It’s hard to fault Bonanza’s Customer Service and Communication. This year’s 2nd place finisher won top honors in both categories and also won the award as Most Recommended. But Profitability has always weighed down the marketplace’s Sellers Choice results. Bonanza’s ability to sync across other platforms is seen as a huge plus by sellers.
In January 2021, EcommerceBytes readers rated the marketplaces on which they had experience selling. An introduction to the Sellers Choice survey along with a summary of the overall ratings can be found here, along with links to results for each of the 10 online marketplaces included in the survey.
Profitability:
Customer Service:
Communication:
Ease of Use:
Would you recommend:
Bonanza
Year Established: 2008
Description: Fixed price listings, general merchandise, fashion, collectibles
More Info
Summary:
Bonanza came in 2nd place in the 2021 Sellers Choice Awards. It earned the top score in two categories: Customer Service and Communication, as well as coming in as the top most recommended marketplace.
Sellers like the ease of use and low standard fees, but many sellers said they think Bonanza needs to advertise more to boost sales and name recognition. “Bonanza still needs to run major advertising campaigns (tv, radio) to expose people to the Bonanza name,” one seller said.”When I mention Bonanza to people most have never heard of it which is sad for a selling venue that has been on the web for over 10 years.”
“Would be more profitable if the site would advertise more,” another seller said. Another said Bonanza would flourish if it invested in more SEO and advertising.
As far as the experience of selling on Bonanza, “bang for the buck” was a term one seller used, and that seems to sum up some of the comments. Sellers can choose to be passive and wait for the occasional sale while not spending a lot in fees, or they can pay extra for additional exposure. Some said they put in the work themselves to drive traffic and sales.
Bonanza takes a smaller cut than other sites, one seller said, “so I’m always happy to get sales there.”
Another benefit, said some sellers – the marketplace doesn’t dictate to sellers. “No great interference or being lectured to,” one seller said. “They let you sell in the manner you feel is best for your product.”
Fans like the friendly and helpful staff. Sellers said customer service is by email only, and while many said they get a timely response, sometimes they wished to speak to a rep by phone.
One seller said international sales were problematic because Bonanza did not provide all the necessary information to ship the item to the buyer.
“I also wish they had an easier way to refund customers directly from their site,” wrote another seller.
Bonanza received a 4.86 in Profitability; a 6.77 in Customer Service; a 6.81 in Communication; and a 7.11 in Ease of Use. It received a 6.52 from sellers when asked, “How likely are you to recommend Bonanza as a selling venue to a friend or colleague?”
Reader Comments: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Bonanza has reasonable rates, easy to list items, easy check out, excellent communication. I used to sell on several sites but dropped all except Bonanza. I have my own site so been concentrating on that this past year that’s the only reason questions 9 and 10 have lower score, It’s been totally me for not listing more. New year with fresh start will be adding lots more.
Easy to use site. Great Seller support. Fair policies! Useable without a monthly selling fee which is great for starter sellers. Just that the sales aren’t very high even for us with over 1,000 items. They need to advertise more in our opinion.
It is the only ecommerce site I have sold on that treats the seller in the proper manner. No great interference or being lectured to. They let you sell in the manner you feel is best for your product.
If you don’t subscribe to the “extras”, Bonanza has the lowest selling fees that I have found. I buy my shipping elsewhere as it is cheaper and Bonanza allows this. Customer service is via email. They always respond within 24 hours. I sometimes I feel they didn’t “get me” in my email and wish they had phone backup. As for the ease of use, as with everything, it gets easier the more you use it. I like Bonanza and would readily recommend it as a selling venue.
I’ve been selling on Bonanza almost from the beginning and 2020 was my best year yet. It’s easy to list items and a big plus is there is no listing fees (no money upfront). Fees are charged only when items sell. Customer service response time has increased compared to years passed so you have to wait longer for an answer but that has happened most everywhere. The number one complaint I see from sellers is lack of buyers. Bonanza still needs to run major advertising campaigns (tv, radio) to expose people to the Bonanza name. When I mention Bonanza to people most have never heard of it which is sad for a selling venue that has been on the web for over 10 years.
