Bonanzle 100k Essays: Winner jsgeare

Lo and behold, for we have at last come bearing the winning essay for the Bonanzle 100k Users Contest!  

Big congrats to jsgeare for his free year long membership!

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Bonanzle – The Best News in Personal Ecommerce

      On the facts alone, Bonanzle is good news for sellers who  need an Internet store but have neither the time, money nor expertise to build a site or subscribe to a service. Many members say that if they did, in fact, design a site from scratch, they would have created something like Bonanzle.

      Bonanzle is “free” in many ways; free to list being the most obvious. But buyers and sellers are also free to establish their enterprise as they see fit. Such controls as exist are quite broad and allow for individual adaptation. Buyers and sellers may openly negotiate with one another to strike a deal that’s right for both. These facts and others make Bonanzle a rational and even inspiring alternative to other forms of an Internet “presence.”

      The facts alone are important, but not as important as the “quality of experience” at Bonanzle. Freedom to create and run a site, plus direct support by the owners have, not surprisingly, drawn over 100,000 members to Bonanzle in its first year. While members are unique when it comes to seller style and products offered, most all members also share in common the passion to succeed and to operate without confusing rules or procedures in their pursuit of success.

      At first, it may seem surprising that such a vast number of members deliberately choose to help others become successful, whether the help is a small technical fix or a broad marketing strategy. Newcomers, especially, benefit from an active user community whose combined wisdom and passion to succeed serve both to enable and inspire. Why are the members like that –why do they help each other? The more successful could just as well take advantage the less successful; the forums could simply be a mouth piece for mean-spirited expressions of distrust or degrading commentary. Why not stick your foot out and trip someone if it moves you ahead a little bit? Isn’t that human nature?

      The truth is that the “nature” of any human reflects, to some extent, the other people around that human. Bonanzle calls out the best in us because our instinct to be supportive is rewarded more richly than our greed. Each of us discovers what we are really like when we are, in fact, given the opportunity to be who we truly are. And what we are “like” is good news.

      And yet better news: given the freedom to be who we are, Bonanzle is truly the work of our own hands. Members have an opportunity not just to buy and sell, but to build the very space ( a “web space,” as it happens) in which we do business and interact with each other. What the world at large sees and experiences at Bonanzle is exactly what we create for them.

      Yet more good news: if who we are is a good thing, then who we can become is even better. The owners and operators of Bonanzle (affectionately known as “the boyz” to the membership) proclaim and do actually pursue the idea that simple is better. But with that comes a challenge to the members: Rather than pay high fees to support the owners’ ideas about marketing the site on behalf of all of us, it is up to us, the members, to promote ourselves. As each of us learns –and often struggles- to use search engine optimization and in all other ways to hang out our shingles, we truly become more skilled at what we do; we become better entrepreneurs. From a Google ranking to handing out business cards, we learn new skills; we expend our time, money and energy. This is exactly the situation we would face by going it alone. Bonanzle, however, provides not just the tools of promotion, but also the instructions on how to use them. And then, experienced and expert members help make it all work. Our success, accordingly, is truly earned, truly shared.

      The effect of our combined promotional activities is a stunning presence –but not an annoying saturation- of the world around us. The most sophisticated, expensive marketing strategy could not possibly deliver as credible a message about Bonanzle as do we, the constituents, deliver. Again, we become more effective entrepreneurs, cooperatively building an enterprise.

      This article is being written as Bonanzle prepares to welcome its 100,000th member. In time, sheer size and popularity will make the very word, “Bonanzle” more widely known. Members will benefit more and more from the site’s size. But the attraction to Bonanzle will also and will always be the “quality of experience.” The variety of goods, various styles of presentation, personalities, easy communication, convenient and fast buying and selling –all are the result of what the first 100,000 have made it.

      The first 100,000 may take satisfaction in knowing that each has contributed not just to the financial success of Bonanzle, but also to its character and to its style. If Bonanzle is a good work, then it is so because each of us has had a hand in it.

      If I seem to have over-looked some praise for Bill, Mark, Tom and the others who design, maintain, develop and support this “destination for everything but the ordinary,” let me simply add this: Leaders of every stripe tend to attract people like themselves, and the best leaders tend to be spend time with their constituents. The direct and personal involvement of the management here does not just create a sense of goodwill. Rather, the effective leaders here, and everywhere, take instruction from those they serve by listening and learning. While “the boyz” may justly be given credit for Bonanzle as a technical achievement, we should take the greatest comfort from their keen understanding of people. The evidence of their discernment is the 100,000 who have so profoundly affirmed the owners’ insight.

      Bonanzle, therefore, stands out as the most convincing evidence that ecommerce venues may actually serve the needs of thousands, and do it one person at a time. The mixture of insight, technical savvy, enlightened ownership and inspired, supportive members has come together to produce a true virtual “place.” The explosive growth with no loss of quality of experience is the staggering testimony that the creators, and that each of us, really got it right.

      Bonanzle, therefore, is not merely the latest news in personal ecommerce. It is, arguably, the best news, as well.

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Trying to pick between this insightful, well-rationed piece, with its many qualifiers, and thus, many commas, owing to its deliberate, tone, vs. a fun+fanciful story like momspennies was a bit of choice between apples and oranges.  And I happen to love both apples

and

oranges.  But ultimately we tipped this way since this essay captures what we believe to be the essence of Bonanzle:  a place built by community, where people help one another and everybody comes out ahead.