think you must use a “hand coded” html site to get your branding and image in front of the public. Some companies are even using simple blogging platforms like Wordpress or Typepad as the basis for corporate websites. These blogging platforms are very inexpensive to set up and the software is free. These CMS or Blogging platforms may also be used in conjunction with an eBay store or a with an eCommerce plug in (or both) to craft a unique Internet marketing funnel for your company.

You get what you pay for

eBay store designs from the good design companies run between $2,000 to $5,000. eCommerce website designs sometimes run in the tens of thousands of dollars with continual maintenance costs and webmaster fees. If your budget makes you choose between the two options, an eBay store is the more economical and faster route to success when managed correctly.

The best part of an eBay stores set up is that once it is installed as you want it, you have very few outside maintenance costs. Your company will have complete control of the products presentation (with the use of a template) and the inventory management is a simple to learn affair on eBay. Advanced tools are available to help with the management of large inventories and to help you create a listing just as you would within a word processing program or text editor.

When you get a quality eBay Stores design, sometimes the results are more than just superficial. Qualified designers improve the shopping experience, which can dramatically increase sales from your existing traffic by increasing your conversion rate. Also, many designs, when set up correctly improve the way your site looks to search-engine spiders, too! (This is the power of an eBay stores “me” page and other exclusive features and benefits of eBay stores packages).

After you determine what parts of the store building process you can do and what you can’t do or would rather not do, you’re ready to look for some help with the heavy lifting. First, you have to decide what type of vendor you want to work with because there’s a big difference between working with a freelancer or independent consultant and working with a large design company or ad agency:

eBay Stores certified design specialists

eBay Stores certified design specialists (certified eBay stores designers) provide the best overall experience. Your company will get the personalized attention it deserves and you will know that the design is based upon eBay marketing principles. Look at the portfolios of these certified eBay stores designers and decide which firm best represents your companies’ image. Stay away from home based eBay stores designers with frilly eBay templates and flashy bouncing mouse pointers. You should be looking more for a corporate image that sells product and more importantly, cross sells more products for your company.

Look at the online stores you frequent in your daily life, think about the type of image and features you would like to emulate for your eBay store. Look at the designer’s portfolios and or ask them if the features you think are most valuable are available in their design packages? Some eBay stores designers can deliver very advanced packages designed to promote more than one primary product at a time. If you are looking for growth in your Internet sales segment, these are the designers to contract with. Talk with several designers to find the one you are most comfortable with and the one who you think will represent the image of your company best with an online design. If the same designer can also develop your off eBay website e-commerce design, you should place that designer high on your list of candidates.

Having a web presence for your company which flows from eBay to your own website with the same “look and feel” is very important. Your goal should be to make your customers feel confident in your products and your company. If you (and your design company) have made an effort to create a nearly seamless shopping experience between eBay and your own e-commerce website, the confidence of the buyer will increase and your conversion rate will as well. Drawing eBay shoppers to your website from within eBay is not only possible, but very probable with a eBay store design done correctly.

Ask your prospective design firm the right questions and you will know immediately if you have made the best choice.

Example Questions:

• Are you a certified eBay Stores Designer?
• Do you have examples of cross marketing designs?
• Can you create an eBay stores design which matches my existing website or can you create an e-commerce design to match your eBay stores design?
• Is SEO important for eBay?
• How important is a eBay about me page?
• Do your templates appear correct on all of the major browsers?
• What kind of changes can be made to the design after your job is complete? (Can I offer a special sale item in my template?)

If your chosen designer is not informed in these questions you should look further. Not every eBay or Internet design firm has the necessary skills or background to help your company effectively cross-market your products. Find the right design firm which will give your firm a solid foundation from which to grow and prosper in the new world of Internet retailing.

eBay Sellers Keyword Tools Rundown – Use keywords tools to find buyers!

