Bonanza may be winding down its usefulness. Here are some free ecommerce webstore alternatives.

There are a LOT of complaints from the BBB about Bonanza right now over the last year. Sellers getting charged for things years ago, customers getting ripped off regularly. Just really, really bad image. The responses are really template responses too. 

www.bbb.org/us/wa/seattle/profile/online-retailer/bonanzacom-1296-22476619/complaints

I remember in 2007 when Wagglepop peaked, it was painful like this. Lots of people complaining about no customer service, fraud sellers, etc. The owner/admin even had shell accounts to fill the site up as sellers began leaving and was taking on the alter egos of 3 different people on the forums and in emails to make it not seem so bad. I absolutely rocked this site too. Hundreds of orders a month. However, it just dropped to near zero. Fortunately I found Bonanza about the time I was moving on. I became user 6,476 in the early days of the site, and am proud to have been a founding member.

I was hopeful that when the site was sold a few years ago, the growth would continue. After all, I was paying about $5,000 a year in fees, and so were many other sellers. They had a tremendous business. My feeling now though is the old ownership realized the site was going to become more difficult to maintain profits, and they decided to move on while they still could. The new owner is a very smart guy. He had a plan. Unfortunately that plan involved external expansion instead of growth. He launched several different businesses under Bonanza, like an online pharmacy, lending platform, shipping platform, and a new webstore builder Vercado.
It seems like the Bonanza owner put his all into the Vercado webstore builder and wanted to capitalize on the thousands of Bonanza sellers to build that platform, but nobody wanted to use it because it was too expensive at $100/month. Now he's finally realized it, and has reduced it to $35/month. Sadly though, the community of avid members and sellers have dwindled far down from the highs. I even left 2 years ago and ran my business on eBay until I saw market trends shifting away from my products. Now, with little in house inventory, I have been looking to rebrand into a similar but new line and move back to Bonanza.

I was going to shoot for adding products and rebuilding my rebranded store, but not sure now. I know a lot of people in the same boat, so this is my input.


Some free alternatives are:
Odoo.com: Great themes, free store. You can select one app free, so select "ecommerce" for your site. Other features available for a fee. 
Ecrater.com, which has marketplace sale fees but no direct store sale fees. In business since 2005, not likely to up and vanish.
Square Online (squareup.com) 100% free except payment processing. Also has more options for a fee. This is a publicly traded company, and probably won't go away anytime soon.
Also, freewebstore.com allows you to build an unlimited free store with Paypal only for payments. Has upgraded stores for a fee.
Gumroad: Free store, but has a 10% fee for direct traffic, marketplace sales though are 30% fees.

Last, there is a $5 monthly Shopify "Starter" option. It includes a basic webstore with no categories or collections, but is a great way to start building too. You get the majority of the apps, blog, and all their payment options.

What's your favorite free webstore builder?

Madam Vice President

Disclaimer: This is not political and any comments as such toward either candidate will be removed.

4 years ago, I wrote about my neice being born as Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote for President, and what it meant that she could one day do the same. 

Well, last week it happened again. My daughter Monroe got to watch as the first woman in US history gave a speech as vice President-elect in the US. She is only 2, and was mostly just watching Baby Shark on her tablet, but I have to believe she knew there was something special when I looked at her as Kamala Harris spoke with a slight tear in my eyes.

I can mostly remember in first grade, Miss Dean's class, we were all asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Every year we were asked this, of course, but I am pretty sure it was that year, 1983.

I wanted to be a garbageman. I thought it was awesome to lift the dumpsters up in the truck.

As we went around the room, someone said he wanted to be a clown, someone said she wanted to be a teacher, then cop, then fireman, then doctor, and so on. Then a girl (I don't remember who) said she wanted to be President. I remember some boys and girls laughing. When Miss Dean asked one of the kids (again , I don't remember who) why she was laughing, she said because the President is a man. This was true, since Reagan was President. I don't remember much more about that day.

