Is Bonanza Legit? [Unbiased 2022 Review]

Bonanza is an online marketplace that has been in operation since 2008. However, you will find mixed reviews from user ratings regarding their services.

In this review, we’re going to take a look at multiple aspects of Bonanza to help you decide if it really is the best overall online marketplace out there.

Hopefully by the end of this, you will be better placed to determine whether online selling is a viable business route.

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Bonanza Review

Table of Contents

What Is Bonanza?

Bonanza is an online marketplace where items for sale are listed by their sellers. It’s an online marketplace that connects buyers to your products.

Products are categorized to make the shopping experience easier and convenient for buyers.

Products may also be added to the cart for a fixed price by buyers or they can make a counter-offer to the seller. Payments are rendered through a secure checkout facility on the Bonanza website.

Bonanza selling website is a popular eBay alternative where you can sell pretty much anything.

It has become a favorite selling place for independent handmade product vendors and crafters. This is why you’d find more unique handmade products in the bonanza selling site than on eBay, though they hold lesser-known brands than Amazon.

It is another way for people to make money working from home, like with Vector Marketing, Amway, or 7k Metals.

Bonanza understands that its clients sell from other platforms in addition to a Woo Commerce or Shopify store.

Your products can thus be conveniently imported through bonanza’s integration. This allows you to market them much faster.

Who started Bonanza?

Bill Harding, the CEO and founder of Bonanza selling website, started building Bonanza in 2007 after becoming frustrated during a rainy garage sale in Seattle.

The failed sale motivated him to learn how to program websites to create an affordable and accessible online marketplace.

Though after the not-so-successful launch in mid-2008, Bill finally caught a break when Bonanza was declared “The Best eBay Alternative We’ve Seen” by Ecommerce Guide.

Within months, Bonanza grew from just “Bill’s mom and her friend” to gaining a few thousand sellers. From there, it grew to a broad online marketplace that now offers more than 10 million items for sale to almost every country in the world.

How Many People Sell on Bonanza?

Bonanza gets more than 5 million visits every month. This means that slightly more than 150,000 visits to the bonanza website per day. This sounds small compared to eBay, Amazon and Etsy but in the grand scheme of things, it is huge.

With that kind of traffic, if your products are on popular sales channels like Bonanza or other platforms, you are likely to sell more.

Most of the people who buy on Bonanza are from the United States, leaving just 25 percent of all the people selling to come from outside the US (sellers in Bonanza come from more than 200 countries across the globe). This means that Bonanza still has room to grow its international market.

What is EBay Feedback Importer

One of the challenges you may face when you are new to online marketing is a lack of trust from the customers. If people have never bought from you or do not know you, chances are they won’t trust your products either.

This is solved by another of Bonanza’s features, the eBay Feedback Importer. It analyzes your eBay account and assigns you a ranking based on the last 1000 pages of user reviews.

Once it does that, your eBay credibility can be displayed on your new Bonanza account. It is always easier to make sales once you have the customers’ trust!

Why is Bonanza Popular with Sellers?

You might be asking, “Why should I sell on Bonanza?”

Many people who use it say that Bonanza selling site features and tools make selling simpler, faster, and more pleasant.

Some of them indicate that when you compare it to eBay, Bonanza is an easier, fairer, and a cheaper 0nline marketplace.

Here are some of the features that you will like as a seller on Bonanza:

There Are Paid Ads

Aside from the google shopping ads, your listings can be viewed elsewhere. If you are willing to invest, your Bonanza listings can be seen on Bonanza Affiliate Partners, Bonanza Shoppers, Bing! Users, and eBay Customers

This enables you to reach more potential buyers, including the ones that have never heard about Bonanza.

You Can Use Google AdWords

Bonanza allows you to tap into the biggest advertising network on the planet. Thanks to Bonanza’s collaboration with Google that has been going on for a long time, you can put your brand in front of more consumers.

Your Bonanza listings can be placed in Google Shopping ads for a small fee thus increasing the likelihood that your listings will be viewed and eventually sold at the bonanza selling site.

Booth Chatting

Booth Chatting is a built-in chat tool that enables you to address any questions that your customers may have about a certain product before they buy it.

Live chat also helps enormously in developing a relationship with your client. This is excellent for branding and you get to establish a loyal following.

Through the feature, buyers and sellers can talk to each other to discuss and handle whatever doubts or inquiries they have, which amounts to quality customer service and allows you to retain them.