Bonanza is a great site that is friendly and easy to use. I have been selling on Bonanza for over 12 years and I have to say that this year has been my best year so far for making sales. Bonanza needs to advertise its site more so that people can hear about it. Most people that you mention Bonanza to have never even heard of the site. I am hoping that 2021 will be even better for me on this site than 2020 was.
Excellent customer service and use of the site. Bonanza has come a long way offering a Blog area on the site to educating via YouTube. I love the new additions. When requesting more Blogs there is never a No and always a Yes. The Staff at Bonanza have always reached out with where there is a Will there is a Way attitude.
It is easy to use and easy to navigate. I find the site to be a little more expensive than most to really advertise or sell an item. Overall it is not a bad site, you can really sell on it that is if you put a lot of money upfront in advertisement.
I make a sale almost every day! They may be small, but they do happen and that means that people who need what I have connect with my store.
I’m thrilled with Bonanza. I’m not very computer literate (I’m an old Grandma!) but I was able to make listings and sell things easily and didn’t have to ask my son for help! I especially like that I can accrue award points that can be applied to my seller fees.
Bonanza is very easy to use, and it can be profitable, but not always for all items. Service and responsiveness are generally good, although sometimes not as good as when the site was newer (hope they aren’t losing their commitment to that). Would be more profitable if the site would advertise more.
The Bonanza.com team goes above and beyond what is expected to help their sellers succeed. They believe that people in general try to do the right thing and allow a transaction between the seller and buyer to be amicable for both parties. There is opportunity to ensure that your item is listed correctly as a seller and information available to the buyer to ensure the purchase is what they expect to receive. Your reputation speaks volumes as a buyer and a seller on Bonanza. It is a fun place to shop and sell on Bonanza.com just like the other unmentionable venues used to be before they were incorporated and only cared about the bottom line. Bonanza is truly an online venue that I look forward to as a buyer or a seller.
Great mirror site to use for eBay sellers. Super-easy to set up and use. My only complaint was about getting reimbursed fees when customers make a return or cancel an order and that has now been addressed.
Bonanza is a great marketplace to sell as the fee rate is not high as in eBay, the only issue that is getting in international sellers is the buyer’s contact details is not complete such as contact number. For us International sellers need to have complete details of our buyers for shipment request. It is fine if our buyers reply our mail and provide the details, but not all buyers will check their mail. Some of them only login just to buy then they will not check their mail. Sellers have to cancel order because of that. Some of the buyers also reply late, and we have to ship out late cost by the delays. Hope there will be improvement for this issue.
Bonanza has some great features that work with eBay marketplace, that can help people get started on Bonanza faster and in tandem.
Effortless cross-listing via eBay.
I have used Bonanza off and on since it first started as Bonanzle way back when. I have enjoyed how easy it is to set up a booth and add items to it. I am an occasional seller and appreciate that I can put things on the site and they’ll sell at some point. I also like that you can put your booth on “vacation” if you won’t be available to manage it for an extended period of time.
Very easy to use. Sales are few and far between. Customer service can take a few days to respond and doesn’t always give you consistent answers. They seem to show up very high in search engines. They take a smaller cut than other sites, so I’m always happy to get sales there.
I like selling items on Bonanza. And when I go through all the trouble of creating a listing, it stays until I remove it or it sells. It is easy to list items. Some of their “Traits” are hard to use when creating a listing. Picture cropping etc. take a little to get used to. Customer service is there but you can’t speak to anyone personally, but hey do get back to you through email and resolve the problem.
I use Bonanza and have never had any problems, Communications and service are excellent.
Fairly easy to use and although you can’t speak to them in person they seem to answer all emails quickly and resolve problems. Sales are not as great as other sites but I do like the fact that once listed the product stays until it is sold without having to renew it. They are friendly and always willing to help.
Good communication. would like it to be easier to purchase shipping labels at a discount. Wish I had more traffic to my store.
