Bonanza Advertising Price Increases During Fourth Quarter
A little surprised today; when I went to cross-sell a product I have in my Bonanza Booth to eBay, I discovered that Bonanza.com raised it's commission prices for advertising.
I have discussed Bonanza many times on my YouTube channel, and my recent thoughts are here on the How To Sell Online blog in My Favorite Places To Sell Online.
According to the new advertising information as shown in the first graphic above. The "Superior" level commission jumped from 16% to 19% but now suggests that 4.6 Million anticipated shoppers may potentially view your products.
The new "Elite" level gives you the same advertising venues as the "Superior" which includes the 3.5% Bonanza Marketplace Only Advertising, 9% Google Shopping and Bonanza (Promotions), 13% Ebay Cross-selling and Bonanza (Affiliate), and 15% NextTag and Bing Ads. Other than having the same market venues as the "Superior", the "Elite" suggests a potential shopper view rate of 6.4 Million reach, compared to the "Superior" 4.6 Million reach.
Below is a graphic of the Advertising Chart that I screen captured of the pre-fourth quarter commissions last week when I updated the My Favorite Places To Sell Online page.
The previous Basic Booth advertising default, referred to as (Disabled Advertising) which was included with all free booths, is now called "Economy" at the original commission rate of 3.5% commission and still is based on the "organic" search results, also known as (Marketplace only) traffic.
Previously the (Economy) advertising commission was a 6% rate and provided you with Google Shopping Cart and Bonanza Promotions. Here in the 4th quarter of 2015, Economy is now called (Basic) with a 9% commission rate with no additional advertising options.
The previous (Standard) Bonanza.com advertising rate remains unchanged at 13% which adds the ability to cross-sell to your eBay account (The most seamless cross-selling implementation to eBay I have found) and provides you with Bonanza Affiliate potential advertising.
The biggest commission increases occur with the original (Superior) and new (Elite) advertising options, with (Superior) commission increasing from 16% to 19%. The new (Elite) is the highest commission advertising rate at 30%.
According to my e-mail accounts connected with Bonanza, as of the date of this posting, there was no announcement from Bonanza.com that any of these commission rates had changed. If I had received such an e-mail, I would of written this Bonanza update review sooner, This concerns me because without notice, anyone with active products for sale using the (Superior) commission level is now paying an additional 3% commission without their knowledge.
Perhaps, there are so few Bonanza sellers opting into the (Superior) commission rate, that Bonanza didn't feel it necessary to notify those few who do. Hopefully, it is simply a matter of my missing that announcement from Bonanza. Either way, the changes are surprising, especially considering the slower sales and traffic on Bonanza since May 2015.
While there was no commission rate change to the level I use (Superior), other than my cross-selling products I have in my Bonanza Booth, to eBay, I have not seen any advantage or increase in sales or traffic on Bonanza since May 2015. According to Bonanza, I should see a 1.4 Million potential increase in sales traffic. I have a difficult time believing it, let me tell you why.
During 2014 through 2015, I tested the various advertising options to determine if I was receiving any additional traffic. According to the analytic s I used to judge traffic compared to the results Bonanza was showing me, both were similar in that Google Shopping Cart presented very few views and no sales. I also didn't notice any increase in traffic nor sales with the higher commission levels I tested. Hopefully, these new commission rates are not simply a price hike for selling on Bonanza, but an indication that Bonanza has fixed and removed some of its broken throttling search methods that have affected sales on this marketplace for a while now. I discussed Bonanza.com's throttling of search results in my recent Bonanza review. (My Favorite Places To Sell Online)
One of the hot topics for online sellers on Facebook recently, focused on selling via Custom Stores at Storenvy.com. We were discussing the value listing products for placement into Google Shopping Cart via paid advertising, so this has been an area of great interest to me.
Here at the end of 2015, in the fourth quarter, I have had ample time to judge and evaluate the benefits or rather lack of benefits of having product appear in Google Shopping Cart, so let me hit you with this question. When was the last time you looked on Google Shopping Cart (located as an extra option) when you are logged into Google.com? If you are being honest, then your answer is similar to mine... Never!. In fact the only time I have ever looked at Google Shopping is when I specifically wanted to locate the products that Bonanza was feeding into it.