Sprint forward 37 years.

Whether you agree with her politics or not, for the first time, a true 50%+ majority of the votes in a national election cast for a female candidate on the Presidential ticket. I have believed for the 2 years of her life that Monroe can one day be anything she wants to be. Every child aspires to be something different. While the "President" is the most common, it is also the most unlikely dream to come true for anyone since there will probably be only 10 in your lifetime. This was even less of a chance for little girls, until now. Guess what, Monroe, that chance is a whole lot better for you today. Someday, yes, you can have just as much of a chance to be anything you want as any man has. Even Madam President. And you will make a seriously bad-ass President in 40 years.

Learning from mistakes, and forging new territory

In 2006, I was selling about 1000 DVD's weekly on eBay. I was riding a wave of DVD sellers who were leaving the site, and I was grabbing all their customers. I was, in fact, so confident that I would be doing this for another decade even more successfully that I cashed in my former job's 401K just to invest in my business.

Then, when thing just couldn't get any better for my business, we saw Netflix streaming movies at the beginning of 2007, Amazon Unbox in September 2006, Youtube and Youtube like sites flooded the internet, and the fading of the era of physical media began.

I had one chance were I could have maintained my business. I could convert my business to integrate high definition inventory, which was just beginning in 2006. My distributor had a whopping 150 HD-DVD and about 100 Blu-ray titles in stock, and consumers with enough money were spending $500+ to get the players for these formats. However, I was not as smart as I would like to think I was.
Exhibit A is my blog post I made in mid-2006, decrying the fools who would make the day of the DVD and VHS obsolete. The only problem? I was the real fool.

Note the arrogance as I wrote that post. I was absolutely certain DVD was always going to be the better, and cheaper option. After all, I had sold them incredibly well for 5 years, so I had no reason to think that would end, right?

As luck would have it, I was not as foolish as I could have been, and began a small site dedicated to this emergence of new media. I called it "House of Blu - We Are Blu-ray" and began advertising and marketing it online. I gained modest success, but by the time I launched in 2008, the floodgates had opened and thousands of titles were available.

Take a look at my site as it existed:

http://web.archive.org/web/20090209131936/http://houseofblu.com/

My message here is to learn from your mistakes. When I continued selling movies online, I continued selling the same old kinds of DVD's I had always sold as my primary source of inventory, and never gained a single new customer. When I began looking at what was selling in my niche, I found a couple areas with pre-viewed pro wrestling and Blu-ray where I could make a terrific mark on the category. To this day used Blu-ray is doing very well and I have moved on to a new one to replace the wrestling that faded.

It is all about planning and honesty. No one wants to fail, so we cling onto what has always worked. 

Now, it is about what is working today.

Sometimes you have to appreciate what you have

December is always tricky for me. I get very busy at work, my online sales take a huge boost, and I get to look back at a handful of tragedies that have hit close to home.
This past week, I remembered a young man who I had been close to many years ago that passed away 2 years ago December 14. It was 5 days after his 21st birthday. I had not seen him since he was 16 when we moved away, and the next time I saw him was as he laid in the chapel 2 years ago.
Nothing can prepare you for seeing the body of someone you loved and helped raise for several years of his life. I could not speak, shed a tear, or smile after seeing him all the way on the 3 hour drive home. I could barely breathe for about 5 minutes after seeing him. Life gets in the way sometimes, and sometimes you can't control anything but how you react to it. As the last 2 years have passed, I have learned that this affected me profoundly, and the way I look at life was forever changed.
All life is precious, and the life we have is the only one we are guaranteed. If you are not happy with your situation, make a small change that makes you happy every week until you are happy every day. I promise, it works, even if it is small. When you make these little changes, maybe just waking up 5 minutes earlier to sit outside for a few minutes and breathe fresh air, your life will change. When you change the way you look at life, your life changes.
Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Glorious Kwanzaa, and today, Happy Solstice.

