Stuff is an amazingly encouraging seller on Bonanzle. She befriended me the moment I opened my Unique Commodities booth on Bonanzle!
Stuff has been selling mostly vintage costume jewelry (along with other small antiques and collectibles) for over 20 years. Before her trek to Bonanzle, Stuff was a Power Seller on Ebay. As things started getting really crazy in 08 and sales on Ebay dropped tremendously discussions ensued of alternate selling options.
Amazon, eCrater, BluJay, Bonanzle and many others were all discussed. Amazon was the alternate of choice for those sellers with new items but for unique items without product IDs it was not the best fit. Stuff gave eCrater and BluJay a run but the traffic and sales there did not seem to be happening (at least not at the moment).
Then, someone mentioned that Bonanzle was taking off, they were seeing sales there, that the uploads to Google were easy to set up because of the almost idiot-proof instructions provided. Well, that was not rocket science so Stuff figured it was a no-brainer and jumpstarted her Bonanzle Booth on December 27, 2008.
Stuff said she was registered, had her personal info input, Google feed set up and several items listed in less than 30 minutes! And that was doing the listings one at a time.
After seeing that she then went to the boards and asked a question or two, read the posts there and saw how much fun everyone was having. Suddenly, her attitude was changed completely. She was no longer feeling the stress of being fearful each time a question was asked, each time someone contacted her just to say hello. It was a different atmosphere completely. The fun of selling on line was back – with a vengeance!
STUFF’S TIP FOR YOU IN HER OWN WORDS:
The best trick that I’ve learned about marketing in general during the time that I’ve been selling both at antique and collectibles markets and online is to buy fewer, more desirable and higher quality items for resale. If you only have $20.00 to spend, one $20.00 item is probably going to be more apt to sell more quickly for a higher return than 20 $1.00 items will.
More importantly, you only have to inventory, photograph, list, sell and package one item. Time is money!
Let me reiterate that it has always been my experience that the higher dollar items are actually easier to sell than the low dollar, perhaps less desirable items when it comes to antiques, collectibles and jewelry. This may not be the case for all areas of antiques and collectibles but in my area it has been very true.
For example: There are a lot more people looking for a wide, rare colors of heavily carved, Bow-Tie or Random dot Bakelite bangle bracelets than there are those looking for a $24.00 spacer.
So, rather than buying 20 spacers for $10.00 each, if I spend $200.00 on a hard-to-find Bakelite bracelet, the return on that investment is going to be far better and most likely, a whole lot faster. Same thing with hard-to-find designers. Chanel, Dior, older, Patented design Trifari, Phrygian cap mark Boucher and rare Reja items are almost always going to sell faster for a high price than a very common piece of Coro, Judy Lee or unsigned rhinestone piece or set priced at under $25.00.
Jan. 27th was Stuff’s one month anniversary on Bonanzle and she has already sold 8 items through 7 transactions here. There is absolutely no doubt in her mind that this is THE RIGHT PLACE TO BE for small individual sellers of unique items.
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