Selling On Bonanzle

I have been uncluttering my house lately. A couple of months ago I took some boxes of stuff to my local thrift store. Now I was wishing I could sell some of the things I have as money is getting tight. I feel we are living in a very bad depression and I can use every penny I can make now. So here I am with tons of books and things that I normally would have sold on eBay. But I cannot afford eBay anymore. Once it changed it was never fun again.

So I found this new place called Bonanzle. I had received a newsletter on Saturday from WebProNews that told that it was eBay's competition and that it had just been funded by Venture Captial and was on it's way. So I went to their site to check it out. I tried to register for a new account and it said my user name and email address was already taken. So I tried to login and sure enough.........I was already a member! Plus, I had two packages of guitar strings already listed. I further checked and found I had joined in March of 2009 and came back two days later and never again after that. Wow! Now what was up with that?? Why would I have done that?

Saturday, yesterday and today, I have been listing more guitar strings and used books I have for sale. I think I could do well on this. I did on eBay but after awhile they started protecting buyers and trying to hurt the sellers. I think they never realized that the SELLERS are the reason the buyers came there to begin with. Buyers can do what they want over there and treat the sellers pretty badly and they think the seller has no choice but to take it. Reminds me of the public school systems! LOL

Bonanzle lets you list for free and you only have a fee after the sale and it is the final value fee. I think it is a lot lower than eBay's fees. Not real familar with the fees yet. I just know that I am listing items for sale and have no fees as of yet. Since it is cheaper, I find I can offer my books for less money than if I had higher fees. If you are thinking of selling somewhere you may want to check them out.

Their discussion boards are not full of whiners and complainers like eBay has. I cannot tolerate whiners and complainers! It is one thing I do not like about people as the internet seem to be full of them. Don't whine and complain..........instead change it. Do something about it to make a difference so you don't need to complain or whine.

The way the prices have gone up not only in the grocery stores, but gas, kerosene and just everything in general, makes you have to take control of your situation. For me that means having many streams of income coming in from a variety of sources so I am not dependent on one thing. Then if that fails, I have others that are still going strong. Everyone should do that, including and especially, people dependent on jobs and government checks.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole

International Customers Welcome!

My little girls taking it easy

I am presently working on trying to get sales in the international markets. It seems that to cut off your international sales means you are limiting the potential of your website store. So if you work to get those sales that can increase your bottom line. We have always had traffic on our websites from international shoppers. The problem has been that I have always been afraid of those sales. Hearing the stories on eBay and other places of how the foreigners are just spammers and people out to get us makes you fear them on your site. The thing is, if I had a brick and mortar store and a Frenchman came in to look at my merchandise, would I throw him out? Or would I smile and try to welcome him to my store? Would I try to help him if he was looking for something in particular? You bet I would! I would treat him like royalty. If he took the time from his day to visit my store I would make it worth his time to do so.

Just recently I have had a couple of nice size sales that came from Paris, France. At first we were a little nervous about this sale. The buyer sent me a message and asked if he could buy our product from Paris, France. So we did some research to see how we could ship at a low cost and still make money. We ship for free to all U.S. and Canadian addresses. Our product is small and doesn't usually cost that much to ship. We do not add the shipping cost to the price of the strings. Instead we take it out of our profits. But international shipping is costly. That is what stops most sellers from doing it. We found a way to do it so it would be a worthwhile move for us. Our customer seems happy as he placed another order with us.

It seems awesome to me to be working here from my homestead in the middle of the state forest and selling my product to people living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean! It shows you just how far we have come in such a short time. Our world is getting smaller and our world market is getting larger...........much larger. To wake up in the morning and have orders of guitar strings waiting to be packaged up is such a great concept. No driving to a job. Just working on the computer which both of us love to do anyway.

As I told in an earlier post this year, I am working on automating my life and my homestead. Making things much easier for us. Ordering supplies online so I don't have to leave home to do those errands. It is much easier for me as I am very busy here. Saves me a lot of time and time for me is also money. Plus no driving around looking for stuff that I can purchase online. Also I  have the ability to have it automated so my orders can be sent on a certain day that I set up.I am looking forward to completing this process. Then I can move onto other more important ventures.

I have been sick for almost a month now and I am finally starting to feel better. It has been the hardest thing I have had to deal with and this was just the wrong time for me to be sick. Spring is my busy time and it was frustrating. It didn't stop me from working but I wasn't my best. Now I am back to normal speed and have many irons in the fire.

Copyright © 2010 Kathleen G. Lupole