The reality is, that simply having your products appear in Google Shopping via Bonanza or any other marketplace, is not that useful. Your products are not appearing in Google's normal Search Engine when a shopper looks for a particular product unless you are selling a product that is only available online in limited quantities. You might also receive a few results if someone uses the specific correct key words that you used in your lists, but its not likely. This is because, for most products appearing in Google Shopping, there is an over saturation of the same products being sold on multiple marketplaces including eBay. You are not seeing these results appear in the higher levels of Google or even Bing search engine, which are dominated by pay-per-click ads.
Here are three items I have had for sale at Bonanza.com over several months The Original Xbox has had (45 Views total with 24 coming from Google Shopping). It is impossible to know if the Google related ad views are robots that are crawling and indexing the content on the Bonanza booth, or if there were real potential shoppers. Notice the other two items that have been for sale half of 2015, have had no views on Google Shopping.
The second item on the list shows Zero Google Ad Views, 3 Bonanza Views and 6 eBay Ad Views.
The Ebay Ad Views came from my using the Publish to eBay option during one of eBay's free 2,000 listings events. One of the 5 of this product I had for sale on eBay sold within 6 views. I paid a 1.5% commission to Bonanza.com for cross-listing the product from Bonanza to eBay. It turned out to be an extra 15 Cents paid to Bonanza. I figured it was worth the 1.5% commission since I didn't have to go through the entire listing process on eBay, instead only having to click the Publish to Ebay button on the right.
Using Bonanza's cross-selling to eBay option, allowed me to list 170 products in under 5 minutes to eBay during eBay's special free listing event. I could have also listed most of the items from ShopSeen.com, though with ShopSeen.com there are additional steps required per item and I was in a hurry.
The strange thing about Bonanza compared to eBay, is that I have often offer discounts to my shoppers on Bonanza with lower prices but few sales, When cross-selling those same items to eBay, many will sell within the 30 Day eBay listing period. So on one hand, it was smart for Bonanza to build the smoothest cross-selling inventory management tool available to eBay sellers, since it makers a small commission. But personally I, like many other Bonanza sellers, would rather have product selling directly on that Marketplace, in addition to anywhere else that we sell.
Because products being sold simultaneously on eBay and Bonanza.com are showing up in the same Google Search results, you will want to make sure to change the title on one of the marketplaces at the time of cross-listing so you do not get penalized by Google. But what it indicates is that Google Shopping Advertising is not very effective. Why would someone be willing to pay $5,00 more on eBay for the same product, from the same seller, than on Bonanza? Maybe familiarity? Maybe eBay's return policy protections? Perhaps all of those contributors, or maybe, its just that no one really goes to Google Shopping to search for products. I never have, I use normal Google Search when I am looking for products and usually only eBay and Amazon appear with results and prices. This is the failure of Bonanza.com. Its great if you want to drive your own traffic, similar to having a custom store. Its great if you want a place to hold your products that didn't sell on eBay using free listings, so you can relist them to eBay later as new products. Occasionally, Bonanza will bring in a few sales too. But really take some time to evaluate how much commission you are willing to payout for those sales on Bonanza, compared to the more active sales and commission rates you can get on eBay, Etsy, ShopSeen Instagram Store, Storenvy Marketplace and Free Custom Stores, etc.
Let's see if Bonanza.com can pull off some new sales and shopper traffic with these new commission rates during the fourth quarter of 2015, or is it just out pricing and over valuing its product?
Here at the end of 2015, in the fourth quarter, I have had ample time to judge and evaluate the benefits or rather lack of benefits of having product appear in Google Shopping Cart, so let me hit you with this question. When was the last time you looked on Google Shopping Cart (located as an extra option) when you are logged into Google.com? If you are being honest, then your answer is similar to mine... Never!. In fact the only time I have ever looked at Google Shopping is when I specifically wanted to locate the products that Bonanza was feeding into it.