Getting used to the shipping process after a sale is a bit confusing. Easier now that I have shipped some packages. Although last week I had a sale to Canada. I went to create an invoice to add shipping and didn’t understand the page so I hit a button thinking it was the help button and ended up sending an invoice for the sale price only with no shipping cost. I shipped anyway as I didn’t want to cancel the sale. So I lost big time on an international sale due to the shipping cost.
Love the ease of the system, but people just need to take precautions before partaking in the upgrades and advertising. Failure to pay attention will cause you to take a loss.
I’ve always found CS easy to work with, sales are slow for the most part, but it has gotten better over the years, some years better than others. Where I lose profit is trying to offer free shipping, without knowing where I’m shipping to, buyers that are clear across the country from me, I really take a hit on the shipping, especially items, that are heavy to ship.
It is definitely one of our smallest markets; however, we are reaching people we wouldn’t reach otherwise. Bonanza does a good job reaching out to sellers, but sometimes it takes a while to hear back. It can take a while to get used to posting items and training someone new through the process.
Bonanza needs a phone number or online chat for customer service help – I don’t like that they only have email help where you must wait 24-48 hours to get an answer. I also wish they had an easier way to refund customers directly from their site. I find it frustrating trying to use their photo services via my phone. I appreciate that my listings from eBay import (and cancel when sold) automatically.
I don’t make any $$$ on Bonanza, but the listings are FREE, you have the background burner (like it), the seller fees are low, and you have a few link-things so I can share to other sites. I like the HPLs (hand picked lists) also. Please don’t get rid of that. All the other sites have gotten rid of that feature.
This is very handy marketplace allowing to export listings from another venues like Amazon, eBay, Etsy. But there’s not much traffic there.
I have had mixed success with Bonanza advertising and interaction with customer support. It doesn’t seem to be any connection between sales and what level of advertising you pay for. Customer Service has been excellent on some topics and in other cases, after 2 years, several issues I raised have still not been resolved. However, overall I will continue to use Bonanza rather than other platforms since they still offer me more bang for my buck.
Bonanza is not designed to help the seller. It is designed to help Bonanza. Tiers should not exist. All of the options, Google Shopping, Turbo packs, Webstore, Bing submission, advertising, and so and so forth…all these options should be included in ONE submission price. All the good stuff for one price – Bonanza’s popularity would EXPLODE!!!! I have never sold anything directly on Bonanza although I have kept a presence there for years. My sales on Bonanza came from eBay submissions. Bonanza is not worth the time, money or effort.
Bonanza’s site is difficult to navigate, for example, notification of a sale should link directly to postage page.
Creating and editing listings is annoying because data entered on the form doesn’t stick and has to be re-entered multiple times.
The classification as poor for profitability is a result of Bonanza’s lack of search engine marketing and driving sales to the site. Lack of exposure for selling the products. The classification for poor for customer service is a direct result of not being able to reach a live agent.
Well, I paid a premium for a year; Pay a higher price for sales coming from another venue and have to try to drive customers by advertising myself and giving freebies. Also, there is no easy way to keep track of my vast inventory because there is not a field specifically where I can place an inventory number and easily do an inventory check. This leads to embarrassment when I am unable to locate an item that was inadvertently duplicated previously that sold. It is not a good way to do business. I feel there needs to be more of a partnership between Bonanza and Sellers so it can become a Win-Win, where everyone benefits. Perhaps there needs to be changes to the business model. Bottom line, between all the fees, cost of merchandise, cost of shipping materials plus time spent does not amount to much $$.
I average 2 sales a month. No traffic. I make money on the things I sell, I just don’t sell that often. It’s almost like a place for people who have been booted from everywhere else? I don’t know.
Although my listings on eBay are synced with Bonanza, I never sell anything on Bonanza. I feel I might if I accepted all their little perks that cost money so it just mostly wastes my time.
Bonanza does not care about the seller’s reputation, they are focused on buyers. Provide 100% customer service by agreeing to give a refund and let the buyer keep products, you still receive negative feedback and pay high fees. Even by providing proof of communication, refund receipt, and product delivery receipt showing you the seller did not scam the buyer but instead the buyer scammed the seller, Bonanza allows the buyer to scam and leave negative feedback to hurt your ratings on your profile. The final value fees are higher than eBay, plus to make sure you get a sale you have to purchase advertisement packages that only bring in limited sales each month.