Here's a tune to take you out, Ghosts of Days Gone By - by Alter Bridge.

Longing for the days of the "St. Elsewhere" marketplace, Volume 1

We are all nostalgic by nature as online sellers. Whether you sell for hobby, for extra money, or for your primary income, you remember the days on now-dead marketplaces you loved.

I started a small marketplace for some friends from these old marketplaces, such as Wagglepop and Plunderhere, and named it Quest for Bids. Check it out sometime: http://www.questforbids.com

My first installment is Wagglepop. View the site at the internet archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20061108032948/http://www.wagglepop.com/bin/Auction

While Wagglepop looks very amateurish by today's marketplace standards, in 2006 when it launched it was the "cat's pyjamas" of eBay alternatives. $10 a month got you a store, hundreds of shoppers a week, and for me, over 500 sales in a year. There was a vibrant community, active members, great seller tools, over 900 stores at it's peak, and the admin was far ahead of the Google game that businesses now cannot survive without.

The store layouts were almost identical to the eBay store layouts at the time. It was a phenomenal clone of eBay built on a stable platform, with all the potential of being the next big thing.
View my store shortly before I left the site:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070610120726/http://www.wagglepop.com/stores/movieaddict?

In fact, this was directly on my "About Me" page on Wagglepop from 2006:
"While I don't plan to talk about why I left that other site this year, I will tell you why I am at Wagglepop. Wagglepop has a community unlike any other I have found online. The sellers, while competitive, are always looking to help other sellers. In other communities, it's every seller for themself, but at Wagglepop, it is every seller for the greater good of the site and community!"

So, why am I talking about a site I left in 2007? Because, it holds a special place in my heart. It was my first non-eBay selling experience, and it was a damn good one. It was so good, that I fell in love with smaller marketplaces and really never returned to eBay or Amazon again except for a few items here and there.

Sadly, the owner of the site began raising store fees dramatically, as high as $60 for the lowest tier store, when sellers flocked to sites like Bonanza and eCrater, and the site dwindled to a slow, expensive death in 2009. It was,however, probably my favorite "St Elsewhere" site, and always holds that nostalgic feeling in my heart when I submit a new item for sale on a marketplace.

What was your favorite "St Elsewhere" site?

Weekend Warrior project returns! $9 shopping cart: material.com

When first setting up a website for ecommerce, there is a natural trend to spend hours on end designing, formatting, laying out, and so on. Today though, I tried a "Beta" version of a site called Material, and have never been more impressed in such a short time. I like to locate sites like this through Stripe's integration page: https://stripe.com/works-with

Pro's
In less than 30 minutes, I had the entire site layout done with 5 products added to the site, which met the free store maximum. The layout editor & theme selector was very simple, adding products was one page with 4 lines, and setup on the back end with payments and shipping took less than 2 minutes. Overall it is the most simple webstore builder I have ever seen.

Con's:
There are a few lacking features, such as the ability to charge extra per item for shipping, and only accepting Stripe payments. There is only a flat rate and free shipping model, but this is not a huge deal for someone like me that can ship 3-5 items for slightly more than 1.

I have not experienced the full monty of the store since I only used the free account, though I am tempted to change that in the coming week just to see what options I have.

Keep in mind, Material.com is still a beta site. They will make many changes based on feedback from users.
Check out 30 minutes of work:
https://Video-Warehouse.mymaterial.com

Why I quit watching college football

This post marks my return to this blog after an absence, and has absolutely nothing to do with selling online.  I am going to chronicle how I quit watching football by copying a few posts I made elsewhere. Keep in mind, Saturdays for more than 20 years, every fall I have been glued to a TV with my remote glued to my hand flipping channels to watch the games. Last year ended it. I've called it my descent into madness against college football, but really it is just a complete withdrawal of my financial support from watching unpaid athletes pay coaches and television networks millions to abuse them.

