This continued until a couple of days ago. Finally, eBay quit that nonsense and changed that section to a list of categories.
The only problem is that a different part of eBay's homepage has gotten quite funny. On Friday I saw this:
I took a screen cap because I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Wow, twelve different Twisted Candles books to purchase. I would never have found them on my own in a search!
So, on Sunday, I saw this:
At this point, I was curious. The pictures seemed too similar, so exactly what were the criteria for this array of books? I clicked on a listing and checked the seller. I could not right-click and open a new window, so I had to left-click. I viewed the listing and returned, but sneaky eBay had switched up the books somewhat. I did find one of the original listings, so I viewed it. I figured out that most of the books were from the same seller. How nice for that seller! It seemed a little weird, though, to put a bunch of books with the same title from the same seller on the homepage. I kept clicking on listings and figured out that most of the sellers were Power Sellers. After around five to six clicks, the array morphed into this:
How funny! I now had my very own array of mostly flashlight edition Mysterious Letters to choose from! Lovely! Which one should I purchase? Hey, one of them looks like a library discard. What a selection!Sarcasm aside, I have to mention that at least eBay did choose Nancy Drew books, which I do purchase, which is better than what was done with the books that had nothing to do with Grace Harlowe or anything I have ever purchased.
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How is the Grace Harlowe collecting going? I haven't been terribly active at buying this series because I've already read most of them online, but I usually check my search for them periodically. Having luck?
I'm not sure how far along I am. I may have around one-third to one-half of them. I have been able to find a few with dust jackets, but most of the ones I have bought do not have dust jackets.
Speaking of ebay .. I got an email today that said, starting in June, my first 5 auctions in each month would receive free insertion fees. It sounded like this applies to everyone who uses the single item "sell an item" form rather than the mass loaders. The stated purpose: "This change is part of our continued effort to lower the upfront costs of selling on eBay. The 5 listings with no Insertion Fees are especially helpful for sellers who may not sell in high volume, but offer unique and hard-to-find inventory buyers expect to find on eBay."
Aha! Just what you have been saying - they have driven the small sellers with interesting items away, and now are trying to get them back. What I have found with my puny little items is that they don't get enough views anymore on ebay. With the lousy "best match" default on ebay searches, they are always pushing the powerseller stuff to the top, new and old, and there are so many powerseller items, it's virtually certain no one is going to page through all of them to find my one item. As the time runs out, i.e., the last 24 hours, you can tell ebay finally shows my item higher in the results because my hits go up suddenly. But getting the bid at that point is hard because the buyer has to jump on it or it is over.
Having said that, I have to admit that ebay still has the buyers though. My items at Bonanzle have had NO views yet according to the item stats. (Well, 1 view, but that was me logging in as guest HA!) And we have to put down the orange and green pompoms, because Bonanzle search results aren't much better. Too much stuff to sift through sorted by "relevancy", most of which is all coming from one seller. Don't know if "premiere seller" is code for "power seller" but it could end up that way if they're not careful. And since, of course, there is no auction end date at Bonanzle, when would a small seller's items EVER move up in the "relevant" search results?
The old ebay didn't have "stores" where items were parked for months at a time. Auctions were starting and ending all the time. This is what kept the inventory fresh and LIMITED. So even small sellers could have their little piece of exposure for that week. But now you have ebay with stores and mass-loading sellers that clog up all the search results, even the auction only searches. And Bonanzle will get bigger and bigger and with inventory sitting there, I'm afraid their searches could end up the same way. I guess that is why they are adding traits to help return better search results. Also, they emphasize driving traffic to your booth, so Bonanzle is more like a mall and you are more respnsible for getting people to your "store" to see your stuff. Works a lot different from the auction format. Anyway, just throwing out comments and what was on my mind as I read your post. It'll be interesting to see how these things work out in the etail world.
I read about the five free listings from eBay. I'm going to have to investigate this further. For the five free listings, the seller pays a flat 8.75% in final value fees. It may be a fee increase for some listings, even though eBay is throwing us a bone. For some reason, I cannot seem to get excited about anything eBay does anymore.
We do pay too much for limited exposure on eBay. They ruined the marketplace by diluting the auctions with Buy It Now, fixed price, and for a time, store listings.
I think that Bonanzle is now entering the expected difficult part of its growth. The initial growth has slowed somewhat, and some idiots are warring with each other through vicious comments whenever someone posts an article about Bonanzle. I have not completely figured out what it is all about. I think that some of these people are trying to implode the site.
You are right that depending upon how it is handled, the premier membership could become like the eBay Power Sellers. I can tell you that my premiere membership does not give me a boost in the relevancy search. All that I seem to get is placement off to the side.