Easier to use once you master the quirks but as far as recommend, lower because support is slow to respond, a lot of censorship and NOT A LOT OF SALES because they don’t advertise to help the sellers get sales for a company that has been out here for over a decade.
My experience with sales on Bonanza has gone from rare to non-existent. I’m not sure what has happened. I don’t know if Bonanza stopped spending the same money to advertise listings on google or if it caused by something else. I’m very disappointed since it has been a long time since any of my items sold on Bonanza or my own website (Paid for a webstore with Bonanza). Hope this changes in the future.
Does not seem to be very much traffic on Bonanza even with the 9% selection. Support is hit and miss. Sometime they answer a question correctly but mostly I have to figure it out myself and then get a email from Bonanza saying they are glad my problem is solved.
The sales are far and few between and the only reason I sell on Bonanza at all is because I have many eBay accounts synced with them. Otherwise, I would not bother. I do tell other eBay sellers that they might as well do it since it won’t take any extra time once they have set up their Bonanza account and there is no cost unless an item sells. I have sold some highly profitable items on the site, but the sales are very slow. I have more problems with them rejecting items as “against policy”” even though they actually are not against any policy I have read on their site and the same items are listed on other venues. I think it has something to do with Google, but I do not care enough to spend time digging into the issue.
Bonanza has a very easy to use platform but it does take a while to really get to know fully what you can do with it. Some of the help sections are good but your question is not always in the help section. I once asked a question directly to Bonanza, the answer was “why don’t you ask the community”. Not the answer I was expecting out of Bonanza, the representative knew the answer to my question but as I mentioned referred me to the community. I needed an answer ! Otherwise Bonanza does a very good job.
Well, Bonanza comes with it’s own pros and cons. The design and structure is very lucid. However, they need to work on their customer support part, some times questions remain unanswered. Also the major concern is about the traffic. Site generate comparatively lower traffic then their reactively popular counterparts
Due to new eBay restrictions, I recently tried Bonanza. It has been a disaster. Listing is difficult, I’ve gotten no interest in my items from a Google feed for 9% fees, and when reaching out to customer service, it takes days to get back to me when I needed an answer immediately as my items were for sale but kept telling me that I had not selected a US shipping method and therefore a buyer might select any shipping method and make me pay the higher difference!
The problem with Bonanza is my feed is being constantly flagged with multiple gtin errors. Doesn’t matter how many times I cross-check and verify, or whether I close the sale and create a new listing These errors persist and the item doesn’t gets disapproved by Google Shopping. These exact same items, with exact same info are approved by Google Shopping when active on eCrater and eBay. … Also, Priority shipping rates quoted on Bonanza are LESS than USPS rates that I’m able to get.
Sellers Choice Awards:
We thank all readers who took the time to rate the marketplaces. If you have comments about the Sellers Choice Awards, please feel free to post them below.
Quote: “I average 2 sales a month. No traffic. I make money on the things I sell, I just don’t sell that often. It’s almost like a place for people who have been booted from everywhere else? I don’t know.”
This is exactly how to describe Bonanza. We have 20,000 products listed on Bonanza and have sold 15 so far in 11/2 years. All they want is money for extra service and if you pay for it you will not get it back in on sales.
Comment: “I’m thrilled with Bonanza. I’m not very computer literate (I’m an old Grandma!) but I was able to make listings and sell things easily and didn’t have to ask my son for help! I especially like that I can accrue award points that can be applied to my seller fees.”
I hope this seller was able to collect her tokens.
How do i get my 500 points for voting in the e-commerce survey? https://www.bonanza.com/community_help/How_do_I_get_my_____points_for_voting_in_the_E_commerce_survey_
Pay to play in so many ways.
So many sellers complain about not getting sales and they rank higher than Amazon?
One benefit: Mark is gone and no more canned responses and closed questions from him.