It also makes customers who are on the fence to commit to the purchase sooner.

Chatting is also quite convenient whenever you have a dissatisfied client who needs to learn more about your return or refund policy. The live chat feature enables them to communicate directly and immediately with you and you get to answer any questions they may have about it.

The Background Burner

To improve your chances of selling your products on an online store, you must have high quality product images. This requires you to have high-quality photography equipment or high-tech editing tools. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to them.

Bonanza’s Background Burner comes in handy because you can upload your product image and use the basic interface this feature provides to edit the background. This allows you to save on costs while still getting high quality images.

You Can Import Products from Other Platforms

Bonanza has a Product Import feature makes selling online so much easier. With it, you can import your existing listings from Amazon and eBay. This means that your entire inventory on Amazon or Ebay will be duplicated to your account with just a few clicks.

This allows you to have consistency. If you have the same listings across all platforms that you sell on, it makes your entire selling experience quicker and more efficient.

How Much Does it Cost on Bonanza Selling?

Once you join Bonanza, you are not charged anything to start a booth or list your items. It is when your make a sale that they charge a small fee off of the overall selling price. The more you pay, the more exposure your products get.

A Bonanza subscription, paid either weekly or yearly(depending on the seller), is available to more experienced users.

Though Bonanza fees are a bit dear, it still is far less expensive than selling on huge platforms like eBay or Amazon.

Note that the shipping fee is determined by the seller. Hence, as a buyer on the Bonanza website, always make it a habit to review the shipping costs before you complete your purchase.

In a nutshell, Bonanza has relatively low fees. However, they have a relatively irregular pricing system where they charge higher fees for the more competitive products

How to make money on Bonanza

The Bonanza advertising platform has a number of levels. Each level/tier unlocks additional platforms on which to display your products.

You can choose what percentage you’d like to opt into and the bonanza website will work on making bids on your behalf to get your item in front of potential buyers. When you sell an item, you’ll pay the fee percentage you’ve selected.

The tiers work as discussed below:

Economy (3.5% rate). It includes organic traffic. Buyers find your item by searching on Bonanza or Google Organic search.
Basic (9% rate). It unlocks Google Shopping, Bonanza Promotions, and Bonanza’s Affiliate Program. . Bonanza offers a discount for your items with promotions by using the final value fee you pay to cover the cost. This way, as a seller, you gain shoppers. Their Affiliate Program includes a network of third-party bloggers who advertise items from Bonanza on their sites.
Standard (13% rate). This level unlocks advertising on eBay and allows your item on Bonanza to be competitive with the eBay version of the same item. If your item is bought on eBay, you pay 1.5% to Bonanza and are also responsible for paying eBay’s FVF. If someone buys your item on Bonanza after clicking it on eBay, that’s when you end up paying up to 13% to Bonanza.
Superior (19% rate). With this tier, you unlock Bing ads. Bing Ads is similar to Google Shopping Ads.
Elite (30% rate). This level has just about the same features as the Superior rate, but the higher commission rate allows you to bid on your items more aggressively, increasing exposure on your goods and thus leading to more sales.

Therefore, the higher your commission, the more sales outlets your products will be featured on.

How does Bonanza work?

Starting on Bonanza is pretty simple. To create a Bonanza account:

Indicate if you have other existing marketplaces on their “Start Selling” page.
Choose the desired name for your booth. Following that, you will be shown your store panel.
Click on the ‘Open your booth’ button.
Choose your payment method and provide the personal information required.
Enter your bank account or credit card information for billing purposes.
Choose if you want to pay for your products to be promoted elsewhere. This can be modified later once you have been on Bonanza website for a while.
If you want to join the membership, you can decide which one feels right for you. However, it is not necessary.

How To Be Successful Bonanza Selling

If you want to make the most out of selling on Bonanza, here are some helpful tips on how to maximize your sales:

Make Use of Freebies, Coupons & Combined Item Discounts.

If you want to stand out from its competitors, make your deals more enticing to customers.

One way to do that is to have undisclosed freebies that you give away for each and every purchase made. Coupons are unique codes that provide customers with either free delivery or a discount on the price of an item.

You can have combined product discounts that make the final price lower if you purchase more than one product.

Market Your Own Listings.

Although you can cultivate organic Bonanza traffic, you can apply a diverse range of strategy. For example, you can use your social media accounts to move traffic to your Bonanza listings.

The Bonanza marketplace has an integrated way that makes it easier for you to do that.

You can also join a Facebook Group where you can market your products to a large audience that shares your interests.

Cultivate Relationships With Clients

Having a good relationship with your clients will increase the likelihood that they become loyal to your brand.

There are various ways to do that and the chat feature we talked about earlier is one way of achieving that. While primarily it was meant to be a tool that allows you to address concerns that your buyers may have, it’s also an excellent way to establish solid seller-consumer relationships.

Bonanza is designed to function as an online marketplace that connects buyers with you as a seller if you are innovative enough to make use of that.

If you build trust with your consumers, you increase your chances of getting more sales because they will prioritize your brand if they like how you interact with them. Having good quality customer support shows them that you care about them and they will reward that by sticking around. Having zero customer support will make you lose some clients, ultimately.

Sell On Other Platforms Not Just Bonanza.

Bonanza is just one among many ecommerce platforms and you are likely to improve your chances of succeeding by diversifying. Bonanza shouldn’t be the only marketplace where your brand has a presence.

In some Bonanza reviews, you’ll find people who’ve only had one sale per month on a bad month and if they were relying solely on it, it can be a problem. In fact, a lot of backlash and negative reviews you find about selling on Bonanza are by people who put all their eggs in one basket.

A nice way to go about it is to find another web store besides Bonanza. You can go with Etsy, Amazon, and just about any other credible platform to improve your odds.

Multichannel marketing is the future of profitable ecommerce businesses and you should also have strategic ads for successful bonanza selling.

Is Bonanza Legit?

Bonanza is a legitimate business. However, there have been customers that have reported that not all the vendors on Bonanza.com are legitimate.

Whenever you are buying anything, it always helps to do some research before making the purchase. Check the customer reviews and ratings of the seller. There are a lot of con artists and fake sellers out there who are constantly looking for people to prey on.

One very simple way to protect you from these frauds is to consider buying products that are rated, “Top Rated Seller.”

If you are a seller looking to start selling on Bonanza, it is a legitimate platform that will allow you to sell products to a wider audience.

Pros of Bonanza

Bonanza is a community-oriented marketplace. It allows direct communication and immediate chat dialogue between buyer and seller.
It has a simple sales system, favorable for saving time.
It has relatively low seller fees.
Customers can use Bonanza coupon codes to save money.
It allows you to modify groups of products simultaneously and automatically.
It encourages the choice of multiple advertising plans and paid advertising on Google.
The Bonanza background Burner helps give a professional look to products.
Bonanza has a high level of security thus offering protection from scammers.
It is possible to synchronize your sales with other platforms.

Cons of Bonanza

Bonanza is not as huge as Amazon or eBay thus there is risk of less traffic for your goods.
The layout of the customization options for specific article lists are in a way, limited.

Bonanza Conclusion

Bonanza is a legit online selling platform. Bonanza has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, and it received an average consumer rating of 8.4 out of 10. This clearly implies that Bonanza really is legit.

They have a fantastic design and concept, particularly for the seller. Buyers can definitely enjoy some benefits as well as Bonanza offers a wide range of products to choose from.

It has a large seller base and an even larger customer base. Millions of purchases have taken place on the Bonanza platform with no complaints or issues.

Still, there a few shady characters here and there which is pretty common in many online businesses. Bonanza is proactive in taking down all types of scammers – both shady sellers and buyers.

Although refunds are possible, it is a time-consuming process since you would need to file a dispute via PayPal to address your complaint. Setting aside this inconvenience, Bonanza is still a decent place to get your favorite product at a lower price than other online marketplaces.

The Bonanza marketplace connects with only trustworthy and the safest payment gateways, the most common of which are PayPal and Amazon Payments.

According to some people, the customer service at Bonanza isn’t that great. A majority of the customer complaints they’ve received about poor customer service (delayed response) were typically by people who contacted Bonanza via email.

Before you leave

If you’re tired of scams and want a real solution for making money online check out my no.1 recommendation.

It’s helped me earn over $300,000 in the last 12 months alone:

Go here to see my no.1 recommendation for making money online

(This is a 100% free training)

David Fortune

David Fortune has been the editor NoBSIMReviews.com since 2019. He is an expert at writing content on stock advisory services, side hustles, reviewing online business opportunities and many more topics. You can learn more about David on our about us page.

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