I have only used Bonanzle search for the sort by newly listed, but I have read many comments that the search needs improving. This seems to be one of the biggest complaints. The good news is that Bill is constantly working on the site.
I think that the next few months of growth will determine whether Bonanzle will ultimately be successful. None of the other eBay competitors are worthwhile. We need at least one.
Make sure you have your items uploaded to Google Base. Google has been having some problems in the last few days, but once those problems are fixed, it should be back to normal. You will begin to get hits from Google as your listings age a little bit.
I found that I had few hits until my booth had been open a few weeks, and it has gradually gotten better.
My Ebay "Helper" was giving me listings of bolts and screws since I obviously needed them by searching for Judy "Bolt"on books. I got quite a laugh out of that.
I also have plunged into Bonanzle land on Saturday by listing about 65 books mostly series books. Nothing expensive or highly desirable. They were just cluttering up the house and I was curious how this new "shop" would work. I searched for a connie blair book I have on bonanzle and it found me at the #5 position. I thought that was pretty encouraging. I'm lelliott in bonanzle if anyone wants to check me out.
Paula, Are you going to put anything more in your bonanzle booth? Let us know how to find your booth; I would be happy to see what you have.
Jennifer,
Thanks for the encouragement with bonanzle. It is all due to you that I took the plunge. I had never even heard of it until you informed us on the blog.
Lian
My Ebay "Helper" was giving me listings of bolts and screws since I obviously needed them by searching for Judy "Bolt"on books.
Is that eBay's new search at work for you or some other interesting new feature? I have not seen it yet. I can't wait (sarcasm). It should be good for a few laughs, though. I'm still using the old search until I get kicked out of it in the next few weeks, heh. I'm a rebel.
I haven't switched over to the new search. I won't until they make me. No, the bolts and screws were on the home page of ebay when they mention "We see you have an interest in Judy Bolton so we are offering you these bolts and screws" So far, they have gotten their information more wrong than right. It's really a waste of space to me that maybe Ebay could be using differently.
Sorry to delay so much in responding - my computer is on the blink - hard drive is going... when it's working right, I am trying to do stuff I *have* to do & I'm trying to sell (on ebay) some ND's that I have accumulated: duplicates, books obtained in lots that I'm not collecting, a few from my collection that I have upgraded, and some that were mistakes - see if anyone else wants them. I've been spending a little too much money on getting the books I want, so I have to try to get some of it back before I spend more. :) I didn't realize how many I had to sell. They mostly are not in VG shape, so I feel ebay is the place to list them.
Lian, thanks for the offer to check out my Bonanzle booth, but it's not books, so I will just wait and see for now. If I do put ND books out there, I will let y'all know! I will check out your booth and all the links Jennifer posted in a more recent post when I get time.
I had an idea about improving the general Bonanzle search - tell me what you all think of it. When many items are returned with high relevancy from a search, my idea is that the search results should show only one item (the one with highest "relevancy", however they determine that) from each booth, until all the booths have been displayed, then start showing the second item from each booth, and so on. This way the first page will be a nice mixture of items from various booths, instead of a whole page of items from the same booth, while the other booths are buried on subsequent pages. I think this would work nicely, because if the buyer clicks on one item, they will go to that seller's booth, where there already are displays for other items in that booth, as well as links to see all items in that booth. This would give exposure to the maximum number of booths on the first page.
Wait! - here's a better idea - instead of returning items from the search, they could return booths that have your item! So like if you search for Nancy Drew books, the results show you a little "booth" that says Jennifer's Series Books and shows one of your items that matches the search, and next to that is Lian's Booth with one of her items, etc. So the buyer goes shopping in her little Nancy Drew mall! I think this would be awesome because it is so out of the box and not a copy of ebay. They could list the booths in order of who had the most items that matched the search. So even if I have a few items and you have hundreds, we might all be on the first page of the search results, so the buyer knows we are there, but can decide which booth she wants to go in first. Oh, and then when the buyer clicks on your booth, Bonanzle should automatically show all the items in your booth that matched the buyer's search. They can still have the other display showing other items that you have, that didn't match, and the link to see all your items. Ok I am making this up as I go along so I will stop now to see what you think. All comments welcome!
P.S. Do you think Bonanzle is hiring "idea-generators"? I need a job! :D
Wait! - here's a better idea - instead of returning items from the search, they could return booths that have your item!
Your idea really intrigues me. I think it is a great idea for general searches like Nancy Drew in which hundreds of items are returned. The whole problem with searches with large numbers of items returned is that it is very hard to sift through all of the results in order to find what you want.
For more specific searches, like a certain Nancy Drew title, it is fine to see all of the individual listings. It is very easy to find what you want.
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