Bonanzle Subscribing Memberships: A Good Deal Gets Better

April 06, 2009

Busy day around the farm today, as keen observers of the changelist may note. Most of the changes are staying in the theme of this month (ways to bring visitors back to Bonanzle without Google), but we also snuck in a top 5-requested feature from the Next Up List -- ability to add tracking numbers to your inventory and print out an inventory sheet.

For Plus (or Premiere) subscribers, this option can be set via the Batch Editor. You'll see a new tab called "Print Inventory" that will let you set a new "inventory_id" attribute for your items in much the same way you setup Google attributes for your items. In fact, we even left the syntax the same: to add an inventory tracking number for your item, you just tell the batch editor [[inventory_id: 12345]]. And of course, you can put that tag directly into your item description as well -- so you don't have to go back to your items in the batch editor after listing them. (Example description: "This is the description for a handmade necklace. It is blue and pretty. [[inventory_id: ABCDEFG]]". When buyers see the item, the [[inventory_id]] bit gets stripped out, but when you go to the inventory printout page, you'll see the inventory id)

We also made some internal updates to the way we are storing the item attributes. This applies to all users. The biggest benefit you'll notice with the new approach is that you can now set more search attributes for an item without your old search attributes getting wiped out. If you set an attribute that is already in your item (e.g., [[color:red]] becomes [[color:orange]]), the new system is smart enough to just update the attribute you changed, without affecting your existing attributes. Of course, this is all very new, so there might be a kink or two in it for Monday, but it all seems to be generally working at this point.

Coming Soon for Premiere Subscribers...

Later this week we're hoping to add another feature for premiere subscribers: the ability to see a list of where your sales originated from. That is, we're going to try to set it up in such a way that you can know that of your 10 sales this week, 5 came from Craigslist, 3 came from Google, and 2 came from hand picked list browsers. In the Founder's humble opinion, this feature will rule. While Google Analytics is great for seeing who is looking at your items, there is still a gap between knowing who's looking at items and who's actually buying items, so this should seal that gap and help you know where to focus your promoting efforts.

Oh, and about a week ago we also added the ability for premiere subscribers to collect buyers' email addresses for running direct email promotions to snag repeat buyers (buyer has to opt into it). I don't believe that has been previously mentioned?

Not a Subscriber?

We don't tout our subscribing memberships that often, but with an FVF structure as low as Bonanzle's, subscribers are the peanut butter on our PBJ sandwich. It's a mere $8.33/month (2 cups of Starbucks, in Seattle-speak) to get a plus membership if you pay yearly, or $16.66/month for a premiere membership, if you buy a year at once.

Here's where you can read about all the subscription benefits (excluding those added today).