Established eBay sellers know the importance of selecting the right “keywords” for the titles of auctions and store listings within eBay. While most eBay sellers may not be aware of the work eBay does “behind the scenes” to make sure each and every one of your listings is optimized throughout the Internet. The work that eBay does assures eBay Stores sellers are the beneficiaries of one of the most effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools available today. That tool is eBay.

While the SEO work that you must do as a seller is minimal for your eBay listings. There are very good reasons for you to learn more about SEO and Keyword tools. Relying on eBay to do all of the work for you may not always be the wisest course of action even though it does work most of the time. With the proper understanding and use of keywords and keyword tools you can increase your sales and get your products seen by the people who are searching for them everyday. In addition, if you want to drive traffic to your eBay store or off eBay eCommerce website a proper understanding of SEO and search based marketing is a basic requirement for your business.

I found the keyword tool comparison listed below to be quite interesting and helpful. It has been written by Aaron Wall of the blog SEOTools. While Aaron offers one of these tools on his website, I find it refreshing and encouraging that he spent the time to write this article and gave his honest opinion of a great deal of the keyword tools available today in the marketplace. Read more

Can anyone clean up on eBay?

Can anyone clean up on eBay?

• If you sell collectibles like this Hummel – You could
• If you find a niche you enjoy – You might
• But if you’re a brick and mortar business already – you will!

Brick and mortar retailers, wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers need to be aware that they already have 90% of the required ingredients to become very successful eBay and eCommerce retailers. In house these businesses already have the manpower, the sources of supply, the shipping capabilities and the product knowledge required to become a successful Internet marketing organization.

If you own or work for any kind of brick and mortar business mentioned above… You should look at adding eBay and then eCommerce to your business! Another stream of income could not be a bad thing and the brand exposure worldwide is always a good thing.

Give it a try or ask us for help!

Blogged with Flock

DesignLogic Created Frooition Powered eBay-Stores Design for Cornerstone Supply

We have have just created this new eBay stores design with our DesignLogic team in conjunction with Frooition in the U.K.

Cornerstone Supply is an established brick and mortar supplier of commercial carpet cleaning equipment and cleaning agents, specializing in heavy duty truck mounted carpet cleaning machines.

Our iBusinessLogic team of professionals and solutions will be bringing this company to eCommerce in a big way – starting with an eBay store designed by DesignLogic and powered by Frooition. Listing services provided by AuctionLogic will keep the inventory of this operation online via eBay with a minimal learning curve and maximizing uptime of inventory.

After our initial eBay stores setup and implementation we plan on designing and launching a eCommerce website and blog for this company.

Wish us luck as we hope to provide these types of services for brick and mortar businesses for the foreseeable future.

Why every Trading Assistant and eBay Franchise Drop Store Should have and eBay Stores Account

In our previous post we reviewed Trading Assistants & franchise eBay drop store marketing ideas and I promised to detail how and why every Trading Assistant or drop store owner should have an eBay Stores account.

It always amazes me when I consult with franchise owners who are struggling to find that they have not signed up to become an eBay store owner. These franchise drop store owners are struggling to generate profits and eventually they ask for marketing ideas, when one of the smartest marketing tools available on the planet is an eBay Stores account. Why don’t these business people take advantage of this opportunity?

Is it the $15.95 per month charge which holds them back? Or is it simply the fact that eBay does not do a good job of explaining why eBay stores are the key to becoming profitable on eBay. Read more

eBay and eBay Stores, Your Most Effective eCommerce SEO Tool?

Does your business use eBay as a tool?

This may seem like an odd term for the largest online sales producer on the planet… but in reality, no matter how large or small your business is, eBay is an effective and often under utilized tool.

eBay is not the only tool in your marketing toolbox and even though it is a very effective device, eBay should not be the only tool your company uses to generate online sales. Other tools are more familiar, website marketing, Google Adwords, Amazon.com to name a few.

But why should any business consider using eBay as a part of their online marketing plan? – Numbers – Search – Rankings – Sales – All of the Above Read more

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