September 20, 2015 · 

Does anyone else think about this too...

out of $50 million that a school like University of Alabama made off tonight's game, just from the tickets, merchandise, parking, sponsors, and TV money included, the only people on that field making a dime off that game are the coaches and ESPN staff. A $15000-$20000 annual scholarship is barely minimum wage to get their heads beaten in for 6 days a week. T

his goes not only for all top tier college football teams, but also all college football in general. Get a minimum wage pay "scholarship" job just so you can have brain damage in 4 years and be unable to perform in your chosen career, or maybe be the 1 in 40 who goes pro and exacerbates your brain trauma another decade before they spit you out too. Oh, and don't forget, you have to give "all the glory to God" like he wanted you to beat the hell out of each other to make your coaches, colleges, and ESPN executives wealthy.

I have to say, I think I'm done with college football.

December 4, 2015 · 

So this year I made a decision to not watch any football after September 19, when Alabama played Ole Miss. The Alabama QB took a really bad hit, which usually would have been a high point in the game for me, but instead when the 22 year old kid ran to the sideline the offensive coordinator blasted him. Nick Saban was yelling at everyone coming off the field. The commentators said something along the lines of "Boy I'm glad I'm not that offensive line at halftime." And that was it for me. I think I posted something similar to this, but as much as I have always despised Alabama football, I felt really bad for those kids. They are getting a free education, worth about $20000/year. That is equivalent to about 9 bucks an hour. Target would pay them that to run the cash register. Meanwhile, Nick Saban is pulling down nearly $7 million a year, and his assistants also making in the millions, to yell at them when they make a bad play, all while living like kings on the bodies of college kids. These kids are getting their bodies beaten, brains scrambled, and often their confidence crushed because they aren't perfect every play. I switched channels and saw the same thing going on in nearly every game. Multi millionaire coaches screaming at players because they weren't perfect. I just decided that was not worth my time to watch anymore. I still got to have my annual FSU/Miami bet with Mike and still got to harass a few people about Bama shirts, and even know kind of how bad my teams are doing, but my TV has not shown a football game since. I just couldn't support that type of abuse.

So now, 10 weeks later, I have virtually zero stress on the weekends. I don't eat really bad junk food on Saturdays. And I actually have done some really constructive things with my Saturdays. And you know what? I don't even miss it.

All of this was just to say, you don't have to stand up for something by marching in the streets, screaming at the top of your lungs, or posting really nasty things about what you think is wrong all over social media sites. Sometimes, just take your support away from what you see as immoral and watch your life get better.

September 25, 2016

Things like this are why I quit watching college football last year.
OK, so mostly it was because I watched 6 million dollar man Nick Saban screaming at his quarterback who could barely walk off the field for his $20000/year scholarship. But yeah, stupid things like this add fuel to me never watching another game. It's amazing how much less stress I have on Saturdays now too. 

October 9, 2016 at 10:37am · 

http://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/video-arkansas-lineman-pins-alabama-qb-jalen-hurts-neck-int/

It's ok to have us pay $100/ticket, or watch billions in advertising, to let kids beat each other's skulls in to get a free education, but not ok to let them have that education with our tax dollars?
I'm still trying to figure out how this stuff surprises anyone? Take kids who are mostly unable to financially go to college, give them a scholarship whose value is less than a full time sales job, scream at them to hit harder and be more aggressive, yell at them when they miss a hit, and threaten to take away their only hope for a future when they are not aggressive enough, all to pay a multi-million dollar salary to the coach and shove hundreds of millions more back into the athletic department. If all that money went to tuitions, we would have 100% debt free college.
This is why I quit watching last year. I won't support something that takes kids, yes, 18, 19 year old KIDS and teaches them to be more aggressive when they attack another player who just wants an education too.
It's all about the kind of society you want to live in. Glorify this for money, or glorify education with the money.