A Bonanzle Challenge Update: Using FREE Ning vs. Bonanzle For Ecommerce Sales?!?

Written by John Comments
Last Updated July 20, 2009

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Dude I am digging this one. In response to one of our stories about my Bonanzle MythBusters Challenge I got this great replay. It seems that Vince took the challenge a step further and created his own FREE Ecommerce Store using NING.com for the platform! Man, that is a cool IDEA!

I love when people think outside the box and this is one example of doing just that. Plus the store LOOKS GREAT! And they have links to ALL of their other platforms that they have product available on under the LINKS tab.

Now read his results/comments below…

Hi.

We ran a test, I noted the particulars in the Red Ink Diary blogs. It included importing eBay items into Bonanzle, BUT we also worked the bonanzle booth, google-feeds, had feeds into other blogs/websites, tweeted bonz items. EBay we only included rss feeds, no tweeting. Same results, as John’s test, or almost. (we don’t do volume on eBay, just a small part of our biz)
1 sale Bonanzle (6 months) , 39 sales eBay. (90 days, lost count for 6 months).

Insofar as your question: “Can a fresh ecommerce store yield as many sales as a Bonanzle store? ”

The answer, in our case is YES!
We used NING networks to set up a web store, back in April. probably first of it’s kind, a Shop-Ning (kinda catchy, doncha think?) It’s a Shop-Happen-NING.

Social sales site, single store owner, only OUR stock.

It’s now 4 months. Traffic superior to our bonanzle booth, many sales and contacts made, purchases made, thousands and thousands of dollars of business. about 80 signed on members. Still growing and going strong. We see it as our primary future venue. Worth checking out at http://greenspot.ning.com , see for yourselves.

Not a full-featured “e-commerce” store, (lacking shopping cart, and other features), but we considered the communications and social aspects as MORE important than the e-commerce features, it works with simple paypal buttons. Customer service, communication,s retentions, and relationships are what this one is all about. Kinda more direct and social than bonanzle, and fully owned by US.

Price paid to sell over $10,000 worth of goods (68 items) so far $0.00. Ning is free. Only costs have been some time, and paypal fees. Time is “investment quality” for us.. Paypal fees are, well…. not really avoidable are they?

cheers.
vince.

Renagade

Cool idea Vince!! I am going to have to check this out!

vince jelenic

Well, I'm very happy to see this post about our little "experiment". Our frankenstein is quickly turning into a little snow white (went right past the sleeping beauty stage into full production quick).

Now, if any other people want a store like this, let me know, I can look into helping you set it up, it's actually fairly easy and cheap.

AND
to make NING a full fledgede-commerce system, send a request to NING to do the following:

ALLOW FORMS AND JAVASCRIPT to be embedded into picture descriptions.

Just use your NING ID and tell them, or join a ning group somewhere and then let them know of this request.

our solution is a bit of a "workaround" within their current system. That small change would make it a "killer" application for e-commerce for everyone to sell their stuff on any ning, anywhere, anytime.

cheers.

Cliff Aliperti

Yes, when Vince mentioned Ning as his e-commerce platform I kind of went, "Huh?" Ning? But if site membership is any indication it's very successful and it is a brilliant way to mix e-commerce with social media. It's great to see a lot of hard work paying off like that and thanks to Vince for allowing a completely "out of the box" e-commerce solution enter the field of play in all our minds!