To advertise or to not advertise. That's the question

Bonanzle, now Bonanza, has been live for about 2 years now. It's member growth has been phenomenal. The members for the most part are a good group of people, willing to help each other out and are a pretty funny bunch of folks.

There have been rumbles about the lack of advertising on the part of the site, for a very long time. There have been numerous threads started asking if members would be willing to pay a bit extra for some really good advertising by the site.  Talks about why there has been no advertising by the site itself. Almost every one of those threads get deleted.

Now tonight, someone posted a link to an article by AuctionBytes about how the smaller selling sites need to get going on PR work and get some serious advertising done to get their sites growing and bringing in sales.

In the matter of a few minutes, support or the owner did something to make it to where the members posting to that thread, not be able to see their own posts and subsequent posts made by other members.

All of a sudden the site announced that they are "opinion gathering" and not letting the responses to that thread be seen by either the persons that have responded to it or anyone just wanting to see what others have said, that they are "gathering"  those responses and that they are "going directly to supports inbox. 
Pretty suspicious if you ask me.

It leads a person to wonder why the site would treat a thread like it would like to delete it, but doesn't want the appearance of outright deletion to be seen. So rather than risk that, they fix the thread to where it will sink into oblivion under the guise of "opinion gathering" and allow it to be buried to where no one sees it, let alone be able to respond to it in any manner that could be seen.

The full article can be read here

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl

Here's the original thread in the forums at bonanzle. This is the one that is rapidly sinking as the site has, at the time of this post, made it to where the posts that are made to it, do not keep it at the top of the forum it's posted in.
http://www.bonanzle.com/forums/1/topics/131493

 And this is a new thread that started as the result of what happened with one post that got deleted that was made due to management making the other one stall.
http://www.bonanza.com/forums/1/topics/131554

The AuctionBytes article brings to light the fact that a lot of these smaller selling sites, like bonanzle, rely on what is in my opinion, almost a grunt labor to get their site advertised for almost nothing. The grunts being us, the sellers there.

We sellers spend countless hours advertising in the way of 

FaceBook

Twitter

MySpace

PlumDrop

Blogs like this one

Multiply

Zimbio

and countless other social and blog type sites in the hopes of getting just one customer to the site.

It's been proven over and over again that simply does NOT work. In order for a site to flourish, it needs to do some advertising for itself instead of depending on little sellers to do it for them.

Sites that are serious about wanting to grow and become a major contender for on line sales, can't just rely on it's almost slave labor to get the word out. As one of the sellers said, people come to market places with the expectation that at some point the site itself will do some advertising. And that should be happening with Bonanzle now.

Bonanza charges a fee when an item sells. 
Bonanza has paid memberships. 
Bonanza was handed a MILLION dollars by an investment group just a few months ago.

Some of that money needs to be used to advertise and in a manner that will get peoples attention, not to buy some silly adwords like rootbeer.

There's an old saying that Bonanza and sites like it need to adopt and put into action. "It takes money to make money".

It was true when that phrase came into being, and it's true now.

My opinion only, like it or not, but it's shared by quite a few!

Fun with Mini Storages

We all know what they are. They are evil creatures that suck your money and give you a false sense of security knowing that the stuff that you don't want or can't have in your home, is safe locked behind their doors.

You would be mistaken in all those beliefs. First of all, they are NOT safe. They can be broken into as I found out about a week ago and wrote about.

Second of all, they are money sucking pits really. You are paying to store stuff that you don't want at your home. And obviously it's nothing that you really need on a day to day basis as it's locked up in your mini storage. We've been renting a mini storage for almost 3 years now. Our unit is a pretty good sized one, 10x20. It's cost us $110.00 a month. Add that up over the three years and it's enough to put a down payment on a home.

We are cleaning ours out. And this time we are doing a really HARD sort on the stuff in hopes of getting rid of rented storage altogether this time. I would strongly reccomend to anyone that has a rented mini storage, to reconsider the stuff in it and do some down sizing. If your possessions have been in storage for an extended amount of time, you can probably do without them. 

And just think of all the money you'll save when you get rid of that monthly storage bill.

I have a feeling that my on line store, RAYVENS RARITIES, will be getting in a lot of new items for sale, very soon.

Warning to all that have the rented Mini Storage buildings

My attitude with life right now is "life, I love you but I'm very angry with you and I want to break up".

We've had a really bad year so far and so have a lot of nice people we know and it seems as though it's not really getting better.

I lost my Dad a couple of years ago to, well I won't say cancer as thats not what killed him. It was the treatment, chemo, that actually killed him, but either way, I lost him.

The guy was, bless his heart, a pack rat extraordinaire. He had two HUGE storage units rented for many years. He started out with the biggest one they had at the place he was renting from, then took the next size down from that.

After he was gone we spent almost a month cleaning out the big one and condensing down to the smaller. We managed to get that done finally and what a job that was. Wheew.

Anyway, day before yesterday we get a call from the property management company that is taking care of the storage business. Seems as though one of the other people renting from them had been broken into and they were calling everyone to let them know what had happened.

This place we have a unit at used to belong to a tire sales store. The people that owned the tire business lost it due to financial troubles and the bank that financed it had repossessed it. 

Anyway, back to the phone call. the man told me that they wanted to let all their renters know about this break in, and thought the worst. And unfortunately I was right to be thinking the worst. Our unit was one of the ones that were hit. 

These thieves got into our unit, took a few tool boxes that were sitting up front and then just basically threw everything they could get their hands on, apparently looking for more stuff to steal. 

In addition to the tool boxes, they also took a very old glass jar that was about half to a quarter full of polished agates. Now while that is not a very valuable thing, it's of great sentimental value to me. My Dad when younger, was a rock hound with his Dad and they actually got the equipment like rock tumblers and cutting saws to work with the rocks. Those agates in that glass jar were what was left of the agates he and his Dad collected and polished.

Even my two kids when they were young went out with my Dad and collected a few of the agates in that jar, so the loss is one that we won't be able to replace.

The one bright spot in this whole mess it that the thieves did NOT get my Dads almost new wood working equipment or the rest of the tools in the back of the unit. The other thing I am very grateful for it the family rocking chair.

I have an old wooden rocker in the unit and while the thieves threw it towards the back of the unit, it didn't get damaged and for that I am sooooo thankful. That chair has rocked 3 generations of my family in it. My Mother and her brother, Myself when I was a baby, I rocked both my kids in that chair when they were babies, and my hopes are that if my children have kids, they will be rocked in that chair as well. So that chair not being damaged means a lot to me.

What these thieves are doing is they are cutting the locks off these units, taking what ever it is they want, and then putting another lock similar to the one they cut off, back on so it doesn't "look" like the units are being broken into.

We are going to start emptying out the unit this coming weekend. The place is in bank owned hands with no security measures in place and apparently this has been taking place in broad daylight. The site has no security people around, and no security cameras installed either.

So we are going to bring as much of our belongings home and store in our garage as possible and then look into another storage facility that has some security measures in place. I would caution anyone with rented mini storage to keep an eye on them and check them periodically.

BlueGrass Festival at Mehama Oregon

We were invited to attend a Blue Grass Festival at a small town on the Santiam Pass. The town is called Mehama. A very pretty little town set right off the highway.

The festival was held in a very large field that is normally used for sports. It was backed by a beautiful river. I'll have photos of it posted as soon as I get them edited. I suspect the field was once a hay field as the parts of it not specifically used for sports was obviously hay at one time. Had that smell to it. Fresh mown hay, was fine by me.

There were probably about 20 vendors there, my store, Rayvens Rarities was included in the number. The foot traffic at this event was pretty slow as the weekend this was held was the same weekend that the Oregon State Fair opened.

The music was very nice but the best music, in my opinion, was played by a single musician that was set up out in the vendors area with us. There was a young man and he played the Pan Flute. He is a member of a band but the rest of them were covering another event, so he was just by himself.

His music was absolutely beautiful. What he was doing was playing some of the bands CD's that they have, then as the parts came along that he played in he played his instruments along with the CD right there at the festival.

Some of the music on the CD's they had actually set up to record at live spots like they set up along side a river somewhere and played along with the river rushing by in the background. Another CD they traveled up a mountain and recorded up in the high altitudes to get the sound of wind and Eagles calling to each other in the recording.

Absolutely breath taking music. And what an idea for a music CD. Traveling up a mountain to record it.

We were there as vendors again and met some very nice people. There was one booth there that was a personal favorite of mine. It was a Husband and Wife and they were making and serving hand dipped Chocolates and Carmel apples. 

They were taking fresh fruit like Raspberries or Blackberries and dipping them in White Chocolate. They would make a base of white chocolate, dip a berry in the chocolate, then place it on the base. Wait for it to harden just a bit and repeat the process until they had a bit of a "stack" of chocolate dipped berries.

Oh My God they were so yummy. I had a hard time not making myself sick with eating them, and the smell of the chocolate and the Carmel they were using to hand dip the apples was simply heavenly, drifting on the clean crisp mountain air. And with just a hint of the Hay smell, couldn't ask for a better combination. Definitely got my thoughts turning towards Fall and the start of the home baking season.

They used Granny Smith Apples for the Carmel apples. I thought it was a better choice than the usual Red Delicious apples that are the norm. I've got NO objection to Red Delicious, but the Granny Smith apples had a bit more of a tart taste and a crisper bite to them in my opinion.

And some of the Carmel apples they rolled in toppings like nuts or M&M's. Some of them they even drizzled with the White, Dark or Milk Chocolate. YUMMMM.

They were located across from us and about 2 booths down so all those wonderful smells drifting on the air everyday was enough to make a person gain weight just smelling the air floating around.

Fresh and cool mountain air with the scent of the Apples, Chocolate and Carmel, with just a hint of fresh mown hay, was just grand.

Oh and then mix in the smells of the Native American Fry Bread booth just down from us and you had a scent feast going on.

We are due to go to another Native Powwow in October so I'll be sure to write about that as well

Turtle Island Native American Gathering

I was recently invited to attend, as a vendor , a Native American gathering in Lebanon Oregon. It was called the Turtle Island First Gathering.
So I packed up all the merchandise from my RAYVENS RARITIES  on line store and headed for Lebanon Oregon where this gathering was being held.

This was not the first year for this gathering, but it was the first year for it in the location it was in. The group was allowed to use a field at the Fritz Stables located in the Lebanon Oregon area.

The property was originally owned by the parents of the people that now own it, and was originally a HUGE dairy farm but is now being used as a stables.

We set up and then left to stay in an apartment that belongs to a friend of my Daughters. She lives in Corvallis. She is not using the apartment right now as she's here in Redmond for the summer but will return to Corvallis and her apartment in September for college. This worked out great for us as it gave us a place to go every night.

We were given the use of a very large field that had a very beautiful river at the rear just behind where the vendors set up their booths. It was absolutely gorgeous. In the mornings, before the event got underway, and all of us vendors were just kind of sitting around and waiting for the day to start, you could hear the river running in the background.

When we went back behind our booth there, we could see the beautiful river slowly flowing, hear the water running by and listen to all the birds calling out in the trees that stood just at the edge of the banks that led to the water.
It was such a peaceful and pretty place to be. At the end of the event, I really had NO wish to go home :)

For breakfast one of the mornings of the event, we were treated to Native Fry Bread from the lady that actually organized this gathering, Morning Starr. She had a booth one down from where we had ours and she treated all the vendors to a Fry Bread breakfast. Yummmm

The event was a 3 day event with lots of Native dancing and other entertainments. There was a Native American Honor Guard to represent the military service given by some of the members of the group or to honor loved ones gone now that had served in the military in years past.

The gathering had a Native Drum group to play and sing for the dancers to dance to. And we were fortunate enough to have a Native Whipman in attendance as well.
A Whipman is a Native man that serves as a dance leader. He's responsible for keeping the dancers in line and for starting the dances. The man that performed the duties of Whipman for this event was Marcus.

Marcus is in his full regalia in the first three photos. The end photo is of the Chief of this group, Red Bear. In the background in the ribbon shirt is one of the Native Honor Guards speaking with some of the other members.

We had a wonderful time and are planning on taking my store, RAYVENS RARITIES back on the road, in July of 2011 if we are lucky enough